Problems of Turkish Minority of Western Thrace and Rhodes, Kos and Dodecanese Turks will be discussed in the European Parliament

The European Parliament in Brussels will host an event where the language and identity problems of the Turkish Minority of Western Thrace and Rhodes, Kos and Dodecanese Turks will also be put on the table. The conference that will take place on 24 February 2015 will be hosted by MEP Jill Evans (EFA/Greens), MEP Herbert Dorfmann (EPP), and MEP Csaba Sogor (EPP) and coordi-nated by Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO), European Free Alliance (EFA), and Centre Maurits Coppieters (CMC). The title of the conference will be “Language, Iden-tity and Power: What future for Minority Languages in Europe?” and Dr Sebahattin Abdurrahman, who is the board member of ABTTF, will also deliver a speech as a result of ABTTF’s intensive lobbying work.

ABTTF will deliver a speech during the conference on the protection of minority languages in Europe on 24 February 2015

The conference will start with opening speeches of the hosting MEPs and continue with an intro-ductory speech by Vincent Climent-Ferrando from ‘Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity’ who will touch upon the issue of legal landscape for minority language protection in Europe. During the first part of the event under the title of ‘Language, Identity and Power’, Mr Zoltán Kántor from Re-search Institute for Hungarian Communities Abroad will deal with the issue of language policy in constructing national narratives. The second intervention will be performed by Dr Sebahattin Ab-durrahman who is the board member of ABTTF on the subject of mother tongue and identity preservation. Rudi Janssens from Free University of Brussels will deliver the last speech of the first part with the title of Language and politics in Belgium. The second part will focus on diversity issue where Paul Videsott from Free University of Bolzano will talk about The Ladin Community in South Tyrol: language learning and social dialogue while Hannes Wilhem-Kell from Lausatian Alli-ance will focus on Revitalizing the lower Sorbian language-the Witaj project. As the last speaker, Johan Häggman who is a multilingualism expert will analyse what the EU can and should do for mi-nority languages.