Advisory Board reacts strongly against Acting Director of Education Kosmidou
The Advisory Board of the Turkish Minority of Western Thrace reacted strongly to the article written by Meri Kosmidou, Deputy Director of Education of the Eastern Macedonia - Thrace Province, on the minority education.
In the statement made by the Advisory Board with the title "EVIL PRESENTED IN SHEET'S CLOTHING", Kosmidu's article was responded.
In the statement made by the Advisory Board, it was stated that the Turkish Minority of Western Thrace has not been involved in the decisions taken by the state regarding minority education until today, and that the opinion of the Western Thrace Turks regarding these decisions, even as a courtesy, was not even asked. It was emphasised that minority education is in this situation due to the unilateral decrees, laws and circulars issued by the state.
The statement said that Kosmidu's statement that Greece fully respects the Treaty of Lausanne and the educational protocols contradicts the spirit of the article and does not reflect the truth.
The response of the Consultative Committee of the Turkish Minority of Western Thrace to the article published by Marigula Kosmidu with the title "Five facts about minority education" is as follows
EVIL IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING
We read with great surprise the article written by Meri Kosmidu, Deputy Director of Primary and Secondary Education of the Province of Eastern Macedonia - Thrace, under the title "Five facts about minority education" and sent to the press in Turkish and Greek. Until today, the Turkish Minority of Western Thrace has not been involved in the decisions taken by the state regarding minority education. Its opinion has not been asked even as a courtesy. Minority education is in this situation because of the unilateral decrees, laws and circulars issued by the state. What Kosmidu puts in front of us as "facts" are only the numerical data of the educational picture they have created with their own efforts. With these data, most of which we are aware of, it is desired that the minority should feel grateful for the supposedly favourable attitude of the state towards the minority schools. However, as claimed in the article, the fact that Greece complies with the Lausanne Treaty and educational protocols with full respect contradicts the spirit of the article and does not reflect the truth.
For example, although Article 40 of the Treaty of Lausanne gives us the right to "establish, manage and supervise all kinds of schools, teaching and educational institutions, provided that we meet our own expenses", why does our state, which claims to have granted us so much, not allow us to increase the number of minority secondary and high schools, which are insufficient in number? Why does it prevent the Minority High School of Xanthi, which has been converted from a tobacco warehouse, to have a new building whose physical conditions are suitable for modern education? Why does it not allow us to open a kindergarten within the minority education system that will provide Turkish-Greek education? Why are our children, who will receive bilingual education after two years, forced to attend state kindergartens that provide monolingual education? Why do the teachers advise the parents of the minority students graduating from kindergartens to send their children to state schools with limited facilities and not to minority schools with extensive facilities as claimed? We would like to know how many of our students follow this suggestion and go to state schools with limited facilities? Again, we would like to know what is the share of these suggestions in the decreasing number of students in minority schools? Because it is not possible to explain the decreasing number of children in our minority schools only with economic migration. Moreover, the state is the author of economic migration. Unnecessarily and disproportionately, the lands of the minority people engaged in agriculture have been expropriated. The land ownership of Western Thrace Turks in the region, which was around 84 per cent in 1923, has decreased to 25 per cent. Subsidies from the EU have not been distributed fairly. Our claim is that the region was deliberately made the poorest region of Greece in order to arrange the demographic structure in favour of the majority. These have accelerated migration and migration has reduced the number of our children. Apart from this, we should not forget the nearly sixty thousand victims of Article 19. The fact that the number of primary schools, which was 307 in 1926, is 90 today explains everything. If minority schools were a rose garden without thorns as claimed, would we have lost 217 schools?
In fact, if Greece had respected and complied with the Treaty of Lausanne and the educational protocols in good faith, the rights of our councillors would not have been taken away. With the signatures of 15 parents, the councillors who could open a school would not have been deprived of the authority to determine the Turkish teachers to be appointed to our schools, to make contracts and to pay their salaries. We had no complaints about paying the salaries of the teachers we chose. However, in order to undermine our educational autonomy, the state took away our authority of the council with Law No. 694/1977 and our right to choose teachers with Law No. 695/1977 and forced the minority schools to employ teachers graduated from SÖPA. Let us ask Kosmidu, who loves statistics, to explain, how many of the 363 minority teachers who were trained in the motherland Turkey and came to work in minority schools for the development and improvement of minority education were allowed to do so? How many of them were dismissed while on duty? Why were academy teachers insisted on when there were so many minority teachers graduated from faculties of education?
The Decree Law No. 3065, also known as the Marshal Papagos regulation, issued in 1954, is the one in which Greece fully respected the spirit of the Treaty of Lausanne and the educational protocols. Unfortunately, Greece, which could tolerate this for 8 years, cancelled the provisions of the Decree Law No. 3065/1954 in accordance with the Treaty of Lausanne with the Decree Law No. 1109/1972. After this date, the impact of both the Treaty of Lausanne and the relevant protocols on minority education was minimised as much as possible. We observe that an extraordinary effort is being made to end it completely. We understand how bad the intentions are from the fact that the minority schools, whose education has been suspended due to the shortage of children, have not been opened even though they have reached sufficient number of students. The demand of the Harmanlik neighbourhood in Komotini for a minority school has never been met. We respectfully announce to the whole public that harbouring evil ambitions on the education, language and culture of this internationally recognised minority is the greatest persecution that can be done to these people.
