Deutsche Presse-Agentur
April 11, 2005, Monday

Greek court rules against association describing itself as “Turkish”

Greece’s Supreme Court has ruled against the right of an association
located in the north-eastern region of Thrace to describe itself as
“Turkish”, newspaper reports said Monday.

According to reports, the country’s Supreme Court rejected a bid by
the “Cultural Association of Turkish Women in the Rhodope Prefecture”
against a ruling by a Thrace appeals court that had ordered the
group’s dissolution.

It was the second ruling of its kind by the Supreme Court this year,
after a decision in January banning a 78-year-old Moslem minority
association named the “Turkish Union of Xanthi”, a Thracian town with
a strong Moslem community.

The court said the cultural association “served the interest of a
foreign country in the attempt to present a Turkish minority as
living in Greece.”

The ruling, which was reported in the Athens daily “Kathimerini”
newspaper, said the association’s aims were illegal and went against
the Treaty of Lausanne.

The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which provided for an exchange of
populations between Greece and Turkey following the 1919-22 war,
holds that the 100,000-strong Moslem minority in Thrace is not
ethnically Turkish.

Supreme Court judges found the association “is implicitly seeking to
forward Turkish ideals, in contrast to other lawful associations in
Greece, such as Armenian or Israeli, which legitimately aim to
preserve their national customs and language.”

Traditional rivals Greece and Turkey have nearly gone to war three
times in the past 30 years, most recently over a rocky islet in the
Aegean in 1996.

While the 1974 war over Cyprus remains a serious diplomatic dispute
between the two nations, both have managed to thaw tensions in recent
years after twin earthquakes struck both capitals in 1999, resulting
in a mutual outpouring of grief and support. dpa cp pmc