The tiny, heart-shaped country of Bosnia sits at the very centre of the Balkans, a region which itself sits at the crossroads between the west and Asia Minor. No Balkan country reflects this diversity more than Bosnia, which for 500 hundred years was part of first the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire and then the Hapsberg (Austrian) Empire. The influences of the Ottoman Empire are still clear to see in Bosnia today, not least in the large Muslim population known as Bosniaks who make up 44% of the population alongside Serbs (32%) and Croats (17%). Most people will be well aware of the tragic conflict that occurred between 1992 and 1995 when these three ethnic groups descended into a bloody civil war on the break-up of Yugoslavia. Despite the obvious differences however, many would argue that the three groups have more in common with each other culturally than is different. The shared language, wh
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