ECMI Minorities Blog. Why Are Minority Children in Northern Greece Trapped in a Broken Education System?
*** The blog posts are prepared by the authors in their personal capacity. The views expressed in the blog posts are the sole responsibility of the authors concerned and do not necessarily reflect the view of the European Centre for Minority Issues. ***
Authors: Aylin Kara Osman and Olgun Akbulut I https://doi.org/10.53779/BARA2807
* Dr Aylin Kara Osman is a linguist with a PhD in General Linguistics, specializing in sociolinguistics. Her research focuses on language, identity, and minority communities. She has conducted fieldwork in northern Greece, working closely with the Pomak community. Aylin is passionate about language as lived experience and the stories it carries.
* Professor Dr Olgun Akbulut is a scholar specializing in minority rights, human rights, and constitutional law. His research focuses on a range of issues concerning minority groups, including political participation, linguistic rights, self-government models, historical instruments for minority protection, and the legal frameworks safeguarding minority rights in post-World War II legal systems.
Western Thrace, a region in northeastern Greece, is home to several ethnic and linguistic minorities, including communities of Bulgarian, Turkish, Albanian, Russian, and Armenian origin. Yet, Greece’s centralized and exclusionary minority policy largely ignores this cultural and linguistic diversity. Despite the multilingual reality, Turkish remains the only officially recognized minority language - and even this applies only to members of the Muslim minority. Non-Muslim minorities receive no institutional or educational support for their language, culture, or identity. So, who truly benefits from reducing diverse communities into a single religious category, especially when it leads to marginalization and erasure?
In this context, education plays a key role in reinforcing Turkification. Minority languages apart from Turkish are pushed entirely into the private sphere. As a result, language and cultural loss is not only inevitable - it is systemic.
Primary school in Greece lasts until around the age of 12 – a crucial time for linguistic development and identity formation. By that age, core aspects of identity and language have usually already been shaped.
Although there is no legal obligation for Muslim children to attend minority schools, these schools are often the only accessible option in disadvantaged areas; in practice, many families have little real choice.
Drawing on fieldwork conducted within the Pomak community in Western Thrace, this blog post discusses the current situation while simultaneously arguing that Greece's interpretation of the Treaty of Lausanne significantly contributes to the inadequate protection of minorities in the country.
Education as a tool of assimilation
From the very beginning, schools in Greece are far from neutral spaces. National identity and religion play a central role in everyday school life – for instance, with morning prayers before lessons begin. This has also been the case in the minority schools in the past, where Turkish language and Islam were closely linked, reinforcing a collective identity.
At minority primary schools, both Turkish and Greek are taught as separate language subjects. However, core subjects - including mathematics, social studies, philosophy, and music - are taught in Turkish. History is taught in Greek, with a clear focus on national narratives and holidays.
All subjects taught in Turkish rely on outdated textbooks provided by Turkey - some are over 25 years old. Minority schools have been trying to acquire updated teaching materials for over a decade, without success. Notably, all these materials must be approved by the Greek Ministry of Education, Religious Affairs and Sports, adding another layer of bureaucratic complexity to an already strained system.
The everyday school environment is also dominated by Turkish: students speak to teachers in Turkish during breaks, and most school signage is in Turkish. Greek is used primarily when a student addresses one of the few monolingual Greek-speaking teachers.
Furthermore, teachers from Turkey are officially assigned to these schools under bilateral agreements tied to the Treaty of Lausanne and are funded by the Turkish government.
By the end of primary school, many students face serious challenges transitioning into Greek-language state schools. Still, many families choose this path, hoping for better integration.
There is also the option to attend a minority secondary state school - one exists in Xanthi - where instruction continues in Turkish. However, students are still required to pass the national university entrance exams, which are conducted entirely in Greek. The logic speaks for itself: the gap is almost insurmountable.
As an alternative, some students prepare for the Turkish university entrance exam, YÖS (Yabancı Öğrenci Sınavı). Others rely on private tutoring – often from the same teachers who teach at schools in the mornings. Some even advertise these lessons as essential for passing the end-of-year exams. This shadow education sector is also driven by economic necessity: teacher salaries are low, and many educators show little to no intrinsic motivation to actually teach.
The illusion of equal opportunity
A 0.5% university quota for members of the Muslim minority was originally intended to improve access to higher education. While well-intentioned, today it raises critical questions.
Rather than addressing the root causes of educational inequality, it merely offers a form of compensation. The underperformance of minority students in national exams is not a matter of ability, but the result of years spent without proper tools and support. The university quota does little to change this. It opens a door, yes – but only after many others have remained closed. If the goal is genuine inclusion, then policies must focus on early intervention: bilingual education, targeted language instruction, updated curricula, and teacher training adapted to the needs of a diverse community. Otherwise, what was once a measure of empowerment may now quietly reinforce exclusion – not by denying access, but by failing to create fair conditions in the first place.
Education as a tool to control
Rather than being supported in their individuality, minority children are pulled in a single direction. The Greek state continues to divide its minorities strictly into “Muslim” and “non-Muslim” categories. The result is a generation growing up in a form of semilingualism, with a divided sense of ethnic identity.
Greece shows little interest in fostering pluralistic minority identities. Instead, it tolerates a system that enables control through education, religion, and language. All minorities are equally disadvantaged in this structure.
