ABTTF President: “Our foremost and fundamental demand from our country is the recognition of our minority’s collective Turkish identity and existence. Indeed, despite the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), our associations—which have been dissolved simply because the word ‘‘Turkish’’ appears in their names—are still not having their legal status restored, and new ones are not being registered. With regard to education, we demand an immediate end to the practice of closing private and autonomous Turkish primary schools on the pretext of low number of pupils – a practice which contravenes the educational autonomy guaranteed by the Treaty of Lausanne – and that permission be granted for the establishment of bilingual Turkish and Greek kindergartens within the Turkish school system”.
In an interview with the Empros newspaper on 10 November 2026, former Greek Minister of Education and Coordinator of the Sector Heads of the Greek Left Alliance (ELAS) Kostas Gavroglou noted that the protection of the rights of the Muslim minority in (Western) Thrace is Greece’s obligation and that these rights cannot be made contingent on the course of Turkish-Greek relations.
Stating that respect must be shown for the individual right of self-identification of members of the minority, Gavroglou emphasised the need to hold elections for the boards of trustees of waqfs and to ensure that the process of appointing muftis is made as representative as possible through dialogue with the minority.
Gavroglou also indicated that, as part of their party’s programme, they propose offering minority students attending public schools in city centres the opportunity to learn their mother tongue on a voluntary basis; establishing public kindergartens in areas where the minority lives, staffed by specialist teachers or mediators who speak the mother tongue; and providing the opportunity to establish private kindergartens.
“Whilst I view the statements made by Kostas Gavroglou —who served as Greece’s Minister of Education for approximately three years—regarding the rights and issues of the Turkish Minority in Western Thrace as positive, I believe they fall short on certain key points. Our foremost and fundamental demand from our country is the recognition of our minority’s collective Turkish identity and existence. Indeed, despite the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), our associations—which have been dissolved simply because the word ‘‘Turkish’’ appears in their names—are still not having their legal status restored, and new ones are not being registered. With regard to education, we demand an immediate end to the practice of closing private and autonomous Turkish primary schools on the pretext of low number of pupils – a practice which contravenes the educational autonomy guaranteed by the Treaty of Lausanne – and that permission be granted for the establishment of bilingual Turkish and Greek kindergartens within the Turkish school system. As Gavroglou has also emphasised, the protection and promotion of our minority’s rights are obligations arising from the bilateral and international treaties to which our country is a party, as well as from human rights law. Our expectation is that these rights should be realised through concrete and lasting measures, going beyond mere political rhetoric’’, said Halit Habip Oğlu, President of the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF).
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