Turkish Croatia, was a geopolitical term which appeared, periodically, during the Ottoman–Habsburg wars between the late 16th to late 18th century, and which can also be viewed as hapax. It was invented by the military cartographers, who worked for the Austrian-Ottoman Border Commission, set up by peace treaties from 1699 and 1718, and consisted of number of Austrians, Venetians and one Croat. It was used more consistently since that time in maps produced for the part of the territory in present day Bosnia and Herzegovina, specifically region of Bosanska Krajina and Zapadne Strane ). This territory 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 Lika, Banovina and northern Dalmatia were also mapped as part of "Turkish Croatia" when Ottoman borders went further west.
History
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 Empire-controlled side, in present-day Croatia, was administered directly from Vienna's military headquarters. In the 19th century, following the conclusion of the Ottoman–Habsburg wars, and the transfer of power in the Bosnia Vilayet from Ottomans to Austrian 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 became a new Crown land, thus making a term irrelevant in the eyes of its originators. 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. From here it found its way into narrative, peculiar to Croatian national revival movement, based on a paraphrase of so-called hrvatske "matere zemlje" ' and "hrvatsko državno pravo" ', which is at the time propagated by political organization called 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. 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 Croatia 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 fascist NDH in 1940s, this term appeared sporadically again, concerning the resurrection of a Croatian statehood, within the romantic sloganeering of Nedeljko Mihanović, journalistic and political propagandistic fieldwork in regard to Bosnia and Herzegovina future by Frano 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 and was preferred Tuđman's and his close associates' argument in reference to their political and military aims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which culminated in Croat-Bosniak war. 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.
