Cyprus-Forum.com

[stpier]

The United States Helsinki Commission, an independent government agency charged with monitoring and securing compliance with international human rights standards, should hold hearings to spotlight Greece ’s subjugation of its Turkish minority in Western Thrace . While the European Union and the United States have been quick to award Turkey demerits for allegedly slighting Kurdish culture, they have been conspicuously inaudible in the face of Greece ’s decades long campaign of cultural repression, ethnic and religious discrimination and economic marginalization of its Turkish minority. Double standards breed resentment. The soft diplomacy of the United States will be punctured if it is not scrupulously evenhanded between Muslims, Christians, and other religions in the defense of human rights.

The Commission’s chief mission is to police the human rights standards enshrined in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, FINAL ACT, HELSINKI , August 1, 1975. It stipulates, among other things:

“The participating States will respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.

They will promote and encourage the effective exercise of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural and other rights and freedoms…

The participating States on whose territory national minorities exist will respect the right of persons belonging to such minorities to equality before the law, and will afford them the full opportunity for the actual enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms….”

According to a recent report issued by The Federation of Western Thrace Turks, Greece is flouting its HELSINKI FINAL ACT human rights obligations towards its Turkish minority. Greece restricts use of the words “Turkish” and “minority” in the naming of organizations, thus impairing the cultural identity of the Turkish minority in Western Thrace . Names are core elements of identity. Consider how the names of children or sacred places are carefully chosen.

Greece denies its Turkish minority equal treatment under the law by providing salaries to Greek Christian families with three children, but denying the same to their Greek Muslim counterparts. Between 1955 and 1998, approximately 46,638 Muslims from Thrace and the Dodecanese islands lost their citizenship when they left the country; this was done under Article 19 of the Greek Citizenship Code, which presumed that every Muslim citizen traveler who left the country, regardless of duration, intended to depart Greece permanently. No such presumption existed for Greek Christians. Though the law was repealed in 1998, 7 years later, in 2005, 30 citizens remained classified as stateless and the ombudsman for human rights noted that delay in processing applications for recovering citizenship was "excessive and unjustified." Equal treatment is additionally violated by Greece ’s discriminatory policy of appointing Muftis as opposed to permitting their popular election by the Turkish minority. In contrast, Jews are permitted to elect Rabbis and Greeks are permitted to elect metropolitans to the Greek Church. Finally, Greece intentionally fragments the voting of its Turkish minority in local election regions to prevent the election of a Muslim mayor or governor; and, a 3% election hurdle has been erected for independent Turkish minority candidates to force them to join Greek political parties if they wish to meaningfully participate in politics.

Education, like naming, is a central component of preserving the identities and cultures of national minorities. The Lausanne Treaty of 1923 endows the Turkish minority in Western Thrace with the right to establish and to administer their schools. Teachers in schools for the Turkish minority, however, are unable to speak Turkish; and, the Turkish minority lacks control over the selection of staff or the curriculum. School resources for Greece ’s Turkish minorities are shortchanged, which has forced Turkish children to seek education in Greek schools because of the superior quality of education. Greece ’s crippling of the Turkish minority’s ability to operate first-class schools in Western Thrace violates its FINAL ACT obligation to promote and encourage their exercise of social or cultural rights.

Ditto for Greece ’s undermining of Turkish minority foundations, which routinely establish schools, pay the salaries of teachers and religious functionaries, and otherwise support the Turkish minority culture. Foundation executives are appointed by the Greek government and are accused of chronically alienating and plundering the property of the foundations they oversee. The Turkish minority is not permitted to elect even the foundation’s officers who hold the purse strings.

Greece deserves harsh condemnation for its egregious mistreatment of the Turkish minority in Western Thrace . At this particular time in history, the Islamic world deserves proof that western democracies do not look with indifference at Christian wrongs inflicted on Muslims—that there is no inescapable battle of civilizations.

[B25]

My my, desperate or what?

[Cap]

The banana brothers at it again.

[Demonax]

Hilarious! This from someone who doesn't want people to publish and comment on human rights abuses in Turkey on a Cypriot forum.

But goes on a Cypriot forum to complain about treatment of Greece's Muslim minority!

It beggars belief!

[stpier]

Ethnic Turks in Greece face continued serious discrimination in the enjoyment of language, religious, and educational rights, according to a report The Turks of Western Thrace.

Greece has enacted a number of discriminatory measures to force ethnic Turks to migrate to Turkey or to disrupt community life and weaken its cultural basis. The most egregious example was Article 19 of the Citizenship Law, which, until it was abolished in 1998, allowed the state to strip approximately 60,000 non-ethnic Greeks of their citizenship between 1955 and 1998. Human Rights Watch welcomed abolition of the law last year, but noted that it did not apply retroactively, so tens of thousands of ethnic Turks remain wrongfully deprived of their Greek citizenship.

A 1990 law granted the state wide-ranging powers in appointing the mufti, the Turkish community's religious leader who also serves as an Islamic judge in civil matters. In defiance of the law, the Turkish community has continued to elect its religious leaders, who have been prosecuted and imprisoned by Greek authorities. In addition, the repair of mosques is sometimes blocked by state authorities, and those involved in the repair are prosecuted.

Human rights violations in the education field affect the largest number of individuals and have done the most to foster economic underdevelopment among the Turkish minority. Turkish children attend schools that are overcrowded and poorly funded compared to those attended by ethnic Greeks. And the two Turkish-language high schools in Western Thrace can provide only a fraction of the needed places, resulting in a disproportionate drop-out rate.

In addition, Human Rights Watch has received credible complaints from members of the ethnic Turkish minority, alleging police surveillance, discrimination in public employment, and restrictions on freedom of expression. Representatives of Human Rights Watch and the Greek Helsinki Monitor were trailed by police operatives in Thrace whileconducting research for the report.

For Further Information:
Holly Cartner in New York, 1-212-216-1277
Lotte Leicht in Brussels, 32-2-732-2009

[Demonax]

Stop it, stupider. You're just making a fool of yourself.

Bloody funny though.

Do you Turks not know what irony is?

[bill cobbett]

Stupider me dear, your source for the above is from 1999.

[Cap]

Stupider me dear, your source for the above is from 1999.

[GreekIslandGirl]

Looks to me like they've never had it so good. Their numbers just keep rising and rising.

- Thanks for telling us they would rather be Greek citizens than Turkish.

[Demonax]

Stupider me dear, your source for the above is from 1999.

Who are The Federation of Western Thrace Turks and who finances them? And why is stupider publishing an old statement of theirs from a man called Bruce Fein who is a paid employee of the Turkish Coalition of America?

Honestly, this is desperate stuff...