ABTTF President: “With the permission of our motherland Türkiye, the Greek Orthodox minority population on the island increased significantly with the opening of a private Greek primary school for only 3 children in Gökçeada in 2013, followed by the opening of a private Greek secondary and high school in 2015. If our country had followed the example of our motherland and entered into a dialogue with us based on goodwill and responded to our justified demands that we have been expressing for years, we would not have these issues today and our children would have the opportunity to receive education in our autonomous schools with high quality education’’.
In the conference organised by the Great Hellenic Foundation in Athens on 28 September 2024, with the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew as the main speaker, the issue of increasing the population of the Greek Orthodox minority in Gökçeada and Bozcaada was discussed.
In the conference, it was noted that the population of the Greek Orthodox minority in these two islands has gradually increased as a result of the returns in recent years, that Greek schools have reopened in Gökçeada, and that the main issue is that young people belonging to the Greek Orthodox minority continue to live in these two islands after graduation and create a thriving society again.
“With the permission of our motherland Türkiye, a private Greek primary school for only 3 children was opened in Gökçeada in 2013, followed by the opening of a private Greek secondary and high school in 2015, which resulted in a significant increase in the population of the Greek Orthodox minority on the island. Despite this positive development in Gökçeada, the opposite is the case in Western Thrace where the Turkish community lives. As a result of the dismantlement of our educational autonomy by unilateral laws and practices over the years, the quality of education in our primary schools with autonomous status has been deliberately reduced by the state and our children have been directed to attend public schools. As a result of the ministerial decision to close down primary schools with less than 9 students, the number of primary schools has decreased from 188 in 2011 to 86 today. Although we constitute the majority of the population in the prefecture of Rodopi and almost half of the population in the prefecture of Xanthi, the state has been ignoring our demand for a bilingual Turkish minority kindergarten for years. In our secondary and high school in Xanthi, the building issue still persists, the capacity of the existing building is insufficient to accommodate the number of students. If our country had followed the example of our motherland and entered into a dialogue with us based on goodwill and responded to our justified demands that we have been expressing for years, we would not have these issues today and our children would have the opportunity to receive education in our autonomous schools with high quality education’’, said Halit Habip Oğlu, President of the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF).
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