The Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF) participated in an event organised by the Brussels Representation of the Autonomous Region of South Tyrol in cooperation with the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN) on 3 October 2024 in Brussels. Deniz Servantie from ABTTF Brussels Office attended the event entitled ‘‘Regional and Minority Languages Teaching in Pre-Scholar Age’’.
In the two thematic panel sessions of the event moderated by FUEN Policy Advisor Johan Häggman, stakeholders from various parts of Europe discussed, among others, the impact of artificial intelligence in teaching, the resources and structures needed in the education system to preserve regional or minority languages, and future projects and recommendations.
Vice President of the Autonomous Province of Bozen/Bolzano-South Tyrol and Vice-President of FUEN Daniel Alfreider, Senior Expert at the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture of the European Commission Anna Sole Mena and Head of Office of the Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity (NPLD) Vicent Fenollar i Sastre delivered their speeches at the all-day event.
During the panel session on language acquisition of children from different cultural backgrounds, ABTTF made a presentation on access to quality pre-school education for children belonging to the Turkish community in Western Thrace living in Greece. In its presentation, ABTTF drew attention to the fact that the autonomous status of the schools belonging to the Turkish community in Western Thrace has been significantly weakened by various legal regulations and ministerial decisions and noted that Turkish schools have been turned into schools managed under the supervision and control of the state.
ABTTF further indicated that the children belonging to the Turkish community in Western Thrace are subjected to discrimination in equal access to education and this is evident in three main areas: the lack of bilingual kindergartens providing education in Turkish and Greek languages, the systematic closure of Turkish primary schools each year, the inability of the two Turkish secondary schools to meet the current needs in terms of student capacity and the lack of new schools/buildings. Reminding that Greece is not a party to the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECMRL), ABTTF called on Greece to restore the educational autonomy of the Turkish community in Western Thrace.
