‘Rights of Turkish minority eroded by Greece’, Erdogan says

The rights of the Turkish minority have recently been deliberately eroded by Greece, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said.

Speaking on the 99th anniversary of the Lausanne Peace Treaty,  Erdogan said: “The rights of the Turkish minority remaining in Greece were secured, and the non-military status of the Greek islands close to our coasts was confirmed via this treaty.”

“However, in the recent period, the conditions recorded in the treaty, especially the rights of the Turkish minority, have been ignored or deliberately eroded by Greece,” he added.

The Treaty of Lausanne, signed in 1923, settled the Anatolian and East Thracian areas of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire through the annulment of the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) that had been signed by the Istanbul-based Ottoman government.

Turkish officials have been blaming Greece for escalating tensions in the Aegean as well as in bilateral ties recently as disagreements on the status of islands, maritime zones and the Turkish minority in Western Thrace continue.

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