The WSJ's Marc Champion on Erdogan's visit to Srebrenica and Turkey's new role in the Balkans:
Tens of thousands of people turned out on Sunday to remember the execution of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb military, in what an international court has since ruled to have been an act of genocide. Families buried another 775 of the dead, as the grim task of collecting and identifying the skeletons of those buried and reburied in mass graves continues.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's presence at the funeral highlights how Ankara has stepped into a void in Bosnia left by the failure of a years-long U.S.-European Union effort to secure a new constitutional settlement aimed at ensuring stability in a still fractious nation made up of Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats, diplomats say.
Tens of thousands of people turned out on Sunday to remember the execution of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb military, in what an international court has since ruled to have been an act of genocide. Families buried another 775 of the dead, as the grim task of collecting and identifying the skeletons of those buried and reburied in mass graves continues.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's presence at the funeral highlights how Ankara has stepped into a void in Bosnia left by the failure of a years-long U.S.-European Union effort to secure a new constitutional settlement aimed at ensuring stability in a still fractious nation made up of Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats, diplomats say.
