Representatives of the Turkish community in Western Thrace raised the issues in the field of education, which has a great impact on the future of the Turkish community in Western Thrace, in the session on the representation of minorities in education.
The Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF) participated in the 17th Session of the United Nations (UN) Forum on Minority Issues on 28-29 November 2024. ABTTF and Western Thrace Minority University Graduates Association (WTMUGA) represented the Turkish community in Western Thrace at the forum themed ‘‘Minority representation and self-representation in public spaces and discourses’’ organised in Geneva, Switzerland.
ABTTF International Relations Director Melek Kırmacı and WTMUGA member Kerem Abdurahimoğlu, who participated in the forum within the framework of the sessions where the representation of minorities in public spaces, education, media including social media, arts and culture were discussed, conveyed the issues faced by the Turkish community in Western Thrace in the field of education.
In her speech at the session on the representation of minorities in public spaces, Vice President Olivia Schubert from the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN), of which ABTTF and WTMUGA are members, indicated that FUEN, as the largest umbrella organisation bringing together national minorities in Europe, supports the establishment of a legal mechanism or treaty for the protection of national minorities and expressed that they would like the UN Forum on Minority Issues to turn into a permanent forum.
Intervening at the session on the representation of minorities in education on the first day of the Forum, ABTTF noted that Greece is one of the countries with the worst record on the rights of national minorities in Europe and that it has not ratified the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) and has not signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Reminding that within the framework of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the Turkish community in Western Thrace was granted the right to establish and manage its own schools, but that this autonomy recognised in education has been dismantled as a result of government interventions, ABTTF stated and expressed the issues at different levels of education.
Furthermore, ABTTF stated that pre-school education is compulsory but despite the fact that the Turkish community in Western Thrace constitutes 55 per cent of the population in Rodopi, 45 per cent in Xanthi and 10 per cent in Evros, there is not a single Turkish kindergarten within the Turkish school system or completely private and that the state rejects the applications in this direction.
Pointing out that the number of Turkish primary schools in the region is decreasing rapidly, ABTTF explained that the decision to close schools with less than nine students in 2010 was also valid for Turkish primary schools which should be autonomous, and this practice has become a systematic discrimination tool. ABTTF added that the number of Turkish primary schools decreased from 194 in 2008 to 86 in 2024.
Explaining that the number of Turkish secondary schools is low, ABTTF indicated that the demand for a new school building in the Xanthi Turkish Minority Secondary and High School has not been met due to the increasing number of students. Speaking at the same session, WTMUGA expressed the issues in education and reminded the issue of double-shift schooling in Xanthi Turkish Minority Secondary and High School and the process leading to the protests and noted that the double-shift schooling system ended as a result of the protests but that the demand for a new school building was not met despite the letters sent to the government authorities.
In their speeches, the representatives of the Turkish community in Western Thrace demanded the return of the autonomous structure of the Turkish community in Western Thrace in education and asked that the demands of the Turkish community be considered urgently in solving the issues in education.
