On the Turkish minority in Greece
Date: Fri, 02 Jan 98 13:31:32 -0500
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: On the Turkish minority in Greece
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: Panayote Dimitras <[email protected]>
On the Turkish minority in Greece
Ghosts finally come alive!
New Year's eve is a traditional day for jubilation for almost everyone. This
year, millions of Muslims around the world anticipate it in a different
manner, as it sets off their Ramadan. For some 1,000 Muslims of Greece, this
Ramadan will be one they will never forget. Just ten days before its
beginning, they will be able to start 'coming out of the closet' to get
official documents that will turn them from 'ghosts' into normal human
beings with a claim to human dignity if not full civil rights. Who are these
odd individuals? Greece's stateless. They are probably unique in the
democratic world, as they have been turned stateless inside their very own
homeland: another 'accomplishment' from this country's exuberant record of
human rights' violations.
Aysel Zeybek was seven when, one day in 1984, as she remembers now, her
mother came home crying and inconsolable. After some insistent probing, she
explained to her four young daughters that she had turned in to the police
all their documents as the whole family was being stripped of their
citizenship. The crime, as Aysel then understood, was that, a few weeks
before, they had all visited her grandparents in Istanbul. There, the father
lost his passport. Like any citizen, he turned to his country's consulate to
ask for a replacement. The Zeybek family ordeal was only beginning.
For other Greek citizens, the Greek Consulate in Istanbul, on the basis of
the identity card, would immediately replace the passport. But the Zeybeks
were already not 'any' Greek citizens; they did not have normal blue plastic
identity cards like their fellow citizens but special white cardboard
booklets which specified that they could not move more than 30 km away from
their residence without the prior approval by police authorities. Showing
that document to the consulate meant that the replacement passport had to
wait for a similar 'prior approval.' After having been sent off a few times,
by consuls who 'had no answer yet,' Huseyin Zeybek was finally told that no
passport will be issued as a procedure to strip him of his citizenship was
engaged.
"Why? What have I done" he was insistently asking unable to hide his tears.
"Don't know" was the answer of the as usual arrogant Greek consular officer,
"Go away and don't come back again!" the diplomat commanded. Huseyin had no
choice. He left the consulate and made sure that his wife and four daughters
, still in possession of valid passports, return home at once. Then, a few
weeks later, he paid quite a sum to one of those professional smugglers of
usually destitute Turks or other Middle East fugitives looking for political
asylum or a mere semi-decent job in what they think is the 'heaven of Greece
.' They 'help' them cross the Greek - Turkish border, as they did for
Huseyin, who thus joined his family into the 'open prison' of the Rhodopes
that was to become, for the following fourteen years, a 'living hell.'
The family was at a loss. Soon they were asked to turn in also the license
for the small family grocery store in the home town of Ehinos. "What if a
policeman or some other inspector comes and asks for my license" asked the
father. "Tell them it is in the police station and they will not bother you"
answered the police station chief. Well, this worked for a while; once the
license expired, and for a dozen years, police or other inspectors had been
taking sadistic pleasure in torturing this quiet family man suing him for
'operation of an unlicensed store.' Millions of drachmas ($1=270drs.) have
being paid as fines following multiple court-delivered sentences.
Aysel, like her sisters, started having problems at school. To register, you
need an identity document. But, as the whole family was stripped of their
citizenship she had no documents. Only thanks to the help of her uncle, a
former deputy, did the school register her; the uncle died in 1991, and so
did Aysel's hopes to go beyond eighth grade. Numerous other similar forms of
harassment were to be endured, as the Greek state's purpose was clear: they
wanted to force the Zeybeks to leave Greece for good.
Refusing to be uprooted, Huseyin started becoming acquainted with Greek law.
First, he heard of Article 19 of the Citizenship Code which empowers the
state to strip non-ethnic Greeks (only -an obvious racist discrimination) of
their citizenship if they had permanently settled abroad with no intent to
return to Greece. "But I have never left except for short trips" he screamed
at his lawyer. "Well, arkadash, the law does not say that you have to prove
that. The state security police decides who lives here and who does not. Do
you know how many people like you have left for short trips or sometimes for
short stays, even as students, and found themselves 'heimatless' [German but
also Turkish for stateless]?" said the lawyer. "Not to mention those who
have been stripped of their citizenship while still living and serving in
the army or even voting here. In fact the first time they heard about it was
when they actually applied for a passport!" He was also told that
'collective guilt' was applied in this case: the whole family can lose the
citizenship if the father's is revoked.
"So what can we do?" asked the desperate father. "Let us appeal to the
Supreme State Administrative Court and then, if necessary, apply for
citizenship anew" suggested the lawyer. "If you are a good boy, they may
give it back to you, as they did for Kurt." Kurt Yakup was stripped of the
citizenship in the 1980s when he was as a student in Turkey because 'he is
smart and we tried to win him over but we failed' as was said in the top
secret note of the Foreign Ministry to the Citizenship Board: 'win him over'
meant becoming an informer which Kurt had refused. Maybe because Kurt, a
leftist, ended up being beaten up by police in Turkey, the Greek state
allowed him back. In the Zeybek case, the Citizenship Board had been
postponing the examination of his dossier, despite the positive
recommendation of the Ministry of Public Order, after the State Court had
rejected his appeal as overdue.
