The President of the Republic of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan was welcomed with the highest state and military honors by the Chairman and Member of the Presidency of BiH Zeljko Komsic, Sefik Dzaferovic and Milorad Dodik in front of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The solemn ceremony began with the intonation of the national anthems of the Republic of Turkey and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and then with a parade.
The Turkish President was welcomed by the Honorary Guard of the Armed Forces of BiH.
“Turkey and President Erdogan are a great friend of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Sefik Dzaferovic, a member of the Presidency of BiH said at the press conference, explaining that Turkey does not ask anything from our country and that “we are grateful to a friend like Erdogan to all citizens and the whole of BiH.”
He pointed out that the bilateral relations and meetings held so far in the previous three years were at the highest level.
“The Republic of Turkey and President Erdogan are an important factor in the stability of the Western Balkans, and that is a very important fact, and we ask Turkey and the President to continue with the stabilizing policy in the Western Balkans,” Dzaferovic said.
He pointed out that Turkey has numerous initiatives, starting with trilateral meetings with BiH and Croatia, and with BiH and Serbia, and revealed that a trilateral meeting of the representations of Turkey, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina is planned soon.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina is on its NATO path, the Euro-Atlantic path, but within that, cooperation with our friends, such as Turkey, which has its own European path and supports the path of BiH, is very important,” he said.
Dzaferovic also mentioned the untapped opportunities offered by positive relations with Turkey, starting with the signing of the agreement in Ankara on the construction of the Sarajevo-Belgrade highway, which he called another “stabilizing project” in the Balkans.
For his part, Erdogan said that the topics of conversation between the two delegations were relations in the region and that the participants in the meeting agreed that some things should be accelerated.
“We exchanged views on what is happening in the Balkans and agreed that economic development should be accelerated,” he said.
He said that Turkey and BiH have a goal to increase economic exchange to one billion euros and that this is a very important goal, which was also discussed by the Chairman of the Presidency, Zeljko Komsic.
“We have confirmed our support for BiH in NATO and that BiH’s sovereignty is important. We will continue to work to preserve regional stability,” Erdogan said, Klix.ba writes.
