Halit Habip Oğlu: “Our country Greece pursues its official policy of denying the existence of the Turkish community in Western Thrace by ignoring the Turkish press which is operating within the framework of the laws in Western Thrace.”
In order to inform the citizens regarding the coronavirus pandemic in Greece, the Government Spokesman Stelios Petsas announced the amounts of financial support given to written press, internet websites, television channels and radios by the New Democracy Party government. According to Rodop Rüzgarı, while media organisations were supported by approximately 20 million euros in all of Greece, no such payment has been made to the Western Thrace Turkish minority press which is operating in Turkish language.
Proto Thema was the newspaper with the most advertising money from the government with 124,000 euros, while SKAI topped the television channels with 1,029,200 euros. In Western Thrace, it was Eleftheri Thraki newspaper from Evros province within the Greek local press which received the highest payment with 6,199 euros. As for Xronos newspaper from Rodopi province, known for its opposition to the Turkish community in Western Thrace, it was paid 4,960 euros by the government.
“As part of the campaign to inform citizens about the coronavirus pandemic, our country Greece has continued to apply the policy of discrimination and denial against the Turkish community in Western Thrace by excluding the Western Thrace Turkish minority press from the government's financial support to media organisations. However, the Western Thrace Turkish minority press, which is publishing within the framework of existing laws, has been informing the Turkish community in our mother tongue Turkish with its own means from the very first days of the pandemic regularly and achieving what the government has not being doing, considering the fact that one of government’s basic responsibilities is protecting public health. On the other hand, compared to Greece, there are very positive examples in other countries in Europe. In Germany, for example, besides the official language German, there is official information about the pandemic and measures taken by the federal government and state governments in the native languages of minorities and communities. Meanwhile, in our country which prides itself as being the cradle of democracy, there has been no information given in Turkish language with respect to combating the coronavirus at the local level by the government despite the fact that the Turkish community constitutes the majority of the population in the Rodopi province and almost half of the population in Xanthi province in Western Thrace. The Western Thrace Turks have been rendered as scapegoats in the spread of the coronavirus and have been targeted. The Greek state should immediatley stop seeing and excluding us who are citizens of this country as its stepchildren all the time”, said Halit Habip Oğlu, President of the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF).
