Turkish parliament speaker hosts Bosnian counterpart in Istanbul

Turkish Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmus has welcomed his Bosnian counterpart, Marinko Cavara, during a reception at the parliament's Istanbul office.

Kurtulmus emphasised the substantial and outstanding historical, cultural, political, and geographical ties between the two nations on Tuesday.

"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 said.

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 the 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.

Dayton Peace Agreement

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 1992-1995 war concluded with the Dayton Peace Agreement, establishing peace and introducing the world's most intricate political system to the country. Locally, the agreement is regarded as "an expired peace agreement" in the country.

The accords, initiated at the Wright-Patterson US Air Force base near Dayton, Ohio, on November 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 live in one of the world's most fragile and multi-ethnic states, facing economic difficulties and political deadlocks due to a complex constitutional structure.

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