Regions, minorities and European integration: a case study on Muslims in Western Thrace, Greece.

• Author: Anagnostou, Dia

Abstract:

This report explores the regional changes and the redefined government policy towards the minority in Western Thrace, Greece, which were largely undertaken in the context of EU integration, as well as their consequences for ethnic politics, cultural mobilization and inter-communal relations. The original research hypotheses were that regional and minority rights changes in the context of European integration a) promote political and economic integration of minorities in development frames, as well as inter-communal cooperation, and b) reinforce a relative decline of nationalist politics, with the interests and identity of minorities and majorities increasingly emphasizing social-economic integration, civic participation and equal citizenship, as opposed to ethnic solidarity. Our findings suggest that minority and majority partly shift their interests in the direction of pursuing regional economic integration and inter-communal cooperation, while national and ethnic politics in Thrace have grown more moderate since the 1990s. At the same time, regional economic, institutional changes and the political participation of Christians and Muslims are constrained by ongoing separation along ethnic-national lines. While the context of EU integration appears to bolster minority quest for integration and to diminish its fears of assimilation and reversion to a discriminatory policy, it does not in any way render less salient identification with the ethnic community. The latter manifests itself in widespread demands for cultural self-determination in religious affairs and for recognition as a 'Turkish minority'.

Keywords:

ethnic politics, minorities, European integration, regions, nationalism

1. Introduction

   The border region of Western Thrace in the northeast part of Greece is home to a small but politically significant population of about 120,000 Muslims, inhabiting the region together with a Greek Christian majority. (1) With its strategic location between three states and two continents, the Muslim community of Western Thrace marks a particular kind of geographical and cultural-historical boundary between East and West. In Europe's southernmost corner, the region of Thrace borders with Turkey to the east and Bulgaria to the north. Across the northern border, Bulgaria's south and southeast regions are also home to large and territorially concentrated Turkish communities, portions of the country's sizeable Turkish minority. Thrace is part of the administrative region of East Macedonia and Thrace (Perifereia Anatolikis Makedonias & Thrakis), and consists of three prefectures, Ksanthi, Rhodope and Evros. Being a lagging region within the sluggish Greek economy, it is a case of a 'double periphery' that ranks at the low end of the EU scale in terms of per capita income and overall development (Ioannides and Petrakos 2000: 32).

   A relic of the country's Ottoman past, Thrace's Muslim community was exempt correspondingly with the Greeks of Istanbul, from the mandatory population exchange between Greece and Turkey agreed with the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). Signed in the aftermath of Greece's military debacle in Anatolia, the international Treaty of Lausanne includes a section on the 'Protection of Minorities', a bilateral agreement between Greece and Turkey containing a series of provisions to guarantee the rights of the exempted minority populations. In respect of these, the Greek has government kept in place the institution of Islamic law (sharia), which had existed since the Ottoman period. Regulated with Law 2345 of 1920, Islamic law in Thrace is a judicial sub-system, in which the Mufti, the spiritual and religious leader, arbitrates in matters related to family, inheritance and child custody, giving 'opinions' (fetwas) on the basis of Islamic law rather than the Civil code which applies to Greek citizens in general (Tsourkas 1987; Soltaridis 1997). (2) In fulfilment of the Lausanne Treaty provisions, the Greek authorities also established a bilingual (Greek-Turkish) minority education system. Greece and Turkey had signed two bilateral agreements in 1951 (morfotiki simfonia) and 1968 (morfotiko protokolo) to decide educational policy vis-a-vis the minorities (Baltsiotis 1997: 321-2).

   Comprising individuals of Turkish origin, Gypsies (Roma), and Slav-speaking Pomaks, the Muslims of Thrace prior to World War II coexisted largely as a religious community characteristic of the Ottoman millet system. Since the 1950s, however, they have transformed into a minority with ethnic consciousness, and in the past twenty years they have mobilized to assert a common Turkish identity. The latter has caused a major and ongoing rift with Greek authorities who officially recognize a 'Muslim minority' in reference to the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 that has defined the status of the latter until the present. Acknowledging the resonance of ethnic Turkish identification within the community, but also its internal cultural diversity, in this report, we use both terms interchangeably.

   Despite Greece's transition to democracy in 1974, state relations with the minority in Thrace deteriorated due to the deepening crisis with Turkey, as well as to a series of restrictive measures adopted by the Greek governments, which deprived the Muslim population of basic social and economic rights. In protest, in the second half of the 1980s the minority mobilized politically on the basis of Turkish nationalism, supporting independent minority candidates in parliamentary elections, who were not affiliated with Greek political parties. The accompanying tensions that erupted between Muslims and Christians in the region in early 1990 marked a nadir but also a turning point; they made clear the failure of the previous discriminatory policy, pointing to the need for change.

   Alarmed by tumultuous conditions in Thrace at the turn of the decade, the Greek government decided in 1991 to abolish the discriminatory measures and announced a new approach towards the minority to be guided by 'legal equality--equal citizenship' (isonomeia-isopoliteia). Such an approach was for the first time put to practice through a new regional development strategy for border regions, which was launched with the Findings of the Inter-party Committee for Border Regions submitted to the Greek Parliament in 1992. (3) While not in any direct way prompted by the EU, the redirection of government policy towards minority rights and their embedding in regional development strategies, this report argues, cannot be understood independently from, and would not have been possible outside of, Greece's processes of European integration.

   The change in minority policy coincided with the intensification of integration processes, at a time of poor economic performance that necessitated the adoption of stabilization measures under EU supervision. Concern with the growing gap between the Greek and the EC economy (4) led to the transfer of increasing amounts of structural funds to Greece. (5) Resources from structural funds have been allocated to Thrace as a border region of strategic importance in the post-Cold War Balkans making possible intensified development efforts and infrastructure investments (Stratigiko Schedio Anaptiksis Makedonias & Thrakis 1994: 98-100). Of the 13 regional development programmes under the Community Support Frameworks for 1989-93, 1994-9, and 2000-2006, Eastern Macedonia and Thrace received the third largest fund in Greece (after the two major urban areas of Athens/Attiki and Thessaloniki in Central Macedonia) (Chlepas 1999: 164; Getimis and Economou 1996: 131). (6) The influx of structural funds enabled the Greek government to put to practice a new development strategy in Greek regions and prefectures, including those of Thrace.

   Besides their pecuniary significance, equally important, has been the institutional implication of EU structural funds for Greece's subnational structures. Linked to growing dependence on structural funds were a series of reforms of local, prefecture and regional institutions, undertaken by Greek governments from the second half of the 1980s onwards. The extent and nature of EU influence in this regard is a matter of controversy in Greek studies as it was discussed in the state of the art report. Yet, there is little doubt that the country's subnational structures in the early 1990s, considered among the most centralized in Europe, were thoroughly unsuitable to implementing structural funds (Marks 1997: 163). Creating viable and active sub-national structures capable of exercising power had never been a widespread public demand and was largely perceived as a threat to the country's territorial integrity (Verney 1994: 167; Ioakimidis 1996: 343). A series of reforms since the late 1980s in this direction, however, were strongly contested in Thrace because of their important implications for ethnic relations in the region.

   Within the frame of the EUROREG project, this report explores the redefined government policy towards the minority and regional changes, largely undertaken in the context of EU integration, as well as their consequences for ethnic politics, cultural mobilization and inter-communal relations in Thrace. In the following section, we outline the background of minority-majority relations and the main socio-economic and political features of the minority and the region of Thrace. In the third and fourth sections we assess the regional context of change within the frame of European integration, and the ways in which it has shaped patterns of socioeconomic activity and political mobilization of the minority. We also discuss the ways in which patterns of minority-majority cooperation and the minority participation in the regional economy and local-prefecture government have changed today as opposed to those of the 1980s. The fifth section discusses the cultural and political demands of the minority and its patterns of ethnic and...