ABTTF on a working visit to Strasbourg during the PACE Winter Session

FUEN member organizations ABTTF, ROISDER and VATAN raised the problems of their own communities during the meetings they held with the PACE members and the Council of Europe officials

The Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF) paid a working visit to Strasbourg during the 2016 Winter Session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). During this working visit from 26 to 27 January 2016, the ABTTF President and Vice President of the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN) Halit Habip Oğlu was accompanied by the President of the Rhodes, Kos and the Dodecanese Turks Culture and Solidarity Association (ROISDER) Prof. Dr. Mustafa Kaymakçı representing the Turks living in Rhodes and Kos and the President of the International Society of the Meskhetian Turks “VATAN” Zhavid Aliev representing the Meskhetian Turks.

The delegation held high-level meetings with the Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland and the Foreign Minister of the Republic of Turkey and the former President of the PACE Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu in Strasbourg. ABTTF President Habip Oğlu also met with Mustafa Abduldzhemil Dzhemilev, the Leader of the Crimean Tatars and a member of the Ukrainian Parliament.

Within the scope of their working visit, the representatives of the Turkish minority of Western Thrace, Rhodes-Kos Turks and Meskhetian Turks held a series of meetings with the members of the PACE and the Council of Europe officials. The delegation met with the Chairperson of the PACE Sub-Committee on the Rights of Minorities Viorel Riceard Badea, the Vice Chairperson of the Azerbaijani National Delegation to the PACE Vusal Huseynov, the Rapporteur of the PACE Monitoring Committee on Georgia Boriss Cilevičs, the member of the Georgian National Delegation to the PACE Guguli Magradze, the Executive Secretary of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) Stephanos Stavros, the Head of the Directorate of the Political Advice in the Council of Europe Alexandre Guessel and the Deputy to the Director of the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe Nikolaos Sitaropoulos.

During his meetings with the PACE members and the Council of Europe officials, ABTTF President Habip Oğlu provided information on the ongoing problems with regard to the educational and religious autonomy of the Turkish minority of Western Thrace and referred to the recent discriminative practices by the Greek authorities against the minority. The ROISDER President Prof. Dr. Kaymakçı representing the Turkish community living in Rhodes and Kos noted the Rhodes-Kos Turks are not officially recognized by the Greek state as a minority on the grounds that the Dodecanese islands did not belong to Greece when the Lausanne Peace Treaty was signed in 1923 and reported about the problems having been being faced by the Turkish community living in those islands with regard to education in its mother tongue and election of its religious leaders. Prof. Dr. Kaymakçı also mentioned the miserable state of the historical buildings and monuments of the Ottoman cultural heritage in the islands. The President of VATAN Aliev representing the Meskhetian Turks underlined Georgia has not fulfilled yet its obligation with regard to the repatriation of the Meskhetian Turks deported in 1944 by Josepf Stalin to their homeland Akhaltsih (Samtskhe-Javakheti) when it became a member of the Council of Europe and called on Georgia to immediately take all the necessary steps to ensure the repatriation of the Meskhetian Turks.