World Bulletin / News Desk
To commemorate 90 years since the Treaty of Lausanne, Muslim Turks in western Thrace, Greece, held a two day conference called the Muslim Children Education Program on November 22-23 in the mainly Turkish city of Gumulcine (Komotini).
However, the conference was marred on the first day when a guest speaker was refused the right to address the audience in his mother-tongue Turkish.
This is the third such incident this month, after a coach and football players in Iskece (Xanthi), another city with a big Turkish population, was forbidden from speaking Turkish among themselves and their families during games. Turks were also forbidden from speaking Turkish at the Gumulcine state hospital.
Approximately 150,000 Turks native to western Thrace were spared the population exchange that took place after the Treat of Lausanne in 1923, which saw Turks in Greece swapped with Greeks in Turkey.
Like other ethnic Turks native to south-eastern Europe in countries such as Bulgaria and Romania, they have been in a struggle to gain official recognition for the Turkish language in Europe.
