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Dear friends
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning.
Before I begin my speech, I would like to warmly thank the organizers of this very interesting conference, because through such initiatives, the opportunity is given to bring Thrace and its very serious problems back to the fore.
One of the main issues that characterize Thrace is the Muslim minority there, which is often a topic of discussion both socially and politically. But let's start from the beginning. I know that a 20-minute speech is not enough to analyze such a complex issue, but I will try to give you an understanding of what is happening in Thrace today, as briefly and as clearly as I can.
First of all, those of you who have read the Treaty of Lausanne will have seen how it talks about minorities and not about a minority. In short, the Treaty of Lausanne itself stipulates that in Thrace there are several minorities and not just one. However, after the signing of the aforementioned treaty, various educational protocols and other agreements followed by which Pomaks, Gypsies and people of Turkish origin became a minority, known as the Muslim minority of Thrace.
Unfortunately, however, Turkey, within the framework of an expansionist policy, is trying wherever there is a Muslim element in the Balkans to create a Turkish minority, and many times the results for Turkey are spectacular since through its very well-organized mechanisms it manages to achieve its goal to a large extent.
However, since we often talk about mechanisms without naming them, I would like to be more specific. Some well-known for the work produced by mechanisms of Turkey and more specifically of the Turkish consulate in Komotini are undoubtedly the pseudo-muftis, the imams in the mosques, the Turkish-speaking printed and electronic press of the region, and through these mechanisms Turkey manages to convey what it wants to the Muslims of Thrace.
You will obviously wonder how Turkey manages to Turkify more and more Muslims, in what ways it achieves this.
The most basic method of Turkification of the Muslims of Thrace is religion through which pseudo-muftis and imams pass their messages. As an example, I mention that several times we Muslims go to the mosque and there we listen to election speeches by mayoral or parliamentary candidates, while in other cases they hand out ballots for candidates that the Turkish consulate wants to support.
I don't know how you would feel about going to church and instead of the priest listening to a campaign speech by candidates, but for us, what happens inside mosques is at least offensive. However, since the result is what counts, I must unfortunately admit that more and more Muslims are being Turkified through religion, and this is happening because, with the enormous responsibility of the Greek state, most Muslims in Thrace are illiterate, and you know very well that when we are dealing with uneducated people, religion plays a very important role.
Another equally effective method by which the Turkification of the Muslims of Thrace is achieved is money, which, especially in times like the one we have been living in for a few years, can work wonders. Even the stones now know that the Turkish consulate in Komotini has several hundred, if not thousands, of unpaid collaborators, people whom it pays to influence their fellow countrymen and convince them that they are Turks and not Greeks.
I recently read in a well-known magazine that the Turkish consulate in Komotini received an extraordinary grant of 30 million euros exclusively for the past election period in order to use this money to support candidates supported by Turkey. You all understand that with that much money a lot can be done.
In cases where all of the above does not work, of course, the method of terrorism is applied, which I have experienced firsthand. I was the one who in 2007 received threatening phone calls because I was asking for Greek schools for my children and because I was speaking openly about Greek Pomaks in Thrace. The strange thing is that when I recorded these threatening phone calls and took them to the prosecutor to request that the telephone secrecy be lifted so that I could find out where these phone calls were coming from, I received the answer that for justice to intervene, there must be facts, that is, to find a dead body in my house. This is unfortunately how the Greek state treats us.  
In this entire systematic effort to Turkify the Muslims of Thrace, the Turkish-speaking press of the region also plays a decisive role, presenting people like me to the public as traitors to the great Turkish nation, as people who declare themselves Greek Pomaks only because they are paid by the Greek parastate, and this often creates serious problems for us because many Muslims believe all this and treat us almost hostilely.
When a few years ago some people decided to create the first Pomak cultural association in Xanthi, our names were plastered on all the mosques and we were presented to our fellow villagers as traitors, as people paid by the Greek parastate, with the result that we could not even move around in our villages. It took a lot of time and a lot of effort to prove that things are not like that and that we declare ourselves Greek Pomaks because we believe it and not because someone is paying us, and fortunately things are much better today.
The most tragic thing is that all this is done with the tolerance and sometimes perhaps with the support of the Greek state which is absent from Thrace. And yet, things could not be so bad for the Greek Pomaks of Thrace if the state decided to deal with them even a little and especially if it decided to ensure them a better education. I have always said and will continue to say that only an educated person can take his fate into his own hands and allow such games to be played on his back and I believe that a properly educated Muslim minority in Thrace will not be able to be controlled and guided by anyone.
Unlike the rest of the Greek children, the Muslims of Thrace are forced to attend a minority primary school which provides them with everything except education. To be more specific, I will tell you what happens to the Pomak students. These are children who until the age of 6 speak only their mother tongue, that is, Pomak, and suddenly in the first grade of primary school they are asked to learn four different languages ​​which they have never spoken.
Greek, which they certainly have to learn because it is the language of the country they live in but up until that time they have not spoken it at all, Turkish because that is what some people decided, Arabic because of religious reasons and English as provided for by the national education system. In short, these children out of nowhere have to learn four different languages ​​and this of course has the result that they cannot learn any of them properly.
This is also the reason why many Muslims in Thrace have repeatedly requested the creation of public Greek-speaking primary schools in their villages because such schools only exist in the city, with the result that Muslims living in villages do not have access to them. This is the reason why many Muslims are forced to abandon their homes in the village and move to rented accommodation in the city so that they can send their children to a Greek-speaking primary school. This is the reason why many public Greek-speaking primary schools in the city tend to turn into minority schools due to the presence of many Muslim students, and the Ministry of Education knows all this better than I do, but it does nothing.
Unfortunately, it is not possible for all Muslims to abandon their villages and move to the city in order to have access to public Greek-speaking primary schools; most are forced to stay in their villages, with the result that they willy-nilly send their children to a minority school. A few years ago, specifically when the Thracian Evripides Stylianidis was the Minister of Education, he began a very serious effort to establish and operate four Greek-speaking primary schools in the Pomak villages of Xanthi, but this effort, although on a very good path, was never completed. At some point, the government reshuffle intervened and Mr. Stylianidis' successor, Aris Spyliotopoulos, for reasons that I cannot know, did not continue this effort.
As for the language, customs, traditions and, in general, the cultural identity of the Pomaks, we ourselves, the Pomaks, have taken several steps towards recording and preserving them, but this is by no means enough. No matter how many efforts we make, if the Greek state does not deal with the issue, unfortunately it is certain that at some point both our language and our culture will be lost. Unfortunately, however, as I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, the Greek state has never dealt with the Pomaks, the Greek state is almost absent from Thrace, as a result of which we have a Turkish consulate that literally does whatever it wants, and when a foreign factor comes into your field and plays you one-sided, you deserve your fate.
 Thank you very much