Türkiye’s intervention prevented Greece’s plans to build a football field over an Ottoman-era Muslim cemetery that was leveled earlier this year in Western Thrace, an official revealed Wednesday.
A cemetery belonging to the Turkish minority in Horozlu (Petinos), a village in Western Thrace's Xanthi (Iskeçe) region, was destroyed by Greek authorities on March 16. Municipal authorities of Bulustra (Avdira) "were planning to turn a part of the cemetery into a sports field," Mustafa Trampa, the mufti (Muslim cleric) of the Turkish minority in the Western Thrace city of Iskeçe, told Anadolu Agency (AA).
Their plans were foiled when the Turkish Foreign Ministry took up the issue, he added.
Ankara had strongly condemned the move, with the Foreign Ministry issuing a statement on March 18 denouncing the cemetery's destruction and calling for restoration "to its former state."
"After Türkiye's statement, the issue gained international prominence," informed Trampa, adding that officials in Bulustra were forced to "withdraw the decision immediately."
He criticized Greek authorities for undermining the Turkish minority's efforts to protect the historical site. "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," said Trampa, who became the mufti of Iskeçe this September.
In its March statement about the Horozlu cemetery, the Turkish Foreign Ministry termed its destruction an "inhuman act."
"Necessary demarches were initiated before Greece regarding this inhuman act, as it turns out it is being carried out with directives from the mayor of Bulustra (Avdira)," the statement read.
"We expect the Greek authorities, who responded positively to our demarches, to show the required sensitivity to finalize the investigation as soon as possible and to bring back the cemetery to its former state," it added.
Greece's Western Thrace region in the country’s northeast is home to a substantial, long-established Muslim Turkish minority of 150,000 people, or around a third of the population. Their rights are guaranteed under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, but since then the situation has steadily deteriorated. After a Greek junta came to power in 1967, the Turks of Western Thrace faced harsh persecution and rights violations by the Greek state, often in blatant violation of European court rulings, as the country began to see its Turkish Muslim minority as a "hostage" of its ties with Türkiye.
Even though the junta was toppled in 1974, its mistreatment of the Turkish minority was taken over and continued by successive democratically elected Greek governments.
Türkiye has long decried Greece’s "second-class citizen" treatment and rights violations of the country’s Muslims and Turkish minority, from closing mosques and shutting down schools to preventing them from using the terms "Turk" or "Turkish" while mentioning names of their schools and foundations, and barring them from electing religious representatives. The Turkish union has for years struggled to ensure basic rights for the minority group, calling for international and European Union law, as well as compliance with the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
Most recently, the Council of Europe decided to warn Greece with a long-awaited letter calling for the implementation of ECtHR decisions, which the Turks of Western Thrace welcomed. The group stressed that Greece's insistence on not implementing ECtHR decisions will continue to pose a major obstacle to the establishment of trust between the Western Thracian Turkish minority and the Greek state.