The Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF) paid a working visit to Strasbourg on 19-21 June 2023 in parallel with the Summer Session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). The ABTTF delegation, consisting of ABTTF President Halit Habip Oğlu and ABTTF International Relations Director Melek Kırmacı Arık, discussed the current issues of the Turkish community in Western Thrace during their meetings with PACE member deputies and the Council of Europe bodies.
During the meetings with politicians and eurocrats, the ABTTF delegation indicated that the discourse of marginalisation and stigmatisation targeting the Turkish community in Western Thrace in politics and media during the general elections in Greece, and that the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) regarding the Western Thrace Turkish associations have not been executed by Greece for the past fifteen years and they further informed as regards the ongoing legal process before the Greek national courts in this respect.
During the meetings in Strasbourg, ABTTF President Halit Habip Oğlu noted that after a Turkish candidate received the most votes in the prefecture of Rodopi, where the Turkish community in Western Thrace constitutes the majority of the population as a result of the general elections held in Greece on 21 May 2023, and that New Democracy (ND) failed to become the first party only in Rodopi, the Turkish community in Western Thrace was directly targeted and marginalised in discussions that began in the political arena and mainstream media.
Furthermore, Habip Oğlu indicated that with the smear campaign launched against the Turkish deputies elected from Rodopi and Xanthi in the general elections on 21 May, an attempt was made to prevent them from placing them at the top of the electoral lists of the parties they were nominated for in the elections to be held on 25 June 2023 and that the media is trying to discredit him, and thus the free will and democratic choice of the voters who voted for him is being ignored.
Explaining that Greece does not intend to execute the ECtHR judgments as regards the Xanthi Turkish Union, the Cultural Association of Turkish Women of the Prefecture of Rodopi and the Evros Prefecture Minority Youth Association belonging to the Turkish community in Western Thrace, which are in the Bekir-Ousta and others group of cases, Habip Oğlu reminded that within the framework of the decision taken at the meetings held on 5-7 June 2023, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe demanded that the Greek authorities adopt urgent measures aimed at taking steps to execute the aforementioned judgments and that it would resume the examination of this group of cases during the meetings to be held in December 2023.
