STATEMENT OF THE TURKISH MINORITY MOVEMENT
In a post on his personal Facebook account, Nassos Theodorides made the following written statement:
"The "Turkish Minority Movement for Human and Minority Rights" unequivocally denounces the hypocrisy of all those political forces of the Greek establishment that refuse to face reality head-on and recognize the Turkish character of the overwhelmingly larger numerical portion of the minority of Thrace. It is no coincidence that for decades Greece has been condemned on this particular issue in Strasbourg, because it has persistently and dogmatically refused to implement the convictions of the European Court of Human Rights on the ban on the operation of Turkish minority associations in Thrace, convictions which, of course, no media outlet has reported in recent days, concealing the truth from Greek citizens and voters. Therefore, the hypocritical argument of the nationalists of Greece that supposedly only individual self-determination is legitimate is refuted. The European Court of Justice has been clear on the safeguarding of COLLECTIVE SELF-DEFINITION as well, as in the cases of "Turkish Union of Xanthi" & others v. Greece, Bekir Ousta & others v. Greece and Emin & others v. Greece, it asked the competent Greek authorities to allow the registration of associations under the name of the choice of their founding members, including the description of the name of an ethnic group or the word "minority".
Besides, let us not forget that the Council of Ministers - as a decision-making body of the Council of the EU - warned Greece on 6 December 2013 about its lack of respect for the decisions of the ICJ, while on 5 June 2014, it adopted an Interim Resolution calling on the Greek authorities to comply with the ICJ decisions, implicitly demanding the recognition of the Muslim minority of Thrace as Turkish.
In fact, on 12 June 2023, the Council of Europe reminded Greece that Greece is still accountable for the case of the Turkish Union of Xanthi.
It is no coincidence that the former Vice President of the ECtHR, Professor Emeritus at the University of Athens and former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Christos Rozakis recently stated that there is still a "black hole" in the relations between the Greek state and the minority of Western Thrace and this concerns the "insistence of the Greek authorities not to allow the people and organizations of the minority to use the term Turk or Turkish.
Therefore, after all this, asking Thrace's parliamentary candidates to renounce their Turkishness is a flagrant violation of the principle of freedom of their collective expression.
Also, our Movement stresses that the interpretation of the Treaty of Lausanne is made by the Greek State and by the Greek media in a wrong way, as it is ignored that the title of the Text is clear and defines the "exchange of Greek and Turkish populations" (something that is also in the English text, i.e. "exchange of Greek and Turkish populations"), while everyone knows that the use of religious terminology is due to the fact that at that time the ethno-cultural groups that had emerged with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire were defined in religious terms.
In addition to this, more recent international instruments such as the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities set out specific legal rules applicable to all relevant minority issues.
However, the practice of the Greek state itself, when even the Papagos (right-wing) and Plastira (centre) governments until the 1960s recognised the minority as Turkish, leaves no room for misinterpretation. Exogenous political crises and upheavals, such as the anti-Greek riots of September and the Cyprus problem were the only factors that changed the facts, and therefore the Treaty of Lausanne itself is not responsible for the unacceptable change of attitude of the Greek governments and for the instrumentalization of the minority.
Consequently, for some to baptize the Muslim minority as a GREEK Muslim minority within Greece is contrary to the Lausanne Treaty.
Based on the above, it is clear that the only correct and proper name for the Minority is:
Muslim Minority, of the Non-Exchangeable Turks,
of Western Thrace."
