Head of Greek Pomaks’ Association rips into Erdogan’s revisionist expansionism

By George Gilson

Imam Ahmet, the head of the Panhellenic Association of Pomaks and editor of the first newspaper in the Pomak language, Zagalisa, has released a blistering open letter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, warning of the dangers of his revisionist expansionism and reminding him that should he attempt to stage an invasion of Greek territory [Ankara has issued thinly veiled threats of a possible invasion of Aegean islands] he could suffer the same sort of defeat as Mussolini in 1940 at the Greek-Albanian front.

The Muslim minority of Western Thrace, which is formally recognised as such under the Treaty of Lausanne, is comprised of three communities, those of Turkish, Pomak, and Roma ethnic origin, but over the past decades Ankara has actively attempted to depict all of them as being ethnic Turks, pressuring them to abandon their ethnic languages - with the obligatory learning of Turkish in schools - and cultures and pressuring for the abandonment of the Pomak place names of mountain villages on maps.

The Pomaks once constituted 34 percent of the Muslim population of Western Thrace.

Their language was first put down in written form in 1995.

In his letter, Ahmet calls Erdogan to task for demanding the implementation of Lausanne Treaty provisions for the demilitarisation of certain Eastern Aegean islands, even as Ankara has for 60 years trampled over the same treaty's provisions regarding autonomy for the once majority Greek populations on the Turkish islands of Imroz (Imvros being the Greek name) and Bozcaada (Tenedos).

Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomeos, the first bishop in Eastern Orthodoxy, which counts an estimated 300mn faithful worldwide, was born and raised on Imvros, as was the late Archbishop...