Neoosmanizam: Turska između juče i sutra

Geostrategic integrity of the Balkans and the Danube region and the strategic ambitions of powerful countries that were inherited from previous centuries define the start points of European streams in XX century. German “drang nach osten”, Russian spread to south and an ambition of primate in struggle for the Turkish heredity, Turkish strivings to bring its Empire out of death with reforms, and remain right-sided to Sava-Danube river basin, preserving it as its natural border, and the strivings of Balkan peoples for liberation, shaped geopolitical, strategic and state-legal traits of the phenomenon called “Eastern question”. The conquests form south east towards north and northwest and vice versa pointed that geostrategic traits of Balkans were not separation and geographic inconnectivity, but connection and permeation, which open strategic ways to domination over the Eurasian knot and warm seas of Mediterranean and Middle East. The fact that Balkans aren’t the only connection between Europe and Asia does not lessen their geostrategic and geopolitical importance. On the contrary. This question, that was an eastern one for powerful countries, and one of a life importance for the people of southeast Europe, goes back into deep past. It was formed and a geostrategic position of a whole area that it related to by conflicted interest of people, religions and whole civilizations that faced each others there. However, if looking for a more narrow historical sense of the term Eastern question, we will find it in a collision of Europe and Islamic world, which was brought by Turkish penetration into Europe. During the rise of the Ottoman Empire, it was a matter of survival of Europian countries that were struck by Ottoman conquest, and after the decline of the Ottoman power it turned into a struggle for Turkish heredity. Today, the struggle form Ottoman heredity strongly includes Turkey as well. Turkish engagement in a struggle for its own historical heredity has got a unique name: “Neoosmanism”!