On 23 June 2026, the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF) submitted a letter regarding the Court of Appeals of Thrace's rejection of the appeal filed by the Western Thrace Fenerbahçe Cultural and Sports Association—an organisation previously ordered to be dissolved by the Court of First Instance of Rodopi on grounds that the phrase “Western Thrace” in its name made reference to a Turkish minority. The letter was sent to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, members of the Committee of Ministers, the Department for the Execution of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), relevant bodies of the Council of Europe, and parliamentarians serving on the relevant political committees of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
In its letter, ABTTF noted that the Court of Appeals of Thrace’s rejection judgment is of particular importance as it demonstrates that obstacles preventing associations established by members of the Turkish Minority in Western Thrace from effectively exercising their freedom of association in Greece have still not been removed in practice. It noted that Greece continues to disregard the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgments and case-law regarding the Bekir-Ousta and Others group of cases and that it has no intention of executing the aforementioned judgments, and that it has taken steps since 2008 to prolong the process as much as possible.
AK Party Member of Parliament for Ankara and Member of the Turkish Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Zeynep Yıldız, in a speech she delivered at the PACE Plenary Session following a letter also sent to her by ABTTF, addressed the rejection by the Court of Appeals of Thrace of the appeal filed by the Western Thrace Fenerbahçe Cultural and Sports Association and Greece’s persistent failure over the past 18 years to execute the ECtHR judgments regarding the Bekir-Ousta and Others group of cases.
In her speech, Yıldız emphasised that Article 1 of the Statute of the Council of Europe stipulates that the Council’s fundamental purpose is to promote greater unity among Member States; however, she noted that the current atmosphere within PACE unfairly targets certain Member States while leaving others unquestioned.
Noting that the Council’s rules must be applied equally to all, Yıldız said that although Türkiye is the country that executes ECtHR judgments most consistently and proportionately, it is constantly singled out; in contrast, the failure to execute the ECtHR judgments regarding the Bekir-Ousta and Others group of cases for the past 18 years has not elicited any sense of shame within PACE.
Highlighting that all violations are equally important, Yıldız noted that the unity of Member States, as outlined in the Council of Europe’s founding charter, can be achieved not by targeting them but by supporting them—not through manipulative and deliberate reports, but through a fair and equitable approach toward all of them.
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