Campaign in Komotini : „Close the Consulate General of the Republic of Turkey in Komotini!“

On 23 October 2009, the owner of the newspaper Andifonitis, Kostas Karaiskos, and an accompanying group of people opened in the city square of Komotini a written banner with the statement „Out with the Consulate! Now!“. In addition to the three banners containing articles in the direction of closing the Consulate General of the Republic of Turkey in Komotini, brochures, which contained ten questions and answers why the Consulate General should be closed, were distributed in the early hours of the same day.*

According to the news of daily Birlik, some statements written in the brochures and on banners were the following:

- Who needs a Turkish Consulate in our city?
- Are there any Turkish citizens in Thrace?
- Are there here that many bureaucratic procedures? Especially after visa for Turkey was removed?
- Is a non-state mechanism trying to create a ghetto for our Muslim citizens?
- Who is controlling the Minority’s freedom of political expression?
- Do they want to create a Turkish Minority after an ethnic cleansing by using different methods and movements to make the Pomaks and Roma to Turkish?

Already before the early general elections on 4 October 2009, a banner with the written statement “Close the Consulate General of the Republic of Turkey” had been put up by a group of about eight people and the website of www.proxeneio-stop.gr had initiated a signature campaign for the closure of the Consulate General.

Habipoğlu: What is the community in Western Thrace which speaks Turkish and identifies itself as Turkish, if it is not a Turkish minority?

With regard to the issue, Halit Habipoğlu, President of the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF), stated that “The campaign, which has started with the bunner hung up on the train bridge in Komotini, is as well targeting the Consulate General of the Republic of Turkey in Komotini as it is targeting the Turkish Minority of Western Thrace living in Greece. The question of a non-state mechanism trying to create ghettos for the Muslim citizens is proving this. Furthermore, it is claimed in the distributed brochures that it is desired to create a Turkish Minority by turning the Pomaks and Roma to Turkish. The Minority, which has been left to Greece with the Peace Treaty of Lausanne, is a Turkish Minority. A campaign containing the claim that there is no Turkish Minority in Western Thrace is as well negating the truth, as it is creating a socially dangerous situation. The aim of this campaign is to separate the majority from the Turkish Minority, which have managed to coexist peacefully in Western Thrace. It should be known that the Turkish Minority of Western Thrace does not intend to follow an exclusionary and aggressive attitude in such a conscious campaign.”