Balkanlarda Türk Dilinin Dünü ve Bugünü: Batı Trakya (Yunanistan) Örneği
Turkish Language in the Balkans from Past to Present: The Case of Western Trace (Greece)

Summary/Abstract: In spite of difficulties about teaching and speaking Turkish, it is still possible to come across with many groups speaking this language in their everyday lives. After getting incorporated in Greece in 1923, the Turks of Western Thrace became Greek citizens. Meanwhile, they were also granted an official minority status with the 1923 Peace Treaty of Lausanne. Even though Greek governments applied different policies towards the Turkish minority, the vast majority of them were based on basic principles of discrimination and pressure, which affected survival of the Turkish culture and language in a negative way. The main aim of this study is to analyze impacts of Greek governments’ policies towards the survival of the Turkish language in Western Thrace after 1923. In this respect, the main argument of this research is as follows: Although Greece signed and ratified many bilateral and international treaties about protection of linguistic rights of the Turkish minority, a variety of fundamental problems regarding survival of the Turkish language still persist in all three sub regions of Western Thrace.

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