The Turkish minority in Greece, mostly stationed across the Western Thrace region, has turned to the United Nations’ special rapporteur on minority issues drawing attention to the problems it has been facing.
In a letter sent by the Friendship and Equality Party (DEB) and backed by numerous minority religious, educational and civil associations, the community brought up the problems with education, including Greece's intervention in the minority's autonomous educational system.
While over 100 minority schools were closed in the last two decades, authorities did not permit the opening of bilingual kindergartens whose curricula would be taught in Turkish and Greek, the letter said.
It underscored that authorities also act in violation of international obligations regarding the Turkish minority's rights by not legally allowing them to elect their religious leaders.
The letter informed Turkish institutions are closed under the pretext that Greece does not have an internationally recognized Turkish minority and hence names of associations cannot include "Turkish."
It is noteworthy that Greece does not act in accordance with rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) that favored the minority concerning the status of the associations, it added.
The ECtHR had ruled Greece violated Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights on freedom of assembly and association.
In December, the Council of Europe sent a long-awaited warning letter to Greece about the violations against the minority, urging the country to fully comply with international and EU law, implement ECtHR decisions guaranteeing basic rights for the minority, and take concrete steps to restore its legal status and personality.
The Western Thrace region, near the northeastern border with Türkiye, is home to a substantial, long-established Muslim Turkish minority numbering around 150,000.
The rights of this community are guaranteed under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne but the situation has steadily deteriorated for Western Thracian Turks. Seeing the community as a "hostage" of its ties with Türkiye, the Greek government has committed numerous breaches of its obligations and ECtHR rulings over the years. Besides shutting down schools and mosques and banning the use of "Turk" or "Turkish," Greek authorities even attempted to build a football field over an Ottoman-era Muslim cemetery they demolished.
Recently, community leaders have expressed that there is a growing fear among Turks in Greece that the country is looking to erase the legacy of Ottoman-Turkish history in the region and thus gradually suppressing the existence of the Turkish minority on its soil.
Türkiye has long criticized Greece for depriving the community of their basic rights and freedoms. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called for the Islamic world to "no longer be a spectator" to the persecutions of the Turkish minority and Muslim population in the country, but it seems, to no avail.
Last week, a party founded by the Turkish minority accused the Greek premier Kyriakos Mitsotakis of ignoring and whitewashing the longstanding issues they face.
The Friendship, Equality and Peace Party (DEB), a party popular with the Turkish community, said Mitsotakis avoided the facts and instead painted a false rosy picture of the situation of the Turkish minority. The party also pointed out that it is not acceptable for the prime minister to mislead both the minority and the world.
The Turkish Muslim minority of Western Thrace has no problems living in harmony under the Greek and European flags, the party said. "The minority has problems with not being rewarded for their great patience, ignorance of all its problems, and not being addressed. Like the prime minister, we invite Europeans to analyze the persecution in our region closely," it added.