Sadık Ahmet

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Sadık Ahmet ( Greek Σαδίκ Αχμέτ Sadík Achmét , born January 7, 1947 in Komotini ; † July 24, 1995 ibid) was a Greek politician and surgeon who belonged to the Turkish minority in Greece .

Ahmet has held various positions, including as an independent member of the Greek Parliament, as chairman of the Committee on Minority Affairs and as party leader of the party of the Turkish minority, the Party of Equality, Peace and Friendship (Turkish: Dostluk - Eşitlik - Barış Partisi , Greek: Κόμμα Ισότητας, Ειρήνης και Φιλίας ), of which he remained chairman until his death.

His political activities were shaped by reactions to protest against Greece's policy of solely professing Greek identity and against the discrimination and isolation of the Turkish minority of Greece, to which he belonged, which had been established by the state since 1955 in the wake of the Cyprus crisis and the Istanbul pogrom . From the mid-1980s onwards, his work contributed to drawing the attention of various human rights organizations, above all Helsinki Watch (now Human Rights Watch ), to what he saw as discriminatory minority policies in Greece, which were later also adopted by Human Rights Watch with regard to certain criteria was labeled as discriminatory.

Legal proceedings have been initiated against Sadık Ahmet several times for various offenses; he was imprisoned once.

Sadık Ahmet's tomb in Komotini

Life

Sadık Ahmet attended grammar school and lyceum in Komotini and then studied medicine at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki .

Election to parliament

From the mid-1980s, Sadık Ahmet was the political leader of the Turkish minority in Greece.

In the parliamentary elections on June 18, 1989, he became an independent member of the Greek parliament as a representative of the Turkish minority . Since no government could be formed after these elections, the next parliamentary elections took place five months later, on November 5, 1989. After the June elections, legal proceedings were brought against Sadık Ahmet and İbrahim Şerif (another MP from the Turkish minority), which Human Rights Watch viewed as serious measures by the Greek state regarding the denial of the ethnic identity of the Turkish minority. First of all, the newly elected MP Sadık Ahmet was refused the candidacy for the November elections "for technical reasons". He was also summoned to court and u. a. charged with referring to the ethnic group of the Turkish minority during his election campaign in October and for having " openly or indirectly incited the citizens to violence or to create secession among the population by using the word Turkish ". Sadık Ahmet was found guilty of "disturbing public order" by the court on January 26, 1990 and sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment, but was released after two months after his remaining sentence was converted to a fine.

Legal proceedings against Ahmet and subsequent pogrom-like riots in Komotini

During the court hearings, which were followed by international observers and filmed on Dutch television, there were outbursts of anger and insults on the part of the judges and the public prosecutor as well as tumult among the audience. In the defense of the accused, they were of Turkish origin, followed by the judge replies like "Why do not you go to Turkey?" Or addressed to Sadik Ahmet words of the prosecutor as "as your end Ceausescu its end!"; always to the cheers of the audience in the courtroom.

From Human Rights Watch's point of view, the whole process violated the European Convention on Human Rights after “a fair trial by an independent, impartial court”.

After the trial ended, there were riots and riots in Komotini . A mob ran through the streets, beat citizens of Turkish origin and destroyed numerous shops. 21 people were injured. According to foreign eyewitnesses, the police stood by and looked on. The anti- Mufti of Xanthi , Mehmet Emin Aga, who was proclaimed by some of the Muslims at that time, was struck down with an iron piece. In May 1990, members of the Turkish minority stated that 1,000 people had taken part in these riots against the Turkish minority, with 150 extremists at the center of violence. Following the riots, the Turkish consul in Komotini, Kemal Gür, was declared persona non grata and expelled to Turkey because he called the Turkish minority in Greece “our relatives”. Turkey then expelled the Greek consul in Istanbul , Ilias Klis, also out of the country.

According to his own reports, Sadık Ahmet was treated correctly in prison. He was visited by the chairman of the Danish Helsinki Committee, Professor Eric Siesby, during his detention.

Because of the naming of the ethnic group of the Turkish minority, two further proceedings against Sadık Ahmet and İbrahim Şerif, scheduled for February 1990, were initiated. However, these were postponed indefinitely after the international protests against the January decision.

