Education major issue for Greece’s Turkish minority, says opposition candidate

KOMOTINI, Greece

Education is one of the major issues affecting approximately 150,000 ethnic Turkish minority in Greece, said a parliament candidate associated with the main opposition party, who blamed the incumbent government for some decisions that exacerbated the situation.

Ozgur Ferhat, a parliament member candidate from the main opposition SYRIZA party, told Anadolu in an interview that the majority of the country's ethnic Turkish minority live in Western Thrace – Bulgaria to the north, Türkiye to the east, the Aegean Sea to the south, and the Greek region of Macedonia to the west – where the quality of education in schools for minorities does not meet modern standards.

Ferhat, who is running in the May 21 parliamentary elections in the Rhodope province, has pledged that his party will improve the education level and update it according to contemporary needs.

"During the SYRIZA government, bilingual kindergartens were introduced. However, this government denied minority children a comfortable education in their native language by reversing that policy," he said, blaming the ruling New Democracy government for the poor education system in the Western Thrace.

He also criticized a mufti law in Western Thrace governing the appointment of Muslim clerics (muftis), claiming that the government did not consult the minority before enacting it last year.

Many articles of the law were not accepted by the country's Turkish minority, he said.

Underlining that the government should take decisions by communicating with the minority on important issues, Ferhat accused the Greek government of also violating the freedom of association in the 2007 and 2008 rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) regarding the minority associations that were closed due to the word "Turkish" in their names.

This should be corrected, and the minority associations that pose no threat to the country should be allowed to operate freely, he emphasized.

He also slammed the government’s economic policies, claiming that they accelerated people's migration to other European countries.

Their region is already one of the poorest in Greece, Ferhat said, pledging that SYRIZA would create more jobs and bring prosperity to Western Thrace, which is critical for the peaceful coexistence of minorities in the region.

The Western Thrace region near the border with Türkiye is home to a substantial, long-established Muslim Turkish minority of approximately 150,000 people.

The rights of Turks are guaranteed by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, but the situation has deteriorated significantly in recent decades, with Greece refusing to implement ECHR rulings.

Despite a 2008 ECHR ruling against Greece, associations with the word "Turkish" in their names are still banned in Western Thrace.

*Writing by Ahmet Gencturk