Thanks to fasting, a worship prescribed by God to everyone who is healthy and has reach puberty, those who fast have been able to sufficiently empathize with the poor and the needy by avoiding food and drinks for up to 16 hours this year. With these feelings of empathy, they have been able to show the generosity of sharing part of what they have with those who are not as lucky as themselves, particularly through voluntary aid organizations and charities. The days of Ramadan are not only days of solidarity with the poor, but also days of union with friends. The evenings of Ramadan when relatives and friends meet around iftar tables and engross themselves in heartfelt conservations and attend collective terawih prayers are sacred slices of time for sealing friendships and eliminating resentment. Turks represent perhaps the only nation that has recently managed to revive that great and magic enthusiasm of good ol’ Ramadans. The iftar tents, fairgrounds and festivals, established for Ramadan, make it possible to spend this holy month with the joy and enthusiasm of feasts or eids. Everyone, from all walks of life, irrespective of his or her ethnicity, race, gender, age or financial standing, can find a place at iftar tables in the streets and tents. Everyone living in this country unites with the unique sense of sharing and being at the same table. Listening intently for the call to the sunset prayer, everyone waits expectantly and in perfect unity for the divine command, “You may break your fast with the hope of earning God’s contentment.”
This spirit of solidarity, unity and mutual assistance has for the last few years been going beyond borders. These iftar tents are being set up everywhere where Turks live abroad, including Europe, the Americas and Africa. This ensures that peoples living in different regions can benefit from the bounties and favor of Ramadan. In this context, Turkish Airlines (THY) launched a new initiative. It has been organizing iftars with broad participation in the capitals of Balkan countries, which still preserve their historical and cultural ties with Turkey. By taking some Turkish guests to these iftars, it provides an opportunity for the people of the Balkans to become closer and commingle with Turks, with whom they lived together until the early 20th century, but also thanks to Ramadan’s unifying power. One of these transnational THY iftars took place in Sarajevo on Thursday, which was preceded by Montenegro’s Podgorica and followed by Tirana, Albania.
Along with the editors-in-chief of several newspapers, I was in Sarajevo to attend this iftar at the invitation of THY Chairman Hamdi Topçu. For several years after 1993, when my professional career started, my personal and professional agenda was dominated by Serb aggression and the Bosnian war. I also had to closely monitor developments in the war and the Dayton Peace Accords as well as the post-agreement developments during my term at the foreign news desk of the Zaman daily. But despite the fact that I had closely monitored Bosnian cities and know them, their streets and villages as proficiently as the Bosnians themselves thanks to the news stories from agencies and our own reporters during the war or books and articles I read, this in addition to my master’s thesis on the leadership qualities of the “philosopher king” and legendary leader Alija Izetbegovic, I, as an irony of fate, had never been to Sarajevo or any other Bosnian city until Thursday. This iftar served as an opportunity for me to meet up with an old friend whom I have been acquainted with since the early 1990s and whom I feel to be a part of.
Thus I was able to walk on the cobblestone streets of the Bascarsija; to visit generous Bosnian tradesmen’s small and thrifty shops, relics of the Ottoman Empire; to look into bakeries cooking Bosnian pastries among the smell of coffee; to be attracted to the modest charm of the water foundation (the Sebil); to step on the Latin Bridge, where Crown Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, triggering World War I; to attend the regular and terawih prayers with Bosnian Muslims at the Gazi Husrev Begova Mosque as if I were with my own neighbors; to watch appreciatively the handicrafts in the coppersmith street, known as Kazandziluk Street; to wish for time to stop at the Ottoman-made historical clock tower; to wander through the Bezistan; and to rest in Morica Han, whose walls contain the inscriptions of Omar Khayyam quatrains.
The Careva Mosque, built in Bosnia around its conquest by the Ottomans in 1463, was destroyed by Serbs in 1480 and re-built by the Ottomans. It survives to this day. The At Mejdan Park and the Vrelo Bosne Park, too, remain memories from this trip. Moreover, I was able to see the historic War Tunnel, one meter in width, 1.6 meters in height and 800 meters in length, built under the Sarajevo airport, and which provided Sarajevo the only connection to the outside world under the heavily armed Serbs, who established a blockade between 1993 and 1995; to visit the Tunnel Museum and, in this way, to commemorate the lives claimed by a violent and unfair war that killed more than 200,000 people in the heart of Europe just 15 years ago, a war whose every stage I had closely monitored. This trip also allowed me to pray for the souls of heroic Bosnian martyrs in the Kovaci war cemetery, which is also home to Izetbegovic’s grave.
I got a surprise at the iftar… As I was engaged in a lively conversation with some of my friends who were working at the two international Turkish universities in Sarajevo, some other folks invited me to their iftar tent and Ramadan program, just 100 meters away. Although I was a bit late, I managed to watch the iftar program held every evening in the company of whirling dervishes by volunteers of the Gülen movement, which has come to serve as Turkey’s door opening to the world.
The iftar event, organized by THY, a company that has grown rapidly despite the ongoing global financial crisis, and attended by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s prime minister and some ministers, was a nostalgic meeting full of surprises for me. It is thanks to this trip that I felt even closer to Bosnia and as a bigger part of it. I would like to express my thanks to the THY officials who made all this possible.
