El-Kalem, the publishing house of the Riaset of the Islamic Community in BiH, published a book entitled “Bosniaks in Turkey”. The book is a result of numerous visits and research in Turkey done by the authors of the book Amir Hodžić and Mirsad Kalajdžić.
No one knows how many Bosniaks left for Turkey exactly. Officially, Turkish data put the figure at two and a half million while other data suggest there are more than four million Bosniaks in Turkey. The diplomat Ramo Bralić, who serves in Ankara and who is familiar with the subject, says there are more than six million people of Bosniak origin in Turkey.
The first and largest wave of emigration of Bosniaks to Turkey was after Austro-Hungary took over the territory in 1878 when the first mujaheers departed from Bosanska Krajina and then Herzegovina and central Bosnia.
In this book, readers will be introduced to the lives and fates of these people who left their home country and travelled to Turkey.
Thousands of details from their live paint a picture of the hard lives of mujaheers and their current lives in their other country which are both be good and bad.
Authors Amir Hodžić and Mirsad Kalajdžić report on the lives of Bosniaks in entire Turkey. They reveal mosaics of the real people who “broke off” from their home country and the lives of the new generations of Bosnian mujaheers.
The authors visited places in Turkey which have the most Bosniak population and talked with them.
This book is not scientific in nature but rather a collection of journalist reports and travelogues combined with texts which are documentary in character.
(Source: Fena)
