An article on the Turkish community in Western Thrace and its issues was published on 9 January 2025 in ‘‘Allgemeine Deutsche Zeitung für Rumänien (ADZ)’’, the newspaper of the German minority in Romania.
In the article titled ‘‘Athens refuses to execute the ECtHR judgments’’ and written by journalist Hatto Schmidt, it is indicated that the Turkish minority in Western Thrace, located in the northeast of Greece, complains of violations of freedom of association confirmed by the court and criticises Greece.
It is further noted in the article that Greece has ignored the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which found the complaints of the Turkish minority justified, for decades, but this situation has not been forgotten thanks to the control mechanisms of the Council of Europe, and that the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe reiterated at the beginning of last December that these judgments should be executed and that in June 2025 it will reconsider whether progress has been made in this regard.
The article underlines that the Bekir-Ousta and Others group of cases is about the dissolution of associations with the word ‘‘Turkish’’ in their names in Western Thrace and the violation of the freedom of association of the Turkish minority by Greece and stipulates that the associations in the aforementioned group of cases are the Xanthi Turkish Union, which was founded in 1927 and was not objected to before due to its name, the Cultural Association of Turkish Women of the Prefecture of Rodopi and the Evros Prefecture Minority Youth Association.
The article also includes the remarks of Halit Habip Oğlu, President of the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF), in which Habip Oğlu notes the following: ‘‘As can be understood from the decisions of the Greek Court of Cassation, Greece has no intention of executing the judgments in this group of cases in any way and is constantly trying to buy time’’.
In the article, it is pointed out that Greece rejects the ethnic identity of the Turkish minority and even today the word ‘‘Turk’’ is forbidden in the country, Greece violates the relevant provisions of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne guaranteeing the educational and religious autonomy of the Turkish minority and its right to use its mother tongue, and it is further noted that there are no bilingual kindergartens in Western Thrace and that there are solely state kindergartens providing education in Greek.
Moreover, it is stated in the article that the government is trying to exercise state control upon the religious institutions of the Turkish minority and the appointment of Muslim clergy through the laws it has enacted and that the muftis elected by the Turkish minority are sentenced to imprisonment and fines due to the lawsuits filed against them.
The article written by Hatto Schmidt also had repercussions in Greece and was reported in the Greek press(https://www.dimokratia.gr/politiki/587340/germanikos-livelos-gia-ti-meionotita-tis-thrakis-meso-roymanias/).
Please click in the link below to access the full text of the article:
https://adz.news/artikel/artikel/athen-verweigert-umsetzung-von-egmr-urteilen
