THE REASONS FOR CHOOSING SARAJEVO

There are approximately 300 Turkish university students in Sarajevo. Most of them are İHL graduates who came to Sarajevo as a result of the changes that were made to the rules governing İHL graduates’ university applications; but only twenty to thirty of them are ÖNDER students. There are three institutions of higher education in Sarajevo: the University of Sarajevo, the International Burch University and the International University of Sarajevo (IUS). The University of Sarajevo is a Bosnian public university; International Burch University is a private university based in Turkey, which was founded by the Fethullah Gülen Community; and the IUS is also a private university based in Turkey, which was set up by a group of conservative Turkish businessmen, academics and political activists.

The University of Sarajevo does not attract Turkish students, because the language of instruction is Bosnian. Some of the respondents mentioned that there used to be a few Turkish female students at the University of Sarajevo when they first came to Sarajevo as IUS students. However, after two Turkish universities were established, which gave instruction in English, Turkish students stopped applying to the University of Sarajevo. Although the university does not attract first-year Turkish students, in exceptional cases, it attracts Turkish students who have already completed a couple of years of study in the Turkish universities. Some students who develop a good command of Bosnian later decide to transfer to the University of Sarajevo. During my field research, I only interviewed one such student. The student was also working as a Turkish-Bosnian translator. The fact that the student had a good command of Bosnian – ‘better than Bosnians’, in his words – supports the argument that language was the key factor behind Turkish students’ unwillingness to choose the University of Sarajevo.

Even though its language of instruction is English, International Burch University has not attracted İHL graduates due to the mutual antipathy between the İHL Community and the Gülen Movement. Mainstream conservative actors in Turkey, such as the mg and Imam Hatip networks, are deeply critical of the Gülen community's pro-state, nationalist and so-called ‘moderate’ attitude.