ABTTF President: “No matter how much our country denies it, we are ‘Turks’ and we have been living with our ‘Turkish’ identity in Western Thrace for centuries. Just like Albanian citizens of Greek origin living in Albania, we are Greek citizens of Turkish origin.”
Ambassador of our country Greece in Tirana Konstantina Kamitsi answered the questions behind the scenes of the visit of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to Albania to attend the European Union (EU)-Western Balkans Summit on 6 December 2022, in an interview she gave to the Albanian press.
Kamitsi indicated that Prime Minister Mitsotakis will visit Albanian villages where the Greek national minority lives in the coming days with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.
“It is quite normal and quite correct that our country’s Prime Minister Mitsotakis will go to Albania and meet with the Greek minority there. However, for some reason, we are portrayed as a ‘Muslim’ minority in our country, even though we speak Turkish. No matter how much our country denies it, we are ‘Turks’ and we have been living with our ‘Turkish’ identity in Western Thrace for centuries. Just like Albanian citizens of Greek origin living in Albania, we are Greek citizens of Turkish origin. We want our country, which claims to be the cradle of democracy at every opportunity, to abandon this policy of denial, which is in no way compatible with democracy, and respect our right to define ourselves as it is”, said Halit Habip Oğlu, President of the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF).
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