Turkish parliament speaker receives Bosnian counterpart

By Hamdi Dindirek

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkish Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmus on Tuesday received his Bosnian counterpart Marinko Cavara.

Speaking at a reception at the parliament's Istanbul Office, Kurtulmus said that the historical, cultural, political and geographical relations between the two countries are very important and at an excellent level.

"Cooperation between the two countries is increasing in every field. We need to increase it further. In this sense, our main aim is to ensure trust and stability in the region, where such big regional and global problems have been experienced," he added.

Kurtulmus further said that ensuring trust and stability in the Balkans is Türkiye's priority.

"The first condition for ensuring trust and stability is that countries and peoples mutually trust each other. There is no other way forward for the future of Balkans other than cooperation and acting in solidarity," he added.

Kurtulmus said the way to achieve unity in this country is not by fueling disintegration, but by strengthening the institutional existence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, increasing state power and making the country stronger and more prestigious in the international arena.

Underlining that they are aware that the Dayton Agreement makes governing Bosnia and Herzegovina difficult, Kurtulmus said: "Despite the difficulties stemming from the Dayton Agreement, the way to turn this into an advantage is not to fuel the differences between the different ethnic identities there, but on the contrary, to ensure this cultural integrity within these differences."

The Dayton Peace Agreement ended the 1992-1995 war and brought peace while enabling the country to have the most complex political structure in the world.

The deal is viewed as "an expired peace agreement" in the country.

The accords, initiated at the Wright-Patterson US Air Force base near Dayton, Ohio, on Nov. 21, 1995, ended a brutal civil war in Bosnia that resulted in around 100,000 deaths over three-and-a-half years.

However, nearly 3.5 million people are living in one of the most fragile and multi-ethnic states in the world, facing economic difficulties and political deadlocks due to a complex constitutional structure.

Dayton built Bosnia and Herzegovina as a single state, but consisting of two entities -- the Croat-Muslim Federation of Bosnia and Republika Srpska -- as well as Brcko, a neutral, self-governing canton.