Foreign ministry to Turkey: The numbers show who respects and implements the Lausanne Treaty

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Ankara is once again “turning reality on its head” in order to present positions that do not stand up to scrutiny, foreign ministry spokesperson Alexandros Papaioannou said on Saturday, regarding the Turkish foreign ministry’s reactions to a decision to close four minority primary schools in the region of Thrace.

Papaioannou said the decision to close the schools was taken using the exact same criteria that apply in all other parts of Greece – namely, when the number of children enrolled to attend is fewer than nine. In addition to the four minority primary schools, he pointed out, decisions were taken to close an additional 29 non-minority schools in the 2022-2023 academic year.

“Consequently, nobody can claim that there has been unfavourable treatment of the minority pupils,” the spokesperson said, emphasising that the Greek state made decisions “equally and without discrimination for all Greek citizens, with the exclusive yardstick of providing high-level education for the benefit of the pupils themselves.”

“Turkey needs to put a stop to its misleading rhetoric and understand the reality, which shows that the Muslim minority in Thrace, living in a free, democratic and European country, fully enjoys its rights and freedoms, as do all Greek citizens,” Papaioannou added.

Conversely, he pointed out, the treatment afforded to “the very few schools of the Greek minority that remain in Turkey act as witnesses to the violent and systematic uprooting of Greeks from their ancestral territories.”

Whereas the Muslim minority in Thrace will be served by 99 primary schools in the coming year, in Istanbul there will be only three for the Greek minority, only one on the island of Imvros and none on the island of Tenedos, he added.

The disparity in the treatment of the two minorities was also evident from the fact that the Muslim minority in Thrace now numbered 120,000 people while the Greek minority in Turkey did not exceed 3,000, even though the two populations were roughly equal at the time of the Treaty of Lausanne in the 1920s.

“Unfortunately for Turkey, the numbers tell their own undeniable truth about who respects and implements the Treaty of Lausanne,” Papaioannou emphasised.

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