Erdogan takes election campaign to Bosnia after EU snub

President Rajab Tayyib Erdoghan's election rally outside Turkey is causing fresh controversy as he takes his campaign message to Turks in the Balkans after several EU countries banned such activities.

According to reports, the whirlwind campaigner is about to hold a rally in Sarajevo on Sunday and around 20,000 people are expected to attend it in the Bosnian capital's largest sports venue Zetra.

Unlike the European Union countries, Bosnia is viewed as a friendly territory whose leader Bakir Izetbegovic attended the marriage of Erdoghan's daughter in 2016. 

"We will show that he (Erdoghan) has friends and that there are those who are proud of him," Izetbegovic, the Muslim member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency, told his supporters last week.

Even so, Izetbegovic acknowledged that the Turkish leader "is not liked in the West and there are many frustrated Bosniak (Muslims) who do not like him in this country." 

A Facebook group of Sarajevans called on citizens of Bosnia to raise their voice against the visit which they see as an expression of "neo-Ottomanism", recalling the years when the Balkans was ruled by the Ottomans for more than four centuries until 1878. 

Bosnian Serb leader Milord Dodik voiced regret that the Turkish leader was "interfering a lot" in Bosnia's affairs.

On Saturday, state-run Anadolu Agency said the Turkish diaspora and Western intelligence had warned of an assassination attempt against Erdoghan during his visit to Bosnia. 

But Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag played down those threats, writing on his Twitter account that "these warnings of assassination threats are not new, and have always been there." 

SS