Turkish Croatia

Turkish Croatia (Türkisch Croatien/Kroatien, Turska Hrvatska) was a geopolitical term which appeared periodically during the Ottoman–Habsburg wars between the late 16th to late 18th century. Invented by Austrian military cartographers, it referred to a border area of Ottoman Bosnia and Herzegovina located across the Ottoman-Austrian border from the Croatian Military Frontier. It went out of use with the Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Location
The name Turkish Croatia was used for the region of Bosanska Krajina (name in use since 1594), Krajina being a term for a frontier land. In Medieval Bosnia this territory was known as Donji Kraji (lit. 'Lower Ends') and Završje or Zapadne strane (lit. 'Westward Sides'). Donji Kraji included territorries of former Croatian-Hungarian župas of Banica, Zemljanik, and Vrbanja. This territory was granted to Bosnian Ban Kulin by King Bela III for his assistance in the wars with the Byzantines. It was usually depicted as roughly comprising the land area between the river Vrbas in the east, the Sava in the northeast, the Una in the northwest, as well as Dinara mountain in the south, including the Cazinska krajina pocket in the far west. Parts of Croatian regions Lika, Banovina and northern Dalmatia were also mapped as part of "Turkish Croatia" when Ottoman borders went further west.

History
The term was invented by the Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces military cartographers, who worked for the Austrian-Ottoman Border Commission, set up by peace treaties from 1699 (Treaty of Karlowitz) and 1718 (Treaty of Požarevac), and consisted of number of Austrians, Venetians and one Croat, Pavao Ritter Vitezović. It was used more consistently immediately afterwards in maps produced for the part of the territory in present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In Austro-Hungarian military maps from the 16th to 19th century, the so-called "Turkish Croatia" appeared as a borderland in the Croatian Military Frontier, whose Habsburg-controlled side, in present-day Croatia, was administered directly from Vienna's military headquarters. The term was similar as other borderland terms such as Morlacchia and Terrae desertae.

The term started appearing in colloquial usage among some Austria-Hungarian military and political mapmakers, in correlation to Ottoman retreat and Austria-Hungarian expansion, and subsequently it was produced in military and geostrategic maps. Croatian historian Mladen Ančić has referred to the term within the description of how medieval political and cultural boundaries were destroyed by the Ottoman wars and the establishment of early modern frontiers.

All these various borderland terms vanished by the end of the 18th century or by the beginning of the 19th century, with the change of the complex circumstances that had created them.

In the 19th century, following the conclusion of the Ottoman–Habsburg wars, and the transfer of power in the Bosnia Vilayet from Ottomans to Habsburg rule at the Berlin Congress in 1878, the term became redundant, as it no longer served its purpose, and disappeared from official usage completely. The entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina came under a direct rule of the Viennese government, and since 1908 annexation (Bosnian Crisis) became a new Crown land, thus making a term irrelevant in the eyes of its originators.

In his 1900 work Kratka uputa u prošlost Bosne i Hercegovine, od g. 1463-1850, Safvet-beg Bašagić used the phrase Turska-Hrvatska in reference to Krajina.

From maps it found its way into narrative, peculiar to Croatian national revival movement, based on a paraphrase of so-called "hrvatske matere zemlje" (lit. 'Croatian mother land') and the "Croatian state right" (hrvatsko državno pravo), similar to the one in Serbia with an expression srpske zemlje (lit. 'Serb lands'), which is at the time propagated by the political organization called the Party of Rights. It was typically exploited for the geopolitical purpose and utterance of territorial ambitions and expansionist aspirations of both Austria-Hungary and later Croatia, via transposition of these "rights" on Bosnia and Herzegovina and its historic territory.

Legacy
Although on rare occasions, the term was also used in romanticized historiography, as well as in the phantasmagoric politics of "National awakening" and "National integration and homogenization" of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia of the late 19th to early 20th century. In the first half of 20th century with a rise of nationalist fervor, up to the time and establishment of Nazi puppet-state Independent State of Croatia in 1940s, this term appeared sporadically again, concerning the resurrection of a Croatian statehood, journalistic and political propagandistic fieldwork in regard to Bosnia and Herzegovina future by Fran Milobar and geopolitical contemplation by Ivo Pilar and Filip Lukas, eventually getting politically operationalized by Ante Starčević, and in 1940s, implemented by Frank and Ante Pavelić via occupation and incorporation of entire Bosnia and Herzegovina into Nazi puppet-state, NDH.

In more recent times, with a rise of Franjo Tuđman and establishment of the Republic of Croatia in the 1990s, the term was revived in reference to the political and military aims that Tuđman and his close associates had in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, wanting to control both the area of former Banovina of Croatia as well as the adjacent Una-Sana regions of Bosanska Krajina. Yugoslav People's Army used territory of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina for offensives against Croatia. At a meeting in December 1991 with the HDZ BiH leadership Tuđman discussed the possibility of joining Herzeg-Bosnia to Croatia as he thought that Bosnian representatives were working to remain in Yugoslavia. Tuđman was widely criticized, among the Bosniaks, by the Croatian intelligentsia and in the international community, for his public discussions of this matter and giving it legitimacy, and was subsequently accused of encouraging a forceful partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, in February 1992 he encouraged Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina to support the upcoming Bosnian independence referendum. Izetbegović declared the country's independence on 6 April 1992 that was immediately recognised by Croatia. At the beginning of the Bosnian war a Croat-Bosniak alliance was formed, though it was often not harmonious. Over time, the relations between Croats and Bosniaks worsened, resulting in the Croat–Bosniak War. In January 1993 Tuđman said that Bosnia and Herzegovina can survive only as a confederal union of three nations. The war ended in March 1994 with the signing of the Washington Agreement. In June 1994 Tuđman visited Sarajevo to open the Croatian embassy. There he met with Alija Izetbegović and discussed the creation of the Croat-Muslim Federation and its possible confederation with Croatia.

Encouraged with Tuđman's usage of the term as a mean to denigrate and devalue Bosnia and Herzegovina sovereignty and statehood, the term was adopted as part of Croatian far-right nationalist narrative and, although sparsely, as part of their official political discourse, however with little if any impact on mainstream international geopolitics, political geography and historiography, or on academic research for that matter. The term never took hold outside the scope of Croatian political extremism and academic fringes.

References to 'Turkish Croatia' in modern-day Croatian scholarly works include discussions of a lack of an actually centrally positioned geographical space in Croatia since the 15th century.