Former Serbian toruture base now houses Turkish school

A building in Sarajevo's Vraca neighborhood that was once a command base where Serbian fascists used to torture Bosnian prisoners is now serving as a Turkish school where Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian students are receiving an education under the same roof. The building was turned into a school, currently attended by hundreds of students, by the Bosna Sema Educational Institutions. Turkish volunteers who traveled to the region shortly after the Balkan wars opened 70 elementary schools and two universities. The former Chetnik base hosts the first school opened by Turkish education volunteers. The building, after seeing many war crimes in the 1990s, has been used as a school since 1997. Bosna Sema coordinator Ismail Yapici said some 2,000 students are attending the Turkish schools and universities. Yapici also said Bosnian authorities had signed a 20-year lease for the building – in which prisoners of war were held during the bloody conflict – with the Journalists and Writers Foundation's (GYV) Bosnian branch after the signing of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords.