The initiative by academic Suad Kurtćehajić to introduce a single, shared identity—“Bosnian”—along with the proposal by former head of the Islamic Community Mustafa Cerić to establish a so-called “Bosnian Orthodox Church”, are part of the same political project whose ultimate goal is the unitarization of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the revision of its constitutional order.
This is the assessment of interlocutors speaking to Glas Srpske, who warn that both initiatives form part of an unfinished political strategy aimed at erasing national and entity frameworks. According to historian Goran Latinović, the debate over naming clearly shows that identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina is not a historical fact but a political instrument, used three decades after Dayton to reshape the state and relations among its constituent peoples.
To understand why Sarajevo’s political elite cannot agree on a name, Latinović says it is necessary to look back into history. According to him, Bosnia was a Serbian land in the Middle Ages, first mentioned in the 10th century in the work of the Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus.
He notes that documents of medieval Bosnia were written in Serb Cyrillic, starting with the Charter of Ban Kulin from 1189, the oldest preserved complete text in Old Serb. Only in the first half of the 14th century, he adds, does the term “good Bosnians” appear—but Latinović stresses that this did not denote an ethnic group, rather a social category: the nobility and respected individuals who served as witnesses and guarantors in charters.
“It was not the name of a people, but of a social class. That is why no Bosnian king ever styled himself ‘King of the Bosnians.’ However, this term was politically abused at the end of the 19th century,” Latinović explained.
During its occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria-Hungary, he says, attempted to resolve the national question by launching a broad campaign to create a so-called “Bosnian nation.” The new authorities sought to remove all elements that linked the population to unity with Serbia and Montenegro, and to bind it permanently to the Habsburg Empire. As part of this effort, the Serb language was replaced by the so-called “Bosnian language” as the official language, while Cyrillic was systematically pushed out of use. This policy attempted to misuse the traditions of medieval Bosnia to construct an artificial nation.
“Put simply, the Austro-Hungarian policy of creating a so-called ‘Bosnian nation’ was based on imposing an image of the past that did not correspond to historical facts, with the aim of permanently separating Bosnia and Herzegovina from Serbia and Montenegro. But this policy failed to gain support among Muslims, who largely rejected innovations coming from a Roman Catholic empire and remained loyal to the fact that sovereignty over these provinces—at least formally—still belonged to the Ottoman sultan. Thus, the Austro-Hungarian attempt to create a ‘Bosnian nation’ collapsed,” Latinović said.
Reviving a buried idea
A second attempt came about a hundred years later—and with greater success. In 1993, the Muslim political elite decided to introduce the term Bosniaks as a new national name, replacing the designation granted to them by communists in 1971.
“The long-buried Austro-Hungarian ethno-political concept of creating a ‘Bosnian nation’ was revived, and the term ‘good Bosnians’—which had denoted a social category of the Serb medieval state of Bosnia—was once again abused,” Latinović said.
With the Dayton Agreement, the term Bosniaks gained international recognition as the name for former Muslims, but, as he notes, it was still necessary to cultivate a sense of belonging—to convince people that they were no longer Muslims in a national sense, but Bosniaks. At the same time, the Sarajevo political elite promoted the thesis that all inhabitants are Bosniaks divided into three religions, thereby denying the national identity and existence of Serbs and Croats.
Latinović adds that even when the legal existence of the Serbian and Croatian peoples is formally acknowledged, it is done declaratively, often through the vague phrase “Bosnians and Herzegovinians”, presented as a supposedly shared sentiment—while simultaneously claiming that Serb and Croatian identities in Bosnia and Herzegovina were created only in the 19th century.
“This is an absurdity that is hard to believe,” Latinović said.
He explains that a segment of the Muslim elite now believes it would be easier to win over Serbs and Croats by replacing the term Bosniaks with Bosnians. According to him, this does not change the substance of the policy—only the method.
In that context, he says, one should also view the idea of creating a so-called “Bosnian Orthodox Church.” A similar attempt was made by the Ustaša regime of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World War II through the establishment of a “Croatian Orthodox Church.” Just as Zagreb then sought to Croatize Serbs and destroy Serbian identity through a non-canonical “church,” some in Sarajevo today naïvely believe that a similar institution with a “Bosnian” prefix could lead to the abandonment of an existing identity and acceptance of a new one.
“Such a state of so-called ‘Bosnians and Herzegovinians’—or Bosniaks or Bosnians of all three religions, as imagined by Sarajevo ideologues—would be the ideal framework for what they call a ‘normal state.’ At the core of all political problems in post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina, including attempts to create a ‘Bosnian Orthodox Church’ as a means of denationalizing Serbs, lies the frustration of the Bosniak political elite over its inability to abolish the Republika Srpska,” Latinović concluded.
“A stupidity without limits”
Historian Čedomir Antić also sharply criticizes the idea of “Bosnians,” calling the “academic initiative to promote the name Bosnian” yet another “stupidity without limits” by ideologues of an unfinished nation seeking to erase Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks alike and turn Bosnia and Herzegovina into a unitary state.
Antić recalls that 150 years ago there were neither Bosniaks nor Bosnians as national names; Muslims could identify as Turks or Serbs, and a small number as Croats. The language was not called “Bosnian,” but Serbian, while “Bosnian” functioned only as a geographical descriptor—like “Sremian” or “Krajina.”
According to Antić, it is grotesque to try to force Serbs and Croats today to accept something their ancestors did not accept 150 years ago, and identity cannot be reshaped at the whim of political elites.
He warns that this is a political manipulation cloaked in the rhetoric of “reconciliation,” aimed at erasing national and religious differences and abolishing the entity-based system.
Dangerous intentions
Academic Suad Kurtćehajić proposed the formal establishment of a single national identity—“Bosnian”—which he claims would serve as a natural, integrative, and unifying identity for all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Former head of the Islamic Community Mustafa Cerić proposed the creation of a “Bosnian Orthodox Church” as a new religious institution which, in his view, would function as a model of reconciliation and spiritual unification in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Source: Glas Srpske