Since Zeybek was 'a good boy' many tried to help. Huseyin or his daughter
Aysel had the 'chance' to plead their case in front of a former prime
minister, an acting foreign minister, and a governing party's leader. They
all 'heard with sympathy' the case and promised to help, in vain of course.
In the meantime, though, the father continued having his professional
problems while her sister was barely managing to go to school, unregistered
of course, and could not -as neither could Aysel- get any transcript.
Because no one had ever informed the Zeybek family that even stateless
people have rights, at least in countries desiring to be civilized and thus
having signed inter alia the 1954 UN Convention Relating to the Status of
Stateless Persons. These stateless belong to the officially called 'Muslim
minority' (they themselves prefer to be called 'Turks') and they had been
stripped of their citizenship in an obviously irregular application of the
anyway inhumane and contrary to all European human rights documents Article
19. They can have special identity papers and even travel documents.
Moreover, they must enjoy the rights of legal aliens in the country except
on matters of health where they are equated with full citizens. Greece
ratified the Convention with Law 139 of 25/25 - 8-1975 but had almost never
applied it.
Worse, not just stateless people but even all lawyers and all politicians
were 'conveniently' unaware of the law's existence. In fact, most, including
the UNHCR which has a mandate also to look after stateless people, were
unaware of the very existence within the borders of Greece of an estimated 1
,200 stateless. "I had been teaching for ten years in Thrace [where these
people live] but have never heard of them" said the Secretary General of the
Greek Foreign Ministry (and a Professor of International Law!). "It's only
since you alerted the Ministry of Public Order a few days ago that we became
aware of the problem" of both their existence and their deprivation of all
UN mandated rights, added the Deputy Foreign Minister, promising in the
process a swift solution to the problem.
Both high officials made these statements to a joint delegation of Human
Rights Watch/Helsinki and Greek Helsinki Monitor which had indeed come
across this blatant violation of fundamental human rights while running into
Aysel and Huseyin Zeybek, in their lawyer's office, during their fact-
finding mission in Thrace, in early September 1997. Then, they escorted the
two to the Xanthi police headquarters to ask for the identity documents
called for by the law. When the local police chief stated his, apparently
sincere, ignorance of the matter, the human rights activists called the
Minister of Public Order's advisor in Athens: he was also astounded but went
on promising that the problem will be solved within two weeks.
Three months later the stateless were still in the limbo, as the Foreign
Ministry bureaucracy was stubbornly refusing to give the go ahead. So, on
International Human Rights Day (10 December), eleven Greek NGOs (with the
noteworthy absence of the Greek sections of the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly
- HCA and the International Federation of Human Rights - FIDH, that have
still to 'discover' Greece's ethnic minorities), all three Turkish minority
deputies and three smaller political parties made public a joint appeal. In
it they were asking the government to grant all rights to the stateless, and
to abolish Article 19, as well as the notorious security zone, this 'open
prison' in the Rhodopes mountain where ethnic Turks had been living
restricted with the aforementioned 'internal passports' until a couple of
years ago and in which, even today, no foreigner may enter without a -rarely
granted- police authorization.
Aysel was on 10 December in the Athens Bar Association where the appeal was
made public and the first ever debate on the minority with the participation
of almost all minority leaders took place. Hardly any Greek media were
present though and only two papers wrote about the event and the tragic
destiny of the stateless (they were Avghi and Eleftherotypia, in front page
stories). Most important, the five ministries concerned which were invited
to present their position snubbed the meeting (but some were abundantly
represented that day in other anodyne celebrations where the focus was on
human rights problems in Africa or elsewhere in Europe). So, those
appealing announced they will go the following day to the Minister of Public
Order to demand the granting of the papers.
In the event, only the deputy from Xanthi, Birol Akifoglu, and only two NGOs
, Greek Helsinki Monitor and Minority Rights Group - Greece, showed up, but
determined not to leave the Ministry until the problem was solved.
Unfortunately, the Minister was tied up with the sequels of a terrorist
attack, but promised to have the solution a week later. Indeed, on 18
December 1997, Aysel could smile again. The Greek government had decided to
finally honor its obligation under that UN treaty: the leadership of the
Ministry of Public Order had imposed its will on the other reluctant
Ministries to have identity and travel documents issues to all stateless
within Greece. The 'ghosts' could finally come alive! Hopefully, from now on
all stateless of Greece will be able to breathe, live, study and work
fearlessly; now they will have to give the next fight, for the restoration
of their citizenship that was 'stolen away' in an equally brutal way. First
though, Aysel, her family and the other stateless will calmly honor Ramadan
and from the bottom of their heart shout "Allah akber" [God is One and Only]
..
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Panayote Elias Dimitras
AIM - Greece (Alternative Information Media)
P.O. Box 51393
GR-145 10 Kifisia Greece
tel: +30-1-620.01.20 fax: +30-1-807.57.67
e-mail: [email protected]
web site: http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/
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