Support from FUEN for the 19th Article Victims Campaigns

Witten – 21.12.2005

Press Release:

Support from FUEN for the 19th Article Victims Campaigns

Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN) declared its open support for the e – mail, postcard and signature campaigns of Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF). It has been only one week since the campaigns were initiated by ABTTF and the support for the campaigns aroused great interest.

The supports for the campaigns initiated by ABTTF are growing continuosly. With the campaigns ABTTF aims to activate European Council to abrogate the traces of the 19th Article by which 80 thousand people were denaturalized basing on the following statement of the Article: “A person not of Greek ethnic origin may be denaturalized, if she/he exists Greece without the intention of com-ing back”. FUEN, the biggest Minority Roof Association, declared its full support for the campaign.

FUEN will join the postcard campaign with its 72 member minority associations. Frank Nielsen, General Secretary of FUEN, send the first electronic postcard to Rene van der Linden, President of the Euro-pean Council Parliamentary Assembly, from website of ABTTF and demanded support from their member associations.

Great Support to the Campaign from Baku to London

Halit Habipoğlu commented about the success of the campaign and continued as “ We printed 5000 postcards and sent them to our member associations and minority associations in Turkey and Greece. We had to reprint the postcards as a result of the high demand and support”. The amount of electroni-cally sent postcards has reached to 500 up until now. He expressed that they aimed the total of the postcards sent to the president of ECPA to reach 10.000 until the first week of the new year. He specially emphasized the support of the FUEN for the campaign and thanked to all for their support.

Europe’s Problem

Habipoğlu stated the support of Europe for the campaigns and continued as “ The campaigns initiated by ABTTF continue at more than 100 points. Our goal is to heal the wounds of our citizens and abro-gate the traces of the implementation of Greek Citizenship Law. In 1998, when the law was abolished, all the problems could have been solved with a sentence added to the Article and this would have executed the unfairness retroactively but this has not been done up until now. The complexity of our problem necessities a political solution. We as the members of the Europe believe that a solution can be achieved by the European Institutions.

European Council that bring representatives from 46 countries together is the most suitable place to demand a solution. With this thought in mind, we apply to ECPA for a solution for the victims of the 19th Article and we direct our campaigns to its activation”.

The denaturalization process speed up especially between the years 1981, Greece became EU member country, and 1998. (...) Habipoğlu commented “ The problem is not only Greece’s internal problem but also a problem that implicates the European Union. We call all the European Institutions, which believe in human rights and democracy,.to share the responsibility”.

Our supporters who would like to join our postcard and signature campaigns are invited to visit the web site of ABTTF (www.abttf.org) for more information.