Srebrenica Memorial Center would be ‘pile of rusty iron’ if it were not for Türkiye: Director

By Talha Ozturk

BELGRADE, Serbia (AA) - The Srebrenica Memorial Center would be “a pile of rusty iron” if it were not for Türkiye, its director said Tuesday.

"I want to let the public know what Türkiye did for the Srebrenica Memorial Center. If it weren't for the Turkish state and the Turkish government, the memorial center would still be a pile of rusty iron leaking everywhere,” Emir Suljagic, who has collected oral histories from genocide survivors in Bosnia and Herzegovina's historic town of Srebrenica, said in a program on Bosnia’s Hayat TV.

“We didn't have a roof. We didn't have a facade. Everything was falling apart. That was solved by the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA). What a miracle it is to work with our friends and brothers from Türkiye.”

The Srebrenica–Potocari Memorial and Cemetery for the Victims of the 1995 Genocide is located in Potocari, Srebrenica.

It was set up to honor the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed in the town, which the UN had declared a "safe area."

- Srebrenica genocide

Thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed after Bosnian Serb forces attacked the UN "safe area" of Srebrenica in July 1995, despite the presence of Dutch troops tasked with acting as international peacekeepers.

Srebrenica was besieged by Serb forces who were trying to wrest territory from Bosnian Muslims and Croats to form a state.

The UN Security Council declared Srebrenica a "safe area" in the spring of 1993. But Serb troops led by Gen. Ratko Mladic, who was later found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, overran the UN zone.

Dutch troops failed to act as Serb forces occupied the area, killing 2,000 men and boys on July 11.

About 15,000 Srebrenicans fled to the surrounding mountains, but Serb troops hunted down and killed 6,000 in the forests.