The ethnic Turkish population in Greece has accused the current prime minister of ignoring its problems. During his two-day visit to Western Thrace, the premier ignored and tried to whitewash the longstanding issues faced by the Turkish minority in the region, a party founded by the minority said.
In his speech in Komotini (Gümülcine), Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis failed to concretely address any of the problems of the Turkish minority in Greece’s Western Thrace region, the Friendship, Equality and Peace Party (DEB) said in a statement on Saturday.
The 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.
Greece’s Western Thrace region – in the country’s northeast, near the Turkish border – is home to a substantial, long-established Muslim Turkish minority numbering around 150,000.
The rights of the Turks of Western Thrace were 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 started to face harsher persecution and rights abuses by the Greek state, often a blatant violation of European court rulings. The Turkish minority in Greece continues to face problems exercising its collective and civil rights and education rights, including Greek authorities banning the word “Turkish” in the names of associations, shuttering Turkish schools and trying to block the Turkish community from electing its muftis. In addition to violating longstanding treaties, these policies are also often in blatant violation of European Court of Human Rights rulings.
