Can a motorway to Bosnia strengthen the Belgrade-Ankara ties?

Turkey’s tarmac-and-concrete diplomacy in the Western Balkans is building a motorway that, by connecting Serbia and Bosnia, intends to bring Belgrade and Ankara closer together.

The ambitious road-transport project was discussed on Friday in the meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his host in Belgrade, Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić.  

The Ankara-financed project to construct a direct high-speed road linking the capitals of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the most important transport infrastructure projects in the former Yugoslavia — especially for the Bosnian capital, notoriously still lacking a motorway connection to the rest of the region and the continent.

The agreement signed by Turkey, Serbia, and Bosnia in 2019 plans a circular motorway whose northern half runs from Belgrade to Sarajevo. The part in Serbian territory has been completed, with an additional 23 kilometres-long section in the Republika Srpska (RS) connecting Serbia’s Sremska Rača and Bijeljina in Bosnia.

The work has not yet started in the rest of Bosnia, and it is also unclear whether there is a final agreement on the highway’s path to Sarajevo, partly caused by Bosnia’s divisions and continuous political turmoil since the end of the war in 1995.

Erdoğan’s visit to Belgrade, it seems, was a first step in reminding everyone what needs to be done and who is picking up the tab.

What is happening on the Bosnian side?

The motorway would tie the beating heart of Bosnia to the heart of Serbia, passing through the RS, the Serb-majority entity in Bosnia led by Milorad Dodik, a populist who is the most committed regional political partner of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

While Dodik, a separatist known for his obstructionist policies, has been known to block any progress in the country if it suits his ethnonationalist agenda, it seems that this highway is something that is at the top of his to-do.

Last August, Dodik obtained a loan of €500 million from a Turkish bank to fund the construction of a further 130km-long section of the road in the RS and another 30km in the Brčko District, a chunk of Bosnia’s territory that splits the RS into two and doesn’t formally belong neither to the RS or Bosnia’s other entity, the Bosniak-Croat majority Federation of BiH (FBiH).

“Even though one considers Dodik as one of the authoritarian leaders, one knows that he can deliver. Dodik is someone to be reckoned with. And on the Serbian side, this project was very quickly endorsed,” Adnan Huskić, a professor of political sciences from the University of Sarajevo, told Euronews.

Meanwhile, things got complicated in the other half of Bosnia, and the road construction machinery has not moved an inch.

“This is something that is very common for Bosnia; the initial route for the highway became the bone of contention because of how and where this road is going to go,” he added.

While the RS has carte blanche to build its roads as it pleases, the moment the tarmac reaches the entity administrative line, the FBiH authorities — mired in the administrative bog of 10 separate cantons and their governments — become in charge of the motorway section in its territory.

But Erdoğan, who has maintained good relations with Bosnian authorities over the years, including heavily investing in the country’s industry, real estate and private healthcare sectors and once holding his AK party’s main diaspora rally in Sarajevo, knows that friends will find a way to move mountains if need be — and he will likely insist on overcoming that last hurdle soon.

How does Brussels see Ankara’s presence in the region?

Meanwhile, the construction costs of the entire road come to an estimated cost of €4 billion. This ambitious Turkish investment is not the only one in Western Balkan countries like Bosnia and Serbia, all negotiating their accession to the EU.

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As transport networks are also crucial for Brussels, which has invested millions in building highways, railroads and other infrastructure in the region, Turkey’s involvement must have raised a few eyebrows, albeit quietly.

Euronews asked the EU delegation to Bosnia about the Turkish-Serbian-Bosnian project. The delegation replied briefly, “We can not comment on non-EU-funded projects.”

Turkey and Brussels have not seen eye to eye on most matters, especially in recent years. While Turkey is a full member of NATO, its negotiations for accession to the EU have stalled a while ago and have been blocked by Brussels since 2016.

At the same time, Serbia’s path towards the EU, despite not being frozen, has been advancing at an extremely slow pace, and its President Vučić seems to be developing a high-flying foreign policy of maintaining good relations with everyone, everywhere.

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Belgrade and Ankara have not given up on maintaining ties with Moscow, and they didn’t join in on the Western sanctions against the Kremlin after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.

Serbian and Turkish airports are still open to direct commercial flights with the main Russian cities, becoming key hubs for transport between Russia and Europe.  

Why is Serbia important to Turkey?

Ambassador of Turkey to Serbia, Hami Aksoy, assessed that Belgrade is currently experiencing an economic upswing and is recording exceptional economic development — and Ankara remains a big partner in all this.

He reminded that over 1,300 Turkish companies operate in Serbia, whose total investments at the end of 2021 reached $250 million (€228.8m) and trade exchange reached $2 billion (€1.83bn).

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“Erdoğan’s Turkey needs Serbia to raise its stakes in a sensitive region for the EU and NATO. Both from an economic point of view and a political one,” Milan Parivodić from the British Chamber of Commerce in Serbia told Euronews.

“Turkey uses the Western Balkans to mark its presence in the EU playground before the countries join the block. It’s a move that has both political and economic relevance,” Parivodić, who is also Serbia’s former minister of foreign trade and economic relations, added.

There is also money to be had in bringing in one’s own companies to do the work. Under Erdoğan, creating business opportunities for its many construction crews has been a major factor in Turkey’s projects in the Western Balkans, Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Middle East, and, until Russia’s war, in Ukraine.

“It gives oxygen from the activities abroad to Turkish businesses suffering from an economic crisis with double-digit inflation rates,” Parivodić concluded.

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