‘Turkish minorities’ in Thrace are a priority, says Turkish FM

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan speaks during a quality league successful Rome, Sept. 11, 2025. [Gregorio Borgia/AP Photo]

Turkey’s overseas curate has repeated claims astir Greece’s Muslim number that Athens has criticized successful the past.

Chairing the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Council of Foreign Ministers during the group’s Annual Coordination Meeting held connected the sidelines of the 80th UN General Assembly successful New York connected Friday, Hakan Fidan said “the Cyprus contented and the situation of the Muslim Turkish number successful Western Thrace [sic] stay two cardinal priorities successful Turkish overseas policy,” arsenic reported by Turkish state quality bureau Anadolu.

Fidan called connected OIC subordinate states to support the rights of Turkish Cypriots and to found nonstop interaction with them.

“He further noted that the Muslim Turkish number successful Western Thrace [sic] and the Turkish Muslim colonisation successful the Dodecanese Islands proceed to look ‘serious violations’ that contradict them their cardinal rights and freedoms,” Anadolu said.

Under the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, Greece recognizes the beingness of a Muslim, but not an ethnic, number successful Thrace.

In July, Greece’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Ioannis Stamatekos noted that some of the OIC’s positions and resolutions contradict planetary instrumentality and established UN resolutions.

Stamatekos specifically criticized the OIC’s references to a “Turkish Muslim number successful Western Thrace” and a “Turkish Muslim assemblage successful the Dodecanese.”

“Such references are erroneous,” helium said, “as the status of the Muslim number successful Thrace is explicitly defined by the Treaty of Lausanne connected the ground of religion, not ethnicity.”

He added that the Muslim Greek citizens residing successful Rhodes and Kos bask afloat rights, including the extortion of their spiritual freedoms, conscionable similar immoderate different Greek citizen.