ABTTF President: “We call on our country to immediately end its discriminatory policy against our community, which is incompatible with fundamental human rights, and on the 25th anniversary of International Mother Language Day, we reiterate our demand for bilingual Turkish kindergartens’’.
The United Nations (UN) Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared 21 February as International Mother Language Day in 1999.
Since 2000, International Mother Language Day has been celebrated around the world every year on 21 February to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.
Underlining the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity for sustainable societies, UNESCO indicated that multilingual and multicultural societies exist through their languages, which sustainably transmit and preserve traditional knowledge and cultures.
UNESCO underscored that 40 per cent of the world’s population does not have access to education in a language they speak or understand but noted that progress has been made in multilingual education and its importance is more recognised, especially in the early school years.
Pointing out that the 25th anniversary of International Mother Language Day is celebrated in 2025, UNESCO stated that selfless efforts have been made in the past 25 years to preserve linguistic diversity and promote the use of mother tongues.
“As the Turkish community in Western Thrace, we are celebrating International Mother Language Day with bitterness again this year. Although learning mother tongue and education in mother tongue is one of the most fundamental human rights, our demand for bilingual Turkish and Greek kindergartens in our country Greece has been ignored for years and our children are deprived of learning their mother tongue which is Turkish. Although we do constitute the majority of the population in the prefecture of Rodopi and almost half of the population in the prefecture of Xanthi, there is not even a single Turkish kindergarten in these two prefectures, despite 141 public kindergartens! We call on our country to immediately end its discriminatory policy against our community, which is incompatible with basic human rights, and on the 25th anniversary of International Mother Language Day, we reiterate our demand for bilingual Turkish kindergartens”, said Halit Habip Oğlu, President of the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF).
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