Sadık Ahmet had also been charged several times before. In 1988 he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison on charges of having forged the signatures of minority members in a 1986 signature campaign "in which he accused the Greek government of human rights violations against the Muslim minority" he enjoyed immunity as a member of parliament at the crucial time. He also had to defend himself in court because of some of his newspaper articles.

In the next parliamentary elections on April 8, 1990, Sadık Ahmet was allowed to run after his release from prison. He returned to parliament as an independent member.

In September 1991 he founded the first West Thrace Turkish Party, the Party of Equality, Peace and Friendship . After the introduction of a 3% threshold in 1993, the party, like many other small splinter parties, was denied access to parliament.

Ahmet's death and his trial before the ECHR

On July 24, 1995, Sadık Ahmet was killed in a car accident at the age of 48. Sadık Ahmet's wife Işık Ahmet and his two children survived the impact on a tractor, seriously injured.

Sadık Ahmet appealed to the European Commission on Human Rights after his 1990 prison sentence . The Commission found that his conviction had violated the "right to freedom of expression" of the European Convention on Human Rights and in April 1995 referred the case to the European Court of Human Rights .

After Sadık Ahmet's death in July 1995, the trial was continued by his wife and two children. At the end of the negotiations in November 1996, the European Court of Human Rights dismissed the case on the grounds that "Sadık Ahmet would not have exhausted all domestic legal channels", that is to say, he had not put forward the argument before Greek courts that his case was a violation of the free Expression is.

literature

  • Michael Ackermann: The Turkish minority in Western Thrace. History and present. (= Southeast Study Series. Vol. 5). Ulm 2000. ISBN 3-87336-001-2
  • Rashid Ergener: About Turkey . (P. 106) 2002, ISBN 0-971-06096-7
  • Suha Hugh Poulton: Muslim Identity and the Balkan State . (P. 207) 1997, ISBN 1-850-65276-7

Web links

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  1. ↑ Human Rights Watch Document 1999, page 8 (PDF; 342 kB)
  2. ↑ Human Rights Watch document, section Greek Violations of the Human Rights of the Turkish Minority , pages 11-42 (PDF; 246 kB)
  3. ↑ Human Rights Watch Document 1999, page 8 (PDF; 342 kB)
  4. ↑ a b Greek Parliament
  5. ↑ Human Rights Watch Document 1990, page 17 (PDF; 246 kB)
  6. ↑ Human Rights Watch Document 1990, page 17 footnote (PDF; 246 kB)
  7. ↑ Human Rights Watch Document 1990, page 19 (PDF; 246 kB)
  8. ↑ Human Rights Watch Document 1990, page 18 (PDF; 246 kB)
  9. ↑ Human Rights Watch Document 1990, page 20 (PDF; 246 kB)
  10. ↑ Human Rights Watch Document 1990, page 21 (PDF; 246 kB)
  11. ↑ Human Rights Watch Document 1990, page 21, footnote (PDF; 246 kB)
  12. ↑ Human Rights Watch Document 1990, p. 22 (PDF; 246 kB)
  13. ↑ Human Rights Watch Document 1990, p. 22 (PDF; 246 kB)
  14. ↑ Human Rights Watch Document 1990, page 25 (PDF; 246 kB)
  15. ↑ Human Rights Watch Document 1990, page 21 (PDF; 246 kB)
  16. ^ Peter Zervakis: The party system of Greece. In: Oskar Niedermayer, Richard Stöss, Melanie Haas (eds.): The party systems of Western Europe. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 978-3-531-14111-4 , p. 195.
  17. ↑ Human Rights Watch Document 1999, page 13 (PDF; 342 kB)
  18. ↑ Ahmet Sadik vs. Greece - Case description of the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights ( Memento of March 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  19. ↑ Font of the Greek Helsinki Monitor , 1999, page 8 ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 208 kB)
personal data
SURNAME Ahmet, Sadik
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek politician and surgeon of Turkish descent
DATE OF BIRTH January 7, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Komotini
DATE OF DEATH July 24, 1995
Place of death Komotini