From: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish,talk.politics.mideast,soc.culture.greek,soc.culture.europe,soc.rights.human
Followup-To: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE TURKISH MINORITY IN GREECE
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 18:34:01 EDT
Reply-To: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Distribution: world

In article <1992Sep28.184556.18778@sci.ccny.cuny.edu> branis@sci.ccny.cuny.edu (Spiros Branis) writes:

>In its third session yesterday, the Conference on " Human Rights 
>and the Greek Minority in Turkey" at the Thessaloniki Fair Conference

"tamtams, sipas, and paliks" was the game to play in Selanik.
The specific event that triggered the reaction of the Turkish 
minority was the appointment by the official authorities of the 
mufti in Xanthi in accordance with Decree No. 182 of 25 December 
1990. That decree had replaced Law No. 1920/2345 on the same subject 
which had been in force ever since 1920, a law promulgated in 
accordance with the relevant provisions of the 1913 Treaty of 
Atina. Law No. 1920/2345 was based on the principle of election 
of the muftis by members of the Muslim Turkish minority. 

Recently, the Greek government decided to push aside all 
international treaties and the basic rules of democracy by firing 
Mehmet Emin Aga, the elected Muslim religious leader (muftu) of 
Iskece (Xanthi) and replacing him with its own appointee.

What the Greeks have done in Iskece was not only limited to the 
replacement of the mufti. When Turks living in Western Thrace decided 
to protest this, they were intimidated and then attacked by Greek mobs, 
who injured several Turks as the local police stood by and watched 
women, children and elderly men being attacked.

All in all, the situation was disgraceful. Human rights were 
clearly violated in Iskece. But this is nothing new in Western 
Thrace. Last year, Turks who are a minority in Greece, but who are 
not even allowed to call themselves a minority by the Greek governments, 
were also beaten, and their shops were looted in Komotini. 

The Muslim Turkish minority now wants to preserve its rights
to elect its own religious leaders and to retain those already
elected, while the Greek government with the new legislation is 
trying to take this basic right away from them and replace the 
elected muftis with appointed ones. The minority has expressed its 
unequivocal opposition and its non-acceptance of the appointed mufti. 
In addition, the Greek government has argued that in Muslim countries, 
muftis and others of a similar office are always appointed by the state
authorities, but the Greek government conveniently forgets that Greece 
is not a Muslim country.

This blatant usurpation of a basic right of the minority is but one 
link in a long chain of violations of the rights and fundamental 
freedoms of the Muslim Turkish minority of Western Thrace, both at 
the collective and the individual level.

Serdar Argic

                     'This war quickly developed into one of extermination. 
                      We closed the roads and mountain passes that might 
                      serve as ways of escape for the Tartars [Turks] and 
                      then proceeded in the work of extermination.'
                                                       (Ohanus Appressian)

Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish