Daily Sabah revives the Thrace minority schools issue, citing Lausanne over the suspensions

The issue of the minority schools of Thrace is back in the pro-government Turkish press. Daily Sabah published on October 14 an extensive report headlined that “Greece’s Turkish minority sounds the alarm” over closed schools, based on statements by representatives of the Muslim minority to the state news agency Anadolu.

The report uses throughout the term “Turkish minority of Western Thrace”, which is not accepted by Greece, while the Treaty of Lausanne recognises a Muslim minority in Thrace.

The eight suspensions

According to Mustafa Trampa, presented as the “elected mufti of Xanthi”, the operation of eight minority primary schools was suspended for the 2026-2027 school year: five in Rhodope, two in Xanthi and one in Evros. The “elected mufti” title is not recognised by the Greek state, where muftis are appointed. His claims have also provoked strong objections from the Pomaks of Xanthi.

Trampa argues that the suspensions, which are officially described as temporary, are in practice permanent closures. He says minority education has a special legal status under Lausanne, bilateral agreements and international law, and that schools should not close merely because of reduced enrolment. He also invokes the Turkish practice towards Greek minority schools in Istanbul and Imbros, which in his view are kept open despite having few pupils.

Ozan Ahmetoglu, the chairman of the school board of the minority junior and senior high school of Xanthi, accuses the Greek authorities of applying nationwide minimum pupil numbers without taking the special status into account, and asks for direct dialogue with the Ministry of Education.

The official Turkish line

The report follows the line set out officially by Ankara in the summer. In a response by Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli (SC-10, July 19, 2026), Turkey condemned the decision on the eight schools, said that the number of minority primary schools had thereby fallen to 76, described the decisions as a violation of Lausanne and stated that it would continue to support the minority’s “struggle”.

It is the same rhetoric with which Recep Tayyip Erdogan insists on the term “Turkish minority”.

Athens has responded to similar accusations with figures in the past. When Ankara raised the issue in 2021, the Greek Foreign Ministry pointed out that the criterion for suspending the operation of any primary school in Greece is a minimum of 9 pupils, and that in the same year, beyond the 12 minority schools, the operation of another 24 public primary schools had been suspended in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace alone. It also recalled that the Muslim minority of Thrace numbers about 120,000 members, while the Greek minority of Istanbul has shrunk to about 3,000.

There has been no Greek reaction so far to today’s report.