Western Thrace Turks
The Western Thrace Turks ( Batı Trakya Türkleri in Turkish ) are a minority in Western Thrace . They make up the largest group of the Muslim minority in Western Thrace, protected in the Treaty of Lausanne, and thus, like the Istanbul Greeks, did not come under the Turkish-Greek Agreement on Population Exchange of January 30, 1923. The number of all Muslims in Western Thrace is 80,000 to 120,000 People, with the ethnic Turks, Slavic Pomaks and Roma being added to these figures.
definition
The Muslims in Western Thrace are Sunnis and speak Turkish or Balkan-Ottoman dialects , Pomak and Romani . It is a heterogeneous Muslim minority made up of three different ethnic groups:
- ethnic Turks who settled in the area around Komotini, Xanthi and Alexandroupolis of the then Ottoman Empire since the late 14th century ;
- the Slavic Pomaks , who lived in this region before the Ottoman Empire;
- Roma , who were originally Christian immigrants, mostly lived in western Thrace and adopted the Muslim faith during the time of the Ottoman Empire. Their colloquial language was originally Romani, which is still spoken by some. The majority of this group now speaks various Turkish dialects as their mother tongue.
history
With the defeat of the Serbian-Bosnian-Hungarian-Bulgarian army in the Battle of the Mariza (1371), Western Thrace came under Ottoman control from 1363-1364. The then Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Murat I , then settled the newly acquired areas with Turks from Anatolia. At the same time, he granted the Christians in the region the protected status of dhimmas in accordance with traditional Islamic law , which obliges them to tolerate non-Muslims in their own country (dhimmas) and to protect them by the state.
Western Thrace remained under Ottoman rule until the First Balkan War 1912–1913. As a result of the First Balkan War, most of western Thrace fell under Bulgarian control in 1913. But the victorious powers could not agree on the division of the new territories, so that in 1913 the second Balkan War broke out between Bulgaria on the one hand and Greece and Serbia on the other. The Bulgarian army then withdrew towards the Rhodope Mountains . On July 14, 1913, the western Thracian city of Gümülcine (today: Komotini) was captured by Greek troops. On August 10, however, the region was awarded to the Bulgarians in the Treaty of Bucharest . In view of the imminent return of the Bulgarians, residents of the region banded together and declared the area to be the Provisional Government of Western Thrace (later Independent Government of Western Thrace ) on August 31, 1913, with Gümülcine as the capital. In the Treaty of Constantinople between Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire on September 29, 1913, the area was finally assigned to Bulgaria. Independence lasted 53 days before Bulgaria reoccupied the region with the help of the Ottoman military.
The region remained part of Bulgaria until the end of the First World War , but had to be ceded to the Entente in 1919 with the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine . A mixed - partly Greek - administration of the Entente then controlled the territory. In 1920 Western Thrace was handed over to Greece by the Entente in the Treaty of Sèvres concluded with Greece (not to be confused with the treaty of the same name with the Ottoman Empire). The territory has been part of Greece since then.
In the areas that fell to Greece after the Balkan Wars in 1912/13 ( Epirus and Macedonia ), 700,000 to 800,000 Turks lived at that time. Before the First World War, some of them emigrated to the Ottoman Empire. The Greek government planned to speed up this process by putting pressure on the Turks. Because of Greece's involvement in the First World War (1915), this could not be implemented at first.
The Greco-Turkish War
In 1919, shortly after the First World War, the Greco-Turkish War broke out. The Greek government under Eleftherios Venizelos saw the chance to put the Megali Idea (unification of all Greek-populated areas on both sides of the Aegean) into practice. The Ottoman Empire, lying in agony, had just signed the Treaty of Sèvres, which granted the Greeks, among others, an occupation zone in Asia Minor ( Smyrna ), but denied them possession of Constantinople. The nationally-minded Turks, led by Kemal Ataturk, soon met with armed resistance against this treaty. The new Turkish army succeeded in driving the Greek troops out of Asia Minor by 1922.
As a result, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed between the two countries in 1923 , which had major repercussions on the situation of the ethnic minorities in Greece and Turkey. Western Thrace was finally assigned to Greece. The separate convention on the exchange of populations agreed between Greece and Turkey on January 30, 1923 was part of the Treaty of Lausanne (Art. 142). On the basis of this convention, the Muslims (approx. 500,000 people) living within the Greek borders of 1913 were resettled to Turkey and the Greeks and Greek-speaking groups residing in Asia Minor (approx. 1.5 million people) were brought to Greece.
The Greeks in Istanbul and on the islands of Imbros (Gökçeada) and Tenedos (Bozcaada) were excluded from the population exchange. In return, the Turks and Pomaks in Western Thrace (approx. 110,000 people), which had just fallen to Greece, were also able to stay in their homeland. According to the Lausanne Convention, the non-Greeks in Western Thrace were recognized as a religious, but not as a national minority. The main text of the Lausanne Treaty refers to them as the Muslim minorities of Greece. The treaty regulated in Articles 37–45 the protection of religious minorities in Greece and Turkey. For the Turks in Western Thrace it is still the essential legal basis of their group rights.
