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While young people from the Greek Orthodox minority are planning to settle in Istanbul, Western Thrace Turks that are victims of Article 19 are awaiting the return of their Greek citizenship

27.09.2021

ABTTF President: “Within the framework of the principle of reciprocity established by the 1923 Lausanne Peace Treaty, the same rights were granted to both the Greek Orthodox minority in our motherland Turkey and the Turkish community in Western Thrace in our country Greece, and their fate was drawn together. The Ecumenical Federation of Constantinopolitans encourages Greek youth to settle in Istanbul and join the Greek Orthodox minority there with the program it conducts in contact with our motherland. We ask our country to take our motherland as an example and return its citizenship to 60 thousand Western Thrace Turks who had been unjustly deprived of their citizenship as a result of Article 19 of the Greek Citizenship Law.”

The Ecumenical Federation of Constantinopolitans (Ec. Fe. Con.) helps Greek youth who want to settle in Istanbul and join the Greek Orthodox minority there. According to the news report from Birlik newspaper, Ec. Fe. Con. which effectively coordinates and monitors the activities of 25 associations founded by Istanbul Greeks in various parts of the world, gives the opportunity to be helpful to applicants with preparation, finding a job and settling in Istanbul through the ‘ELPIS (Hope)’ programme which has been implemented since 2006. It is stated in the news report that the programme in question has been carried out in direct contact with Turkish government officials since 2010 and aims to help Greeks who want to return to Istanbul.

“Within the framework of the principle of reciprocity established by the 1923 Lausanne Peace Treaty, the same rights were granted to both the Greek Orthodox minority in our motherland Turkey and the Turkish community in Western Thrace in our country Greece, and their fate was drawn together. While our motherland has gone beyond the principle of reciprocity and improved the rights of the Greek Orthodox minority in recent years, in contrary to that, our country has implemented many policies and laws that usurp our rights. One example of this was former Article 19 of the Greek Citizenship Law which was in force between 1955 and 1988 and that ignored human and minority rights. As a result of the law in question, which aims to completely assimilate and erase Western Thrace Turks, 60 thousand Western Thrace Turks were deprived of their Greek citizenship on grounds that they are not of Greek ethnicity. Thousands of naturalised Western Thrace Turks have lost their European Union (EU) citizenship and have been deprived of various social and political rights. The Ecumenical Federation of Constantinopolitans encourages Greek youth to settle in Istanbul and join the Greek Orthodox minority there with the program it conducts in contact with our motherland. We ask our country to take our motherland as an example and return its citizenship to 60 thousand Western Thrace Turks who had been unjustly deprived of their citizenship as a result of Article 19 of the Greek Citizenship Law”, said Halit Habip Oğlu, President of the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF). 

*Image: www.birlikgazetesi.org 

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