{"id":1912,"date":"2016-02-25T13:28:40","date_gmt":"2016-02-25T13:28:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1912"},"modified":"2016-02-25T13:28:40","modified_gmt":"2016-02-25T13:28:40","slug":"turkey-the-eastern-question-is-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1912","title":{"rendered":"Turkey: The Eastern Question is back"},"content":{"rendered":"

By JONATHAN MARCUS (diplomatic correspondent)
\nBBC<\/em><\/p>\n

History has a strange way of imposing itself upon the present.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back in the early 1990s, when I was on my way to join the first British troops despatched for peace-keeping duties to Bosnia, I stayed overnight at a Vienna hotel. In the lobby, there was a series of 19th Century maps of the Hapsburg Empire.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>There they were, all of the old names – Bosnia Herzegovina, the Croat lands – names, long consigned to the history books, that were now the currency of nightly news reports, marking out the boundaries of this latest tragedy in the Balkans.<\/p>\n

Later, standing in Sarajevo’s old Turkish market, one had the clear sense of being in a historic border zone; a frontier between Europe and the old Ottoman lands to the east.<\/p>\n

It was a reminder that for much of the 19th Century, Western diplomacy had been obsessed with what became known as “the Eastern Question.”<\/p>\n

This was the fear as to what might happen as the Ottoman Empire – then seen as “the sick man of Europe” – slowly relinquished its grip on its various possessions.<\/p>\n

Who might step into the breach? One obvious concern was Russia. Britain and France had already fought one campaign to bolster Turkey and limit Russia’s influence in the Holy Land – the Crimean War of the 1850s.<\/p>\n

Crimean War:<\/strong><\/p>\n