For the first time in more than a century, Greece on Wednesday reopened a historic mosque in the northern city of Thessaloniki, allowing the Western Thracian Turkish minority in Greece and others to celebrate Ramadan Bayram, also known as Eid al-Fitr, the holiday ending the holy month of Ramadan, amid its recent rapprochement with archrival Türkiye.
Around 100 people attended prayers at the historic Yeni Cami (meaning “New Mosque” in Turkish), last used in this capacity in the early 1920s, before a war between Greece and Türkiye led to a population exchange that whittled away the city’s Turkish population.
“We are fortunate that it opened for us,” Ismail Bedrettin, a 66-year-old retired furniture maker, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“I’ve lived in Thessaloniki for four years and this is the first time I’m given the opportunity to pray with my Muslim family,” added Ali, a 23-year-old Turkish economics student who declined to give his surname out of fear of reprisals.
Greek police guarded the building during the ceremony.
The Yeni Mosque, built in 1902 by Italian architect Vitaliano Poselli while Salonica was part of the Ottoman Empire, was at the time used by the Dönmeh, Jewish people who had outwardly converted to Islam.
The two-floor building was briefly used in 1922 to house refugees of the Greco-Turkish War. It later became an archaeological museum and municipal gallery.
Greece is an Orthodox Christian country, and Muslim places of worship are mainly in Western Thrace, a region in the northeast of the country near the Greek-Turkish border that is home to a centuries-old Turkish minority numbering around 150,000.
In Athens, the number of Muslims had been negligible since the Greco-Turkish War, but their numbers rose during the 2015 refugee crisis.
Despite numerous restored and functioning Greek Orthodox churches throughout Türkiye, the first official new mosque in Athens opened in November 2020, taking more than a decade to complete after running into strong opposition from the Orthodox Church, as well as from nationalist groups.
Greece’s Western Thracian Turkish community often complains of double standards and continuing inequalities in the country, namely socioeconomic discrimination, lack of equal access to quality education for children of minorities, or political rights.
The rights of Western Thracian Turks are guaranteed under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. But over the decades, the situation has seriously deteriorated for the community, which is also economically one of the poorest in Greece.
The Greek government has committed numerous breaches of its obligations and European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rulings over the years, including shutting down schools and mosques and banning the use of the words “Turk” or “Turkish.”
Earlier this year, the Turkish minority turned to the United Nations’ special rapporteur on minority issues to highlight the problems it has been facing, including the closure of schools, the banning of Turkish-language education, and refusing to legally allow the community to elect their religious leaders like muftis (Muslim clerics), which is a treaty right.
Türkiye has long criticized Greece for depriving the community of their basic rights and freedoms.
The issue also looms over Turkish-Greek relations, which have been strained for decades over several disputes regarding territorial claims in the Aegean.
But Ankara and Athens have agreed to cooperate on improving the conditions for the minority as part of their recent rapprochement efforts, with Greek premier Kyriakos Mitsotakis making a vague promise to “continue working in line with postwar treaties that designate minorities’ status.”
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