There is a growing fear among the Turkish-Muslim community in northwestern Greece that the country is looking to erase the legacy of the Ottoman-Turkish history in the region, which dates back to the 14th century.
Suspicions arose after an attempt by the Iskeçe (Xanthi) province's municipality of Bulustra (Avdira) about a year ago to build a football field over an Ottoman-era Muslim cemetery in Horozlu (Petinos). Greek authorities’ plans to turn the cemetery into a sports field were foiled after Ankara shed international attention to it by denouncing its destruction and calling for its restoration to its “former state.”
"Greece is doing everything it can to remove all traces of Ottoman history, be it baths, mosques, madrasas or cemeteries, throughout the country and in Western Thrace," the mufti (Muslim cleric) of the community in Iskeçe said.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA) on Wednesday, Burhan Baran, a deputy with the leftist opposition PASOK party, said the community elected members for a board of trustees that would be in charge of following the case, but Greek authorities are yet to approve the process.
"It would be only natural to be suspicious about the reasons behind this," Baran said.
He explained that the community appealed to the city council to clear Ottoman-era gravestones scattered between the trees in the area, which used to be woodland. “They gave us tools and we assigned two of our imams to find and discern the gravestones. After we understood that it wouldn’t be possible to clear out the area since the site was so ancient, we asked the municipality to pause the works, hoping to clean up with help from local citizens,” Baran revealed.
While they were still in talks, the Bulustra mayor suddenly got the city council to greenlight the construction of a football field and a park, he said. The community then petitioned competent Greek authorities, including those from the education and religious affairs ministries, and consequently achieved to halt the municipality's plans over the cemetery.
“What I want is protecting this cemetery that is historical heritage, one of the elements uniting us,” he emphasized.
Also speaking to AA, Cengiz Ömer, a prominent local journalist, argued that the municipality's attempt is part of a greater plan of eradicating properties and estates belonging to foundations of the minority community.
The head of the municipality that attempted to build the football field over the cemetery is known for his anti-Turkish sentiments, he added.
All in all, Ömer said, it is an ill-intentioned plan that aims to sweep the legacy of hundreds of years of Turkish-Ottoman presence in the region.
The Western Thrace region near Greece’s northeastern border with Türkiye is home to a minority population of some 150,000 Muslim Turks.
The rights of this community are guaranteed under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne but the situation has since steadily deteriorated for Western Thracian Turks. Seeing the presence of the community as a “hostage” of its ties with Türkiye, the Greek government has committed numerous breaches of its obligations and European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rulings over the years. For example, it shut down schools and mosques, banned the use of the terms “Turk” or “Turkish” in the names of their schools and foundations, and barred them from electing their religious representatives.
In 2022 alone, Greece closed four schools, blocked the election of a local religious leader and prevented the community from performing Eid prayers in public.
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.
