The observations about fact-finding the visit is on Hungarian Newspaper Bihari Naplo

Bihari Naplo newspaper representative Istvan Pap from the Hungarian Minority in Romania and the member of the European Association of Daily Newspapers in Minority and Regional Languages (MIDAS) who attended to the fact-finding visit to Western Thrace between 19-22 June organized by the partnership with the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe(ABTTF), Western Thrace Minority University Graduates Association (WTMUGA) and Friendship Equality Peace Party (FEP Party) wrote an article on 1 July 2014 about his observations on the visit on Bihari Nablo.

According to Pap, with the end of the World War 1 the borders of countries had changed and the fate of the most national minorities of Europe were similar. The fate of Western Thrace Turkish Minority in Greece was determined by the 1923 Lausanne Treaty, but Greece accepted only the ex-istence of Muslim Minority in its country because there is no concept of national minority on the Treaty.

Due to the electoral threshold of 3 percent in Greece, the independent candidates can not be elected to the Greek parliament, minority members run candidates from majority parties. Otherwise, the Turks do not have the chance of being elected in the parliament. FEP Party has entered the Euro-pean Parliament elections in the region, but despite having a very high vote the party can not send deputies to the European Parliament.

During the fact-finding visit, Pap had the opportunity to meet with the representatives of minority media and experienced the negative attitude of the Greek media towards the Turkish minority. He also referred in his article those two Turkish Minority newspapers Gündem and Millet were given high penalties due to an article published in their newspapers. He wrote that the situation of the mi-nority media is very difficult in an environment which members of the minority experience difficult socio-economic conditions in their daily life.

He adds that the associations which bear the name “Turkish” in its names were closed and notes that there are Turkish road signs where the minority lives. He further notes that 46 thousand people of non-ethnic Greek origin were repelled from citizenship due to former Article 19 of the nationality code in Greece.

Lastly, Pap mentions in his article the details of the meeting with the Komotini Mayor George Pet-ridis, who says that Western Thrace Turks are mostly low-income families and that they can not work in the high social status works due to the low quality of education in minority schools.