Step-by-Step, Greek-Turkish Relations Warm
1/2/2012
The decision by the Turkish Ministry of Education to allow the reopening of a minority primary school on the northeastern Aegean island of Gokceada — 47 years after the schools serving the island’s ethnic Greek population were abruptly shut down — marks the latest step in a gradual but enduring rapprochement between the two erstwhile rivals.
The development comes on the heels of last November’s decision by a first instance court on the island of Büyükada in the Sea of Marmara to return a disused orphanage building, considered one of the world’s largest wooden structures, back to the Istanbul-based Orthodox Patriarchate.
The last Greek minority school on Gokceada, called Imbros or Imvros in Greek, was closed in 1964 amid simmering tension between Athens and Ankara caused by inter-communal strife on Cyprus.
Laki Vingas, a member of Turkey’s tiny ethnic Greek minority and the first non-Muslim representative of non-Muslim foundations at the Council of the General Assembly of the Directorate General for Foundations, referred to the deeper significance of the decision in statements to the SES Türkiye.
“The right of education is one of the basic human rights. It was also among the most important factors that pushed the Greek community of Gokceada to immigrate,” he said.
The decision was also praised on January 19th by Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew, himself a native of Gokceada. “You are witnessing, step-by-step, a righting of past injustices,” he said from the island’s main Christian Orthodox cathedral.
Bartholomew thanked the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the decision, and called on parents who have the ability to enroll their children when the school opens. “Even just one [pupil] … even with just a handful of children, the reopening of the school is important,” he said.
Stelios Berber, the head of the Gokceada Conservation, Aid, Development and Solidarity Association and one of the approximately 180 — mostly elderly — permanent ethnic Greek residents on the windswept island, thinks the decision can only be viewed as the fulfillment of the state’s obligation to reinstate a fundamental right, namely, education in a minority community’s mother tongue.
Also on Gokceada, native islander and entrepreneur Yiorgos Zarbuzanis, 73, beamed at what he called a “very, very positive development … It may not yield the best results [immediately], but in the long run it will greatly help, especially psychologically.”
“People will decide to come back because the education issue [for children] will not be a problem,” according to Zarbuzanis, who is affectionately known to locals and visitors alike as “Barba Yorgo”.
Zarbuzanis, a retired chemical engineer who rents rooms during the summer, operates a traditional taverna and even produces his own wines, said that at present there are no elementary school-age children in what is left of the ethnic Greek community.
“However, I believe three or four families will return, maybe from Greece, especially due to the economic crisis there, and from Istanbul, too.”
Asked to evaluate reactions to the news by the majority ethnic Turkish population on the island, he said some local authorities appeared “concerned” over the prospects of a minority school reopening, mostly along the lines of “if they [Greeks] return, there’ll be less work for us. Others, more cultured people, said that it would be good for the island for your people to return.”
According to Vingas, even if there are few pupils, the initiative is still important for boosting the confidence of Turkey’s ethnic Greek community.
Vingas echoed “Barba Yorgo’s” view: “Some Greek families living abroad will be much more willing to return to the island with their families and children, and this will contribute to economic development.”
For his part, Berber said people need a clear political message that they are welcomed to return to their birthplace if treated as equals, and as an integral part of the island, its history, its culture — and not just as tourists.
At the international level, the decision could offer Erdogan’s government an opportunity to ameliorate one of the shortcomings repeatedly listed in EU progress reports and the annual US State Department report on human rights: specifically, the focus on the education rights of minorities.
In Athens, academic and foreign affairs analyst Theodore Couloumbis expressed reserved optimism over the decision, cautioning that it nevertheless remains to be implemented.
He urged sceptics in Greece to judge the decision at “face value” and not with suspicion.
“You can’t move forward if you have in the back of your mind some hidden agenda. Greek-Turkish conditions change. Erdogan has not exhibited the same behaviour as the previous Kemalist politicians or the so-called ‘deep state’ [in Turkey]. An improvement in relations is measured in reduced tension, which we have recorded. Even small steps, such as the reopening of a school on Imvros, even for one pupil, are progress,” said Couloumbis, the vice-president of the Athens-based Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP).
“If we always worry if there’s a hidden reason for this and that, or if a move will haunt us in some way, then we risk the danger of never doing anything,” he added, referring to historic enmity in Turkish-Greek relations.
In a distinctly less upbeat view, Professor Samim Akgonul, a noted researcher on minority issues at Strasbourg University, said the decision does not demonstrate any substantial change in the way the Turkish state views citizenship rights, but only shows that the state sees the ethnic Greek residents of the island as a minor touristic group not likely to pose any kind of “threat”.
“I define the step taken by the state as ‘folklorisation’, in other words, introducing the remaining few diverse minorities as mere tourist souvenirs,” he says.
“By granting a primary school to a handful of Greek community members after so many years, they wish at the same time to provide Stambouli [Istanbul] tourists with an opportunity to make romantic travels to nostalgic islands, where a handful of members of the Greek community live,” a dismissive Akgonul said.
According to him, the decision will demonstrate a real change of understanding only when the grandchildren of the people who emigrated from the island return, along with a sizeable number of ethnic Greeks, without fear of discrimination.
For the moment there is no definite date for the opening of this school. “However, it could be ready for the upcoming school year, 2012-2013,” Vingas told SES Türkiye.
The question remains, of course, if reopened, will the Greek-language school attract pupils?
“From Greece and Istanbul too, some families here have expressed a desire to return,” Imvros Society of Athens secretary Meni Triantafyllou told SES Türkiye.
She said there are roughly 4,000 registered members in the greater Athens area alone, rising to a community of 7,500 if children and grandchildren are included. Pressed on the issue, she said six to seven younger families have already returned to the island, either from Istanbul or Greece. An optimistic prediction would be three to four pupils at their desks when the school finally opens.
