OPINION - Muslim Turkish Minority of Western Thrace seeks urgent solution to its problems
Mustafa Trampa, Mufti of Xanthi province of Greece, wrote about the problems experienced by the Western Thrace Muslim Turkish Minority in Greece and his demands for solutions from Prime Minister Mitsotakis for AA Analysis.
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The 1923 Lausanne Peace Treaty recognised the Turkish community in Western Thrace as a "minority". Articles 37 to 44 of the Treaty of Lausanne include regulations on the rights of non-Muslim minorities in Turkey. Article 45 states that the rights granted by Türkiye to non-Muslim minorities are also recognised by Greece to the Muslim minority in its territory.
The Muslim Turkish Minority of Western Thrace has experienced many difficulties since the entry into force of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Many of our rights arising from the agreements and protocols signed between Turkey and Greece and international treaties were violated. As a society, we have suffered various pressures and troubles with arbitrary practices. Many of these existing treaties were cancelled by decrees issued in domestic law. Our problems on fundamental issues such as the Muftiate, foundations, education and the inability to express our identity, which constitute the basis of our society, have been constantly distanced from their goals and objectives instead of being solved, and they continue to be distanced today.
Mufti problem
One of the most important of these violated rights is the Muftiate problem. As Western Thrace Turks, we do not want an order and practices that we have invented by ourselves. The source of our demands is international law. We want the Treaties of Istanbul in 1881, Athens in 1913 and Lausanne in 1923 and Law No. 2345/1990 to be implemented. Greece ignores and violates these treaties. Most recently, they enacted the Law No. 4964 on Mufti Offices. This law has a provision that completely removes the autonomy of the Mufti Offices and reduces them to an ordinary government office, a civil servant. With this law, the state has completely damaged the reputation of the office of Mufti.
The Greek government has been pursuing a policy of denial of the Turkish identity of the minority for years. On the other hand, there is a discourse of respect for Islam and religious sanctities, which is also constantly voiced by the government. But can you think of a society without its national identity? National identity is as sacred as religious identity. Turkishness and Muslimness are like flesh and nail. It is not possible to ignore the Turkish identity of the Muslim Turkish Minority of Western Thrace and express it with its religious identity. This is unacceptable. Despite being subjected to so much oppression and injustice and being tried to be assimilated by various methods, if the Muslim Turkish Minority of Western Thrace has been able to survive to this day in the spirit of unity and solidarity with its Muslimity and Turkishness, I can state that this is possible because of its strict adherence to national and religious customs and traditions. It is Islam and Turkishness that keep us standing. The separation of one of these from the other leads to the loss of both. If we want to continue our life in Western Thrace, we must always continue to protect our national and religious values that sustain us. Because nations live as long as they honour their religion, history and ancestors. If those noble ties are broken, they will deteriorate.
Greek state's approach to Turkish-Islamic artefacts
As for the Greek state's respect for Islam and our holy places, Greece has destroyed Turkish-Islamic masterpieces and mosques in many regions at the expense of erasing 6 centuries of culture and civilisation of these lands. According to the 1913 Athens Treaty, cemeteries in Greece are the property of foundations and cannot be touched. There are no cemeteries left in areas where Turks do not live. Today, despite the presence of tens of thousands of Muslim Turks in Xanthi province of Western Thrace, Horozlu cemetery was plundered. Again in Xanthi Hemetli Mosque and Yenice Bazaar Mosque are about to be demolished and have been waiting to be restored for years. In the city of Thessaloniki, which is called the city of minarets, not even a single minaret was left. Is this respect for Islam and religious sanctities?
Education problem
Another important link in the chain of problems experienced by the Muslim Turkish Minority of Western Thrace is the problem of education. The rights we obtained from the International Treaty of Lausanne signed in 1923 and the education protocols signed between Greece and Turkey in the following years were never fully implemented. As in many other fields, our rights to education have always been violated. For example, our schools are closed every year on the grounds of lack of students, and we are not allowed to open bilingual kindergartens in our mother tongue, Turkish and Greek. The building problem of Xanthi Minority Secondary School-High School is not resolved. Our school building is a half-timbered building built as a tobacco warehouse during the Ottoman rule of Xanthi. The school building is very old and far from the physical conditions that a normal school building should have. 570 students in our school receive education in a total of 20 classrooms. The 5 classrooms in the basement are closed for education by the Directorate of Secondary Education of Xanthi and are not allowed to be used as classrooms. Therefore, the current school building is extremely inadequate for the number of students beyond the physical conditions. Our students have to study in extremely cramped classrooms. In response to this situation, our request for a new school building has not been responded by the government for more than 10 years. Last week, the Committee of the Xanthi Minority Secondary School-High School and the Parent-Teacher Association sent a letter to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis regarding the school building problem and demanded a solution. Our expectation is that the Prime Minister will respond positively to this letter.
