Bosanska Krajina
Other cities and towns include Bihać, Bosanska Krupa, Bosanski Petrovac, Čelinac, Bosansko Grahovo, Bužim, Cazin, Drvar, Gradiška, Ključ, Kostajnica, Kozarska Dubica, Kneževo, Kotor Varoš, Laktaši, Mrkonjić Grad, Novi Grad, Prijedor, Sanski Most, Šipovo, Velika Kladuša, Teslić, and Prnjavor.
[2] Also, for the same territory, the exonym Turkish Croatia appeared in German speaking Austria-Hungary in the first decades of the 18th century, and was first used in maps created by the Austro-Hungarian — Ottoman Border Commission, which was mandated by the peace treaty of Karlowitz (1699), and then the peace treaty of Passarowitz (1718), and consisted exclusively of Austrians' and Venetians' military cartographers, and one Croat (Vitezović).
[3][4][5] In the mid-19th century the term Turkish Croatia, used in some Austrian maps for the Western Balkans, was replaced in favor of region's common name, Bosanska Krajina.
[7] Archaeological data show that medieval cemeteries of northwestern Bosnia clearly indicate that from the first half of the 10th century this territory was under the political rule of Tomislav I.
In the 13th and 14th century, a region called Donji Kraji (parish of Pliva), located in today's southern Bosanska Krajina developed, and was first mentioned as a property of the Diocese of Bosnia and claimed by the Bosnian Banate.
In the late 15th century, a local Croatian lord (knez), Juraj Mikuličić, erected a fort in the village of Bužim near Bihać, fearing the advancing Ottoman army.
The Croatian lands in general were reduced to a fraction of what they encompassed, and only the westernmost parts of today's Bosanska Krajina still resisted the Ottoman rule.
The natural obstacles in and around the region, especially at the time, included the rivers Sava, Vrbas, Una and Sana, as well as the mountains such as Plješevica, Šator, Klekovača, Raduša, Grmeč, Kozara, and Vlašić.
[citation needed] Turkish incursions expanded further to the north, and Charles of Styria erected a new fortified city of Karlovac in 1579.
When the Ottoman Empire lost the War of the Holy League (1683–1690) to the Habsburg monarchy and her allies, and ceded Slavonia and Hungary to Austria at the 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz, the northern and western borders of the Sanjak of Bosnia (corresponding largely to the current borders of the modern Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina), became a permanent frontier between the Austrian and Ottoman empires.
The anti-fascist Yugoslav Partisan movement in the Bosanska Krajina region was more ethnically diverse than in any other part of former Yugoslavia during World War II.
The region was also a place of concentration camps, including Manjača and Omarska where Bosniaks were held, tortured, raped, and killed.
For the past two years, non-Serbs in the Bosanska Krajina area have been "cleansed" through systematic persecution that includes torture, murder, rape, beatings, harassment, de jure discrimination, intimidation, expulsion from homes, confiscation of property, bombing of businesses, dismissal from work, outlawing of all scripts except the Cyrillic in public institutions, and the destruction of cultural objects such as mosques and Catholic churches.The population of the region numbered almost one million before the Bosnian War.
The composition of the current population of Bosanska Krajina has dramatically changed, because of expulsions, forced relocation and emigration during the Bosnian war in 1992–95.
Zagreb Airport, due to weather conditions in winter often preferable to Sarajevo, is approximately two hours away from Banja Luka by car.
Services operate to the northern and western Bosnian towns Banja Luka, Prijedor, Bosanski Novi and Bihać.
