ABTTF conveyed the problems of Turkish Minority in OSCE Meetings

ABTTF uttered the „Citizenship and Political Participation“ problems of Western Thrace Turkish Mino-rity on the first day of OSCE Warsaw Meetings, 2 -3 October and on the second day problems related with „Freedom of Association and Human Rights“ were discussed.

Özkan Reşit and Association of University Graduates represented ABTTF, Western Thrace Turkish Mi-nority respectivelyat the meetings. Mr. Reşit said that Greek authorities have been very reluctant towards the problems of Turkish and Macedonian Minorities for years and responsible authorities have been keeping the problems unsolved. There has been no impovement aiming a clear cut solution.

Halit Habipoğlu, chairman of ABTTF, made a statement on topic and said „Greece always considers his minority as a danger and due to this point of view, Greek authorites never accept their mistake and do not take initiative to form a clear, peace – oriented minority policy. We should not forget the fact that minorities always enrich countries, where they live, in every means.“

Turks are kept away from administrative duties…

Reşit emphasized that Turkish minority had serious problems related with political participation and they were not represented fairly at the parliement. He continued „ Election barrier of 3% in accordance with political stability and equality in political representation that is implemented to all political parties is acceptable but the same election barrier is being implemented on personel base and that is not only undemocratic but also unacceptable. After the success of Western Thrace Turkish minority indepen-dent candidates during 1990’s elections, Greek authorities decided to implement election barrier to independent candidates as to restrict political rights of the minority. We reitrate our demand of electi-on barrier of 3% to be implemented only to political parties. Kapodistrias’ Plan anticiptes the union the election areas and that aims to prevent the Western Thrace Turkish Minority members to elect their own governor of province in their election areas.

Gülbeyaz Karahasan was nominated as the candidate for governor of İskeçe-Kavala- Drama provin-ce. Conservatives as well as other parties in the community overreacted to the candidacy of Gülbeyaz Karahasan and demanded her to announce the public that „she is a Greek woman“. The interesting point here is that the center point of all discussions on the theme is the „Turkish identity“ of the can-didate

No improvement concerning Greek Minority Policy…

Mr. Özkan emphasized the citizenship rights violations of Greece and made the following statement “19th Article of the Greek Citizenship Law, that was issued in 1955 and implemented between 1955 - 1988, caused directly or indirectly 46.638 Western Thrace Turks to lose their citizenship by a very simple administrative decision due to their ethnic origin as we discussed in the former meetings. The article was abolished in 1988 as a result of international pressures but it was not implemented retro-spectively and due to this, the victims of the mentioned law still have serious problems and are aggrieved by that unfair implementation. We repeat our call to our country, Greece to give Western Thrace Turkish minority their basic rights back. We believe strongly, Europe that is established on the principles of peace, welfare and freedom will not accept such an unfair implementation. Greek’s problem concentrating on our „Turkish identity“ has been known for years. Our organizations were formally closed due to their names containing „Turk“ and the last of the cases lasting since 80’s at European Human Rights Court will be adjudicated as we hope.

Greek Delegation used their right to reply and they claimed that there was no Turkish minority but instead Muslim minority and Turkish minority members formed a part of Muslim minority.

Mr. Reşit commented that answer as „Greece still denies the national identity of the the minorities in the country. Such a denial is a human rights problem. National identity comes before religion while religion is an individualistic fact. Meanwhile, minorities in Greece can not exercise their right of religion.“