ABTTF delivered a presentation at UPR Info pre-session for Greece

ABTTF presented the problems of the Turkish Minority of Western Thrace and put forward its recommendations ahead of the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session in May 2016

Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF) attended the Greece pre-session organised by the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Info on 31 March 2016. ABTTF Vice-President Mesut Küçükhasan and ABTTF International Affairs Director Melek Kırmacı Arık participated to the pre-session, which brought together state representatives and NGOs ahead of the Greece session during the UN UPR 25. Session at UN Geneva House on 2-13 May 2016. Kırmacı delivered a presentation on the problems of the Turkish Minority of Western Thrace at the pre-session that took place at International Conference Centre of Geneva.

3 NGOs gave presentations at the meeting where Surinam and Greece were discussed. The session began with the speeches of Ilia Maria Siatitsa from Greek National Human Rights Council and George Nikolaidis from LUMOS, which is an NGO active on the rights of children. Siatitsa explained that human rights had been negatively affected in Greece especially thanks to the huge flow of refugees and immigrants in the last years. She insisted that all national action plans had to be effectively implemented with regard to the protection of human rights of the refugees and immigrants. LUMOS on the other hand focused on the issue of unaccompanied children and stated that there was no child protection system in Greece. Consequently, around 300 thousand children are in need of institutional care, she concluded.

ABTTF International Affairs Director Melek Kırmacı Arık highlighted the issues that Greece had approved during the first cycle in 2011 in her presentation. These issues included the women rights, implementation of sharia law in Greece, developments on the freedom of association, 2014-2016 Human Rights National Action Plan and the other problems of the minority in education. Following the explanations of the developments on the mufti problem and the “240 Imams Law” in the framework of the sharia law, Kırmacı further talked about the current situation concerning 3 ECtHR ruling against Greece on the freedom of association. Kırmacı stated that Greek authorities should respect the minority’s right to elect its religious leaders and officers and demanded that Greece should implement the ECtHR rulings as soon as possible.

On the issues that are not included in the first cycle but are of huge importance, Kırmacı drew attention to the increasing state control over all aspects of education and declared that this was incompatible with the educational autonomy. While mentioning the current problems such as bilingual minority kindergardens, insufficient number of primary schools where the quality of education is fairly poor, insufficient number of secondary schools, Kırmacı also emphasised, as a new development, the problems of the law numbered 4310/2014 adopted in 2014.

In her closing remarks, Kırmacı recounted that some of the problems of the Turkish minority could not have been mentioned because many recommendations articulated during the first cycle had not been approved by Greece. Kırmacı insisted that Greece didn’t recognise Turkish Minority of Western Thrace as ethnically Turkish and closed all possible communication methods. Kırmacı also talked about the conference organised by ABTTF on 2 March 2016 at the European Parliament in Brussels where 2 Golden Dawn members of the Parliament interrupted the event and that the other mainstream parties had sent a letter of protest to the EP President Martin Schulz. Kırmacı equally criticised the lack of any dialog mechanism between the governmental authorities and the minority.