World Greek Language Day events were cancelled at Ankara University after endless threats were made on social media, including linking Turkey’s false claims that the Greek Muslim minority in Western Thrace live in persecution.
Ankara University’s Faculty of Language and History-Geography said in a statement that the event, which was organised with Istanbul University and Trakya University, had to be cancelled because its “perception exceeded the initial purpose.”
Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dekanlığından Duyuru pic.twitter.com/uGbajVWOjW
— Ankara Üniversitesi (@AnkaraUni) February 9, 2021
One Turkish social media user said:
“Organising a foolish event and harbouring sympathies for the Greek language puts a dagger in the back of Muslim Turks’ sovereignty in Western Thrace, and means that you have trampled on Turkey’s interests in the Aegean Sea and Eastern Mediterranean.”
It is reminded that on the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s very own website in English, states on its Treaty of Lausanne page in Article 45 that:
“The rights conferred by the provisions of the present Section on the non-Moslem minorities of Turkey will be similarly conferred by Greece on the Moslem minority in her territory.”
Article 2 also states that:
“Moslems established in the region to the east of the frontier line laid down in 1918 by the Treaty of Bucharest shall be considered as Moslem inhabitants of Western Thrace.”
The supposed Turkish minority in Western Thrace are in fact Greek Muslims, some of whom are Turkish-speakers, and many others are Pomak and Roma, a fact that Turkey denies.
Other social media users made outright threats against the Greek language event, forcing it to be cancelled.
