The hysteria over Thrace

In Greece, where we are proud of the Rum in Istanbul and the ethnic Greeks of Himare in southern Albania, we freak out when we hear about a Turkish minority in Thrace. So much so that various politicians - usually from the right - are setting dangerous precedents for the country. We read that "the Muslim SYRIZA member of Parliament, Huseyin Zeybek, was targeted by New Democracy, who, according to the ND lawmaker Tasos Chatzivasileiou called the minority in Western Thrace 'Turkish.'"

On paper - and specifically in the Treaty of Lausanne, which is the only one that counts for the defense of our national interests - there is only a Muslim minority, even if late conservative premier Konstantinos Karamanlis "in 1978, in Montreux, talked with the then Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit about a 'Turkish minority' in Greece," as political science professor George Mavrogordatos...