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Representatives of the Turkish community in Western Thrace are in Geneva for the UN Forum on Minority Issues

02.12.2022

At the Forum, which was held with the theme of the 30th anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, ABTTF and WTMUGA expressed the issues of the Turkish community in Western Thrace and the Turks in Rhodes and Kos in the field of minority rights.

The 15th Session of the United Nations (UN) Forum on Minority Issues was held on 1-2 December 2022 in Geneva, Switzerland. Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF) International Relations Director Melek Kırmacı Arık and Western Thrace Minority University Graduates Association (WTMUGA) Human Rights Expert Kerem Abdurahimoğlu, representing the Turkish community in Western Thrace attended to the Forum which was held with the theme of the ‘‘30th anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities’’.

During the two-day sessions of the Forum, where the normative framework of the UN Declaration of the on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities the role of the defenders in the implementation of the declaration was discussed, and what should be done to bridge the gap between rhetoric and practice in the implementation of the declaration was assessed.

Speaking on the second day of the forum, ABTTF indicated that the Turkish community in Western Thrace gained autonomous status in the field of education and religion with the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, but that this autonomous structure was disbanded by the laws and circulars in the post-1967 period. Stating that Greece does not recognise its ethnic Turkish identity and uses the definition of “Muslim minority” in Thrace, ABTTF further noted that Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with students from Turkish primary schools in the prefecture of Rodopi on 24 November 2022, and at the occasion of his meeting with the students, he gave the example that since the Treaty of Lausanne, there is bilingual education in Turkish and Greek in the Turkish primary schools but despite this example, he did not even say that the language of education is indeed Turkish in such schools. Indicating that Greece has closed the associations bearing the word “Turkish” in their names, ABTTF explained that Greece has not been executing the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for the past 14 years with respect to the violation of the freedom of association of the Turkish community in Western Thrace and more specifically as regards the cases known as the Bekir-Ousta and Others Group of Cases. 

Furthermore, ABTTF stated that, in addition to the Turkish community in Western Thrace, the Turkish community living in Rhodes and Kos in Greece are not defined as a minority because the Dodecanese Islands did not belong to Greece at the time when the Treaty of Lausanne was signed and as such are deprived of their minority rights. It stated that their right to education in their mother tongue and their right to elect their religious leaders were taken away over time.


WTMUGA noted that the Turkish community in Western Thrace has the right to establish and manage its own schools, but that this right has been violated, and cited the deprivation of the rights of the board managers in the management of schools as an example to this situation. Indicating that the right to elect the muftis, who are the religious leaders of the Turkish community in Western Thrace, was taken away from them in the religious field, WTMUGA explained that the state does not recognise the muftis elected by the community and that it is instead appoint muftis to their roles. Moreover, WTMUGA noted that the Turkish community in Rhodes and Kos is not recognised as a minority by Greece and that the Turks living in the islands are not granted education in their mother tongue, nor the right to elect their own religious leaders. WTMUGA indicated that civil society representatives in the region were targeted in the media after the international meetings they attended to defend minority rights, and that civil society representatives were exposed to criminal and financial investigations.

Using its right of reply, Greece claimed that it fulfilled its obligations regarding the Turkish community in Western Thrace with the expression ‘‘minority in Thrace’’.

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