The hysteria over Thrace
In Greece, where we are proud of the Rum in Istanbul and the ethnic Greeks of Himare in southern Albania, we freak out when we hear about a Turkish minority in Thrace. So much so that various politicians – usually from the right – are setting dangerous precedents for the country. We read that “the Muslim SYRIZA member of Parliament, Huseyin Zeybek, was targeted by New Democracy, who, according to the ND lawmaker Tasos Chatzivasileiou called the minority in Western Thrace ‘Turkish.’”
On paper – and specifically in the Treaty of Lausanne, which is the only one that counts for the defense of our national interests – there is only a Muslim minority, even if late conservative premier Konstantinos Karamanlis “in 1978, in Montreux, talked with the then Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit about a ‘Turkish minority’ in Greece,” as political science professor George Mavrogordatos states in a commentary published in Kathimerini on September 18, 2022. “Did it cease to exist or did [the minority] cease to be Turkish?” he asked. “In 1954 (…) an order was issued by the then prime minister, Alexandros Papagos, that henceforth, for any use, the terms ‘Turk’ and ‘Turkish’ will be used officially instead of the term ‘Muslim.’ This was followed by the mandatory renaming of every ‘Muslim’ school and organization (…), with immediate replacement or correction of all inscriptions and signs,” the professor wrote. Of course, as the connoisseur of Greek history, Mavrogordatos knows that we have an “existing problem, which is extremely difficult but also dangerous. A real ticking bomb, a legacy of 1922-23 and the choice made then to have exemptions from the compulsory population exchange.” But he does not hide his head in the sand, like politicians, international relations experts and other babblers.
The problem with Zeybek is not so much what he said, but the fact that he was elected. This means that the Greek state did a lousy job up there. Indeed, it wasn’t until 1990 that then conservative Premier Konstantinos Mitsotakis (the father of Kyriakos) abolished the peculiar apartheid we had established in the region, with military outposts to check the special permits required to visit minority villages. And it was only in 1995 that the then minister of education (and later PASOK premier), George Papandreou, allowed Muslim children from Western Thrace to enter universities, establishing positive discrimination in admissions, so that they would not have to study in Turkey.
A lot of work remains to be done to stop the minority of Thrace from being a “ticking bomb,” as Mavrogordatos wrote. But this effort is undermined by some people’s shrieks and hysteria for the sake of a handful of votes.
