ABTTF President: “The Court of Cassation’s decision on the Xanthi Turkish Union which has been struggling for justice for 38 years showed once again that our country Greece disregards the principles of democracy and the rule of law.”
Greece’s Court of Cassation (Areios Pagos) rejected the appeal of the Xanthi Turkish Union, the oldest association of the Turkish community in Western Thrace, for the execution of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgment and the reinstatement of its official legal entity. Despite the ECtHR judgment and the warnings of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, Greece’s Court of Cassation once again rejected the appeal of the Xanthi Turkish Union in its decision rendered eight and a half months after the hearing of the case in Athens on 16 October 2020.
Established in 1927, the Xanthi Turkish Union had been closed in 1986 on grounds of the word “Turkish” in its name within the framework of our country’s policy denying the Turkish identity of the Turkish community in Western Thrace. The Xanthi Turkish Union had applied to the ECtHR in 2005 after more than two decades of civil legal struggle, and the ECtHR had ruled in 2008 that our country had violated freedom of association.
Following the ECtHR judgment, the request of the Xanthi Turkish Union, which had reapplied to the Greek domestic law for the cancellation of the closure decision and the reinstatement of its legal status, had been rejected on the grounds that domestic law does not allow the execution of ECtHR judgments. The Xanthi Turkish Union had applied to the Thrace Court of Appeal following the amendments to the Code of Civil Procedure adopted by the Greek parliament in 2017, which had allowed ECtHR judgments to be recognised at Greece’s national courts, but the court had rejected the association’s appeal. The Xanthi Turkish Union had then appealed to the Court of Cassation.
“The Court of Cassation’s decision on the Xanthi Turkish Union which has been struggling for justice for 38 years showed once again that our country Greece disregards the principles of democracy and the rule of law. Our country has ignored all warnings and calls by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to immediately execute the ECtHR judgments regarding the associations of the Turkish community in Western Thrace and for the Court of Cassation to decide in light of the court’s case law. While the ECtHR judgments have been ignored by the Court of Cassation’s decision, it was proved that the law is not operating in our country. As ABTTF, we have been conveying for years to our interlocutors before the European Union and the Council of Europe that in our country, which claims to be the cradle of democracy, democracy is not operating essentially but in name only. We will continue to support the Xanthi Turkish Union in its struggle for rights and inform international institutions and organisations about the Court of Cassation’s decision which is a projection of our country’s official policy that ‘there are no Turks in Western Thrace’”, said Halit Habip Oğlu, President of the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF).