After 1923, the mutual treatment of the Greek minority in Istanbul and the Turkish minority in Western Thrace was always reflected in the Greek-Turkish international relations and vice versa. Both minorities initially benefited from the rapprochement between the two states, which was initiated by the two former rivals Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Eleftherios Venizelos . This phase lasted from 1930 to 1955.
In view of the threat of attack from Fascist Italy , both states signed a friendship pact in September 1933. After the Second World War , Greece, Turkey and Yugoslavia allied themselves in the face of Soviet expansion by means of a Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Assistance, which was to be followed a year later by the Balkans Pact .
During a state visit to Greece in 1954, the then Turkish President Celâl Bayar described the Greek-Turkish friendship as “the best example of how two countries that had mistakenly mistrusted each other for centuries, now as a result of realizing the realities of the Have decided for a trusting and sincere cooperation. "
Consequences of the Cyprus conflict
However, the situation was to change after 1955 in the wake of the Cyprus conflict - the Cyprus conflict had a negative impact on the fate of the Turkish minority in Greece and that of the Greek minority in Istanbul. The efforts of the Greek Cypriots to tear themselves away from British colonial rule and to join Cyprus to Greece, the Enosis , often ended in bloody attacks on the Cypriot Turks , who at that time made up 20% of the total population of the island and opposed unification of the island with Greece. The attacks by the Greek Cypriots on the Turkish Cypriots triggered countermeasures against the Greek minority of Istanbul , just as you did me, so I did. Large-scale violence against the Greek minority of Istanbul, presumably ordered by the then government of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes , destroyed an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 shops on the night of September 6th, 1955, and resulted in thousands of ethnic Greeks fearing further violence fled from Istanbul. The Turkish government responded to the continued violence on the island after independence in 1960, which began with the bloody attacks on the Turkish Cypriots in December 1963 ("Bloody Christmas") by granting a residence permit for 12,000 Greeks in Istanbul for invalidated and confiscated their property. In July 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus as a guarantee power under the London Guarantee Treaty after the coup of the fanatical Turkish hater Nikos Sampson ousted the elected Makarios government in order to advance the unification efforts with Greece. Ultimately, Turkey occupied around 40% of the island.
After the anti-Greek pogrom of Istanbul in Turkey in 1955 , which led to the mass emigration of members of the Greek minority there, Greece also increased the pressure on the Turkish minority in western Thrace. Land belonging to the ethnic Turks was taken over by the state, professional licenses were refused, forced emigrations were brought about by the unilateral withdrawal of citizenship (between 1955 and 1998 around 60,000 minority members were affected), and religious freedoms were restricted. In the mid-1980s, the practices of discrimination led to changes in the civil rights of the Turkish minority, which at the time was led by Sadık Ahmet until his death. This discrimination did not decline until the early 1990s.
Today their number is around 50,000 - 60,000 people. According to Turkish sources, the Turkish population in Western Thrace in 1923 was 129,120, making up 67.4 percent of the population in this area. Today their number is well below 20 percent.
Sadık Ahmet's era and its effects on the Turkish minority
The era under the leadership of Sadık Ahmet (Sadik Achmet) is of immense importance in the history of the Turkish minority. For them, after decades of institutionalized and established methods of intimidation and discrimination, it means the difficult way out of political isolation.
Sadık Ahmet drew the attention of the then Helsinki Watch , today's Human Rights Watch , to the minority policy of EU member Greece, which published its first report on human rights violations in Greece on August 1, 1990. Further reports on human rights violations about Greece regarding the Turkish minority should also be followed by reports on the similar problems of the Slavic minority in the Greek region of Macedonia .
Sadık Ahmet was sentenced to imprisonment in January 1990 for designating the “minority as a Turkish minority” during his election campaign. Since the course of the process was observed by international observers and filmed on Dutch television, international protests rained down on Greece.
Two days after the trial, up to 1,000 Greek extremists rioted in Komotini , during which over 400 Turkish shops were destroyed and 21 people were injured. The Greek police watched without taking any action.
The CDU politician and later MEP Werner Langen also stood up for the Western Thrace Turks in the course of the international protests. In the April 29, 1995 issue of the news magazine Focus , Trouble with Greece - Political Explosives: The Turkish minority in Western Thrace chose Germany to protest Langen's first report on the Western Thrace Turks. The statement on the international protests came about a month later from the Greek Consulate General in Munich. According to Dr. Nikolaos Sotiriou, there are no human rights violations in Greece and this applies "also to the Greek Muslims in the north-east of the country." As was also reported in the Focus issue of May 22, 1995, according to Dr. Sotiriou not correctly refer to “Turks” as the Lausanne Treaty speaks of “Muslims”.
In the course of these events, which happened at breakneck speed, the Western Thrace Turks had chosen Germany as a protest platform.
On July 24, 1995, exactly on the 72nd anniversary of the signing of the Lausanne Treaty, Sadık Ahmet died in a car accident.
The improvements in the situation of the minority initiated by Sadık Ahmet should go so far that in 1998 Article 19 of the Greek Nationality Act, which has been in force since 1955 and on the basis of which, according to the Society for Threatened Peoples, a total of 60,000 Western Thrace Turks had been expatriated over the past decades , was abolished should be.
