Western Thrace’s Turkish minority wins in court – but Greece still won’t listen

The refusal of Greek authorities to register a women's association in the register of associations violates the right to freedom of association enshrined in Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, according to the European Court of Human Rights. The registration was refused because the association was to include the word ‘Turkish’ in its name.

In December 2010, seven women wanted to found a ‘cultural association of Turkish women in the prefecture of Xanthi’ and applied for registration in the register of associations. The competent court in Xanthi (Turkish: İskeçe) rejected the application on the grounds that the name of the association was misleading and could ‘cause confusion regarding the identity of its members’. This referred to the term ‘Turkish’, which the court interpreted as an indication of nationality rather than a self-designation of the national minority in Western Thrace.

Greece denies the existence of national minorities on its territory, whether they are Macedonians, Albanians, Aromanians, Roma, Pomaks or Turks (together they make up 2.1 per cent of the total population). Minority languages are referred to in Greece as regional idioms, as dialects of Greek, although they are not related to Greek.

The only recognised minority is a Muslim, i.e. religious, minority. Athens refers to the Treaty of Lausanne, which ended the war between Turkey and Greece that broke out after the end of the First World War in 1923 and which only mentions a Muslim minority (Article 45). This Muslim minority is estimated to number around 105,000 (Greece does not record nationality in its censuses). About half of them are ethnic Turks, 35 per cent are Pomaks who speak a South Slavic language, and around 15 per cent are Roma. These communities live in the three prefectures of Xanthi, Rodopi and Evros in Western Thrace in the far north-east of Greece. They are victims of multiple forms of discrimination and are repeatedly the target of nationalist attacks and hate speech.

These communities are not supported in their cultural activities, but rather hindered. In particular, the authorities try to prevent them from identifying themselves as Turks. When members of the Turkish minority file complaints against this, their complaints are dismissed, even by the highest court, the Court of Cassation.

These rulings violate the principles of pluralism and self-determination, the plaintiffs argued in their complaint to the European Court of Human Rights (Sagir and others v. Greece, application no. 34724/18. The real purpose of the restriction was to prevent the recognition of Turkish identity in Thrace. The plaintiffs referred to other cases in which Greek courts refused to register associations because of the designation ‘Turkish’ or even dissolved associations that had existed for a long time.

Although Greece has lost all these cases before the European Court of Human Rights, it has not implemented the judgments: The Bekir-Ousta v. Greece case concerns the refusal to register the Turkish Youth Organisation, founded in 1995, in the prefecture of Evros (application 35151/05), the Emin and Others case concerns the refusal to register the Cultural Association of Turkish Women in the Prefecture of Rodopi (complaint 34144/05) and in another case concerning the dissolution in 1999 of the Turkish Union of Xanthi, which had existed since 1927. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has already dealt with these cases several times as part of its monitoring procedure, but has unsuccessfully appealed to Greece to enforce the judgments. Two weeks ago, the European Commission also referred to these cases in its 2024 Annual Report on the Rule of Law in Greece that Greece has failed to enforce these ECtHR judgments for many years.

In its ruling on 24 June, the Human Rights Court emphasised that the Greek courts had violated the right to freedom of association enshrined in Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Freedom of association is of particular importance to members of minorities, and the establishment of associations can be an important means of exercising and promoting their identity, as well as of preserving and defending their rights. ‘The existence of minorities and cultures in a country is a historical fact that a democratic society must tolerate or even protect and promote in accordance with the principles of international law,’ writes the ECtHR. Therefore, the name of the association cannot in itself justify non-registration.

‘With this ruling, Greece can no longer continue to deny the Turkish identity of our ethnic group,’ writes Halit Habip Oğlu, President of the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF), in a press release on the ruling, adding: "Our country, which has tried by all means to avoid enforcing the three previous rulings of the ECtHR regarding our associations and has disregarded international law for over 17 years by burying its head in the sand, now has no excuse. We call on our country to fully and effectively implement all ECtHR rulings concerning our associations and to immediately recognise the Turkish identity of our ethnic group," writes Habip Oğlu.

Greece signed the European Convention on Human Rights on 28 November 1950 and ratified it on 28 March 1953. It has not acceded to what are probably the two most important Council of Europe agreements for national minorities: Greece signed the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities on 22 September 1997, but has not ratified it and it has neither signed nor ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

*Note: This article gives the views of the author and does not represent the position of the European Association of Daily Newspapers in Minority and Regional Languages (MIDAS) or Eurac Research.

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