ABTTF President: “We reiterate our demand for bilingual Turkish minority kindergartens and call upon the Council of Europe and our country which is a member of the Council of Europe and the EU to immediately cease closing our special and autonomous primary schools belonging to our community and to ratify the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages without delay’’.
Since 2001, the European Day of Languages has been celebrated across Europe every year on 26 September with various events, organised at the initiative of the Council of Europe, highlighting the importance of linguistic diversity and multilingualism. This year’s theme for the European Day of Languages is ‘‘Languages open hearts and minds!’’.
On the European Day of Languages, under the leadership of the Council of Europe and the European Union (EU), all Europeans of all ages, in and out of school, are encouraged to learn more languages, highlighting that linguistic diversity is a tool for greater intercultural understanding and an important part of the rich heritage of the European continent.
While over 200 different languages are spoken across Europe, more than 60 of these are regional or minority languages spoken by approximately 50 million Europeans. One in seven people in Europe is a member of a national or regional minority or speaks a minority language. The European Day of Languages also highlights the fragile situation of regional and minority languages in Europe, emphasising that regional and minority languages are indispensable for a diverse and united Europe and are a fundamental expression of cultural and political experiences, and that multilingualism is an investment in Europe’s democratic, cultural and economic future.
‘‘As the ABTTF family, we sincerely celebrate European Day of Languages with everyone living in Europe. Learning one’s mother tongue and the right to education in one’s mother tongue are among the most fundamental human rights. However, in our country Greece, our community’s demand for bilingual Turkish-Greek minority kindergartens has been ignored for years, depriving our children of their right to learn their mother tongue Turkish, in pre-school education. As the Turkish community, which constitutes the majority of the population in the prefecture of Rodopi and approximately half of the population in the prefecture of Xanthi, we do not have a single Turkish minority kindergarten. Contrary to our educational autonomy guaranteed by the Treaty of Lausanne, our private and autonomous primary schools are being closed by the Greek authorities on grounds of lack of sufficient number of pupils, and this year, as in the village of Paleo Zigos (Mizanlı), those that have reached sufficient number of pupils are not being allowed to re-open. While there were 188 Turkish primary schools in Western Thrace in 2011, today there are only 83. We reiterate our demand for bilingual Turkish minority kindergartens and call on our country which is a member of the Council of Europe and the EU to immediately cease closing our private and autonomous primary schools, which belong to our community, and to ratify the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages without delay’’, said Halit Habip Oğlu, President of the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF).
*Image: Council of Europe