Sadık Ahmet is considered a hero among the Turkish population of Western Thrace. His death in a collision with a tractor driving unexposed at night is considered by the Turkish minority to be an assassination attempt to eliminate the politician.
Legal status
According to the Lausanne Treaty , Muslims in western Thrace ( Turks , Pomaks and Roma) enjoy minority protection. They are allowed to maintain their own religious institutions. Turkish in western Thrace is legally recognized as a minority language in Greece. Nevertheless, the Turks in Greece have to endure all kinds of defenses and they have been fighting a political struggle for the implementation of their group rights for decades. In the period from 1955 to 1998, 60,000 members of the minority were deprived of their citizenship.
The mother tongue tuition for the minority is inadequate. According to a 1955 Greek-Turkish agreement, 35 teachers were allowed to teach in the other country's middle schools. This number was reduced to 16 by the Greek government in 1988 with reference to the principle of reciprocity. This was justified by the fact that the Greek minority in Istanbul had been marginalized as a result of the pogrom in Istanbul in 1955, the forced expatriation of 12,000 Istanbul Greeks and emigration in 1964 and therefore hardly needed any more teachers. Only 1000 schoolchildren who complete elementary school each year are placed in one of the two secondary schools for the minority by lottery. Regardless of the total number of primary school leavers, only 40 children from each primary school can attend one of these schools. The remaining 900 school children (2001) have to go to a monolingual Greek secondary school or attend a school in Turkey.
Political participation
The Muslim minority formed party formations like the “ Party for Equality, Peace and Friendship ” in the early 1990s . These were temporarily represented by two MPs (the Turks Sadık Ahmet and İbrahim Şerif) in the Greek parliament , but this was no longer possible after the one percent hurdle was raised to a three percent hurdle (This three percent hurdle also applies to independent candidates). In the current legislative period, the MP İlhan Ahmet of the conservative Nea Dimokratia comes from the Muslim minority. In May 2006, PASOK nominated a Turkish candidate for the office of prefect in the Rodopi region .
Points of conflict with the Greek state are the currently prohibited naming of associations using the adjective "Turkish" (despite two judgments in favor of the "Turkish Union of Xanthi" (Iskece Türk Birligi) by the European Court of Human Rights, the association is not permitted) and the desire to elect the leading Islamic legal scholars (muftis) who are currently appointed as civil servants by the state. Discrimination against Muslims in granting building or business permits has been reduced over the past decade. When applying for positions in the service of the communities in the minority region, however, the Turks continue to be discriminated against.
The Article 19 victims
On the basis of Article 19 of the Greek Citizenship Act, introduced in 1955, around 60,000 Turks were expatriated by 1998. The article allowed the expatriation of "persons who were of non-Greek ethnic origin and who had left the country with no intention of returning".
According to Human Rights Watch and the Society for Threatened Peoples , this law made expatriation a simple administrative act without consulting the expatriates. Most of the expatriates only found out when they were planning to enter the Greek border that they were not allowed to enter Greece because they had been expatriated.
Article 19 was abolished on June 11, 1998. According to Human Rights Watch, the law violated several treaties that Greece had signed, and last but not least, it violated the Greek Constitution itself as, among other things, it was incompatible with the equality of all citizens before the law (isonomia).
Culture
The children of the Turkish minority are required to attend school for six years. A lottery procedure decides whether to attend the secondary minority schools in Xanthi ( İskeçe ) or Komotini ( Gümülcine ), as there are not enough places. Many Western Thrace Turks choose to send their children to general schools.
Some newspapers and weeklies, as well as local radio stations, broadcast articles in Turkish. The local public radio broadcasts news in Turkish, and Komotini Municipality offers one of the Turkish satellite channels.
For several years now, the weekly television series Μη μου λες αντίο (German: Don't say goodbye ) has been broadcast on Greek television . The series tells the problematic love story between a Greek woman and a Turk from the West Thrace. The Greek comes to Komotini to study and meets Murat, who is of Turkish origin, at university - they both fall in love. The series is important because it is the first time that the issue of the minority in Western Thrace is or is being made known at all.
In 1988 the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe was founded as a non-profit umbrella organization of all Europe-wide associations of Western Thrace Turks established in the past. While the individual local associations are family meeting points for the Turkish minority in Greece, the federation is the exclusively political arm of all associations with the aim of making themselves more heard in Europe and worldwide. The Federation regularly takes part in OSCE conferences.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Human Rights Watch 1999
- ↑ Θεοφάνης Μαλκίδης. "Οι Πομάκοι στη Θράκη"
- ↑ Hikmet Öksüz: The reasons for immigration from Western Thrace to Turkey (1923-1950). In: Turkish Review of Balkan Studies. Volume 9, 2004, pp. 249-278, here p. 255 ( PDF ).
- ^ Human Rights Watch, 1990: Destroying Ethnic Identity - The Turks of Greece
- ↑ Human Rights Watch, 1994: Denying Ethnic Identity - The Macedonians of Greece
- ^ Human Rights Watch 1999