Pomak leader warns of growing Turkish influence

As we walked through the narrow streets of Xanthi in northern Greece, we often heard Turkish being spoken in conversations. We sat at a cafe and talked about the community Imam Ahmet represents, the 40,000 Pomaks who are constantly trying to find their voice as a minority within a minority.

Ahmet, who is the head of the Panhellenic Association of Pomaks and editor of the first newspaper in the Pomak language, Zagalisa, sat down with Kathimerini recently to talk about this endeavor, but also about the enduring shortcomings of the Greek state, which has allowed Turkey to penetrate the Pomak community, and the electoral peculiarities of Thrace, which only recently appeared in the news again.

“Turkey claims that there is a minority of 130,000 individuals and that this minority is Turkish,” says Ahmet. “It bundles together me, a Pomak, with the Gypsies of Drosero – i.e. the Roma. The minority is not only made up of Pomaks. For the Greek and Turkish governments, the word ‘Pomak’ does not exist. They are afraid to even pronounce it. To this day, I have not heard from any prefect, mayor, or from any minister mentioning the word ‘Pomak,’ while sometimes they refer to Pomakochoria (the villages of the Pomaks) by avoiding the actual word and saying the ‘mountain area,’” he explains.

“For me, a Greek citizen, it is offensive when I go to Europe to be called a Muslim, because there is Islamophobia and xenophobia and those named Hassan, Hussein, Ahmet, Mehmet are treated as if they are Turks and potentially dangerous terrorists,” he explains. “So, I do not accept what the Greek government says about a ‘Muslim minority.’ There is no ‘Muslim minority.’ We are Greek citizens, Pomaks by origin, Muslims, but we are not the same as the Roma who are not Muslims, or the Pomaks in the mountains of Drama and Serres with whom we share a language but are Christians. Therefore, they should not divide us and call us Greek Christians and non-Greeks.”

Ahmet says that the Turks “were unable to turn us into Turks during the 500 years of slavery. In the last two decades they have been trying to make us Turks. They have invested in this issue, meaning that [they claim] there are no Pomak villages and they bundle us together with the Turkic people from the plain of Xanthi, whom I call other Muslims.”

“Currently the [Greek] government is implementing its policy with the logic of the ‘Muslim minority.’ As there is no Muslim language, they force the Muslim child, from the first day at school, to learn Turkish as his mother tongue and Greek as a common language – i.e. as the language of the area in which he lives,” he continues.

“I was a teacher for 21 years and the Greek state obliged me to teach Turkish and not to teach the Pomak language. Politicians claim that the language of the minority should be bilingual, Greek and Turkish. But we, the Pomaks, speak Pomak, our language is Pomak. Hence the Association of the Pomaks was founded to stop the Turkification, the assimilation of the Pomaks by the Turks. We are by no means Turks.”

‘When Greek politicians visit, they get a crowd of 50 people, but when the Turkish consul visits he gets 1,500. This is because Greek politicians remember the area only before an election’

“Unfortunately, the 40,000 Pomaks and their children who go to school, learn Turkish and have started to feel Turkish. Also, for decades there was no Greek television in the mountains and they watched only the Turkish channels via satellite. In addition, the Turkish consulate in Komotini, that is Turkey, has opened tutoring schools called ‘Kuran Kursu,’ that is, tutoring for learning the Koran, because the Koran is not taught in minority schools,” Ahmet says.

“In addition, the consulate has appointed Turkish teachers in the Pomak villages to conduct, allegedly, tutoring sessions and in every functioning mosque they have a Turkish priest – i.e. people who have studied in Turkey. One of Greece’s mistakes is that it did not establish Muslim theological schools like Bulgaria and Serbia,” he says, adding that there are also private schools for computer studies, sewing and Turco-Islamic culture in the area, not to mention the “Kanaat Turkcelerim.”

“They are so-called ‘public opinion shapers,’ who have studied at Turkish [religious] schools and visit mosques and waqfs at least once a week to preach. When they want to address a bigger audience, they go to the mosques. When they want to address the women of the minority, they visit venues that are rented or offered free of charge by the Turkish consulate, which has managed to bring around 70-80% of the minority under its control,” says Ahmet.

The elections

Ahmet also indicates efforts to influence the Greek parliamentary elections.

“In the recent election on May 21, the people who came to vote from Turkey [Greeks with dual citizenship] formed a line of 25 kilometers at the border. They cast their ballots mainly in Komotini [which is in the Rodopi region] and left the same day, meaning that they changed the result of the community’s will. The Turkish consulate in Thrace tried to get five Muslim MPs elected. It failed, not because it couldn’t make it happen, but because the candidates were all sympathizers of Fethullah Gulen.”

The issue of interference in the Greek elections by the Turkish consulate was raised after the May 21 ballot by New Democracy, citing claims in apparent support of the existence of a “Turkish minority” by SYRIZA candidates Ozgur Ferhat for Rodopi and Huseyin Zeybek for Xanthi.

“The wife of one of the candidates is an employee at the Turkish consulate in Komotini, and is paid as an IT teacher. Another candidate for a different part has dual Greek-Turkish citizen,” says Ahmet. “The consul’s staff is essentially made up of the teachers and imams. They are the ‘long arm’ of the consulate and there’s not much you can do to counter their influence, because they are among the people every day, all day,” he adds.

“The consulate is extremely active. We have a branch of the [state-owned Turkish] Ziraat Bank here, for example, and I remember one school event where its manager was handing out cards and telling parents to drop by his office for a cup of tea. No Greek Christian has visited the villages and offered special services so that pensioners don’t have to pick up their pensions. When Greek politicians visit, they get a crowd of 50 people, but when the Turkish consul visits he gets 1,500. This is because Greek politicians remember the area only before an election, when every Turkish party leader or minister who has visited Western Thrace has gone to the trouble to go to the villages.”

Ahmet also decries the absence of the state in more practical matters like infrastructure and healthcare, saying that the military often has to step in to clear roads after floods, for example. The army also has a medical unit that it sends to the area’s villages to offer residents basic healthcare.

“There is a National Health medical center in Echinos that doesn’t work properly, as is also the case with the one in Stavroupoli, so patients come to Xanthi, but the hospital here is also terrible, so many end up going even further to Alexandroupoli,” says Ahmet.

The discussion with Imam Ahmet concludes with the importance of the concept of Greece for him.

“Greece educated me and made me a teacher. My father could not afford to educate me. Greece educated me and I am not ungrateful. The Pomaks have shed their blood for this country called Greece. An uncle of mine fought in the Albanian mountains, he was killed and we don’t know where he is buried. Fortunately now they have put up a sign saying that Muslims were also killed in the Metaxas Line. I am sad because if the Pomaks are lost the country will be poorer because we are a flower in the garden of Greece. The Turks are not in any danger. If the Pomaks disappear, the Turks will move into our villages. The Pomaks here are custodians and border guards of the region.”