The Pomak community
The Pomaks, often referred to in Bulgaria as Bulgarian Mohammedans, are a Muslim Slavic-speaking group primarily residing in southern Bulgaria and the border region of Western Thrace in Greece. Historically, they converted to Islam during the Ottoman expansion in the Balkans and subsequently developed a distinct cultural identity separate from the Orthodox Slavic populations. Despite this unique background, many Pomaks in Greece today express a strong affiliation with Greek national identity.
“Yes, I say that I am a Greek Muslim, but all the culture, all the traditions that I really like and don't want to lose are disappearing.” (Interviewee 1, translated from Greek)
Linguistically, Pomak belongs to the South Slavic branch and is closely related to Bulgarian. It is a specific idiom spoken by Pomaks in the Balkans and Greece and carries significant cultural and historical value within the community. Interviewees revealed that, even if they feel nationally Greek, their linguistic identity remains rooted in Pomak. They express pride in their language and show a strong desire to preserve and pass it on to younger generations. For many, keeping the language alive is more than cultural – it is a moral responsibility.
“Yes, it must not be forgotten, that's why I always try to speak Pomak. But yes, as I said before, I mostly speak it with my grandmother at home [...] to learn it, so I don’t forget it.” (Interviewee 2, translated from Greek)
“Even young people are starting to care more about this now (...) they even tell little children: ‘Speak Pomak, learn it while you're still young’, and they’re right — I mean, what can I say, I would do the same. I definitely think this is the right thing to do.” (Interviewee 3, translated from Turkish)
The threat of erasure
However, these efforts face a powerful counterforce: the state-supported process of Turkification. As discussed earlier in this text, Turkish dominates minority education and public life for Muslim communities in northern Greece. This not only sidelines Pomak as a language but actively undermines community efforts to preserve it.
Far from offering support, the Greek state contributes to the erosion of Pomak through neglect and structural barriers. The result is an alarming trend toward language death. Linguistic traces of this process are already visible through the growing presence of Turkish borrowings within Pomak.
Many interviewees described an identity conflict – torn between pressure to assimilate and the reality of exclusion. Only a few have managed to find a personal balance.
A political choice, not a policy failure
It is time for the Greek government to stop forcing minorities into linguistic and ethnic categories they do not claim. Maintaining substandard schooling while pretending there are no alternatives is neither credible nor acceptable. The lack of will to improve is not about resources – it is a political choice. And one that is indefensible.
The state avoids engaging with non-Turkish ethnic or linguistic identities – perhaps to preserve a simplified and controllable narrative of minority existence, and to avoid recognizing communities that might demand equal participation in European civil society.
This is not only a failure of education – it is failure of minority policy built on neglect. Those who do not fit the state’s preferred image are quietly pushed aside.
The Treaty of Lausanne
The Treaty of Lausanne was signed on 24 July 1923 in the aftermath of the First World War as a peace agreement between the British Empire, France, Italy, Japan, Greece, Romania, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes on one side, and Turkey on the other. The negotiations held in Lausanne resulted in provisions for minority rights that were both similar to and distinct from those in other treaties of the era. Section III of the Treaty, titled “Protection of Minorities”, comprises Articles 37 to 45. These provisions remain among the few legal instruments from the Versailles system under the League of Nations that are still in effect today.
In contrast to the terms “racial, religious and linguistic minorities” used in the so-called mother treaty (the Polish Minority Treaty) and in other treaties of the period, the Lausanne Treaty refers only to non-Muslim minorities in Turkey. That is, the term “minority”, as officially used by Turkey and based on the Lausanne framework, effectively mirrors the Ottoman Millet system, which categorised non-dominant communities primarily along religious lines.
The Treaty of Lausanne and minorities
Why is Lausanne important for minorities in Greece?
The answer is hidden in Article 45 of Treaty, which reads:
“The rights conferred by the provisions of the present Section on the non-Moslem minorities of Turkey will be similarly conferred by Greece on the Moslem minority in her territory”.
Although both the Turkish and Greek governments have often interpreted this provision as establishing reciprocity, a more accurate reading reveals that it actually creates equal and parallel obligations. In this sense, the Muslim minority in Greece are rights-holders under the Treaty of Lausanne in the same way that non-Muslims are in Turkey.
By establishing parallel obligations, the Treaty grants minority rights such as mother tongue education, public financial support for minority schools and institutions, freedom of language use in the press, and certain linguistic rights in legal proceedings in Greece.
When adapted to the Muslim minority in Greece, Article 40 reads:
“Turkish nationals belonging to non-Moslem minorities [Greek nationals belonging to Muslim minorities] shall enjoy the same treatment and security in law and in fact as other Turkish nationals [Greek nationals]. In particular, they shall have an equal right to establish, manage and control at their own expense, any charitable, religious and social institutions, any schools and other establishments for instruction and education, with the right to use their own language and to exercise their own religion freely therein” (italics in square brackets are ours).
Similarly, Article 41 provides:
“As regards public instruction, the Turkish government [Greek government] will grant in those towns and districts, where a considerable proportion of non-Moslem nationals [Muslim nationals] are resident, adequate facilities for ensuring that in the primary schools, the instruction shall be given to the children of such Turkish citizens [Greek citizens] through the medium of their language. This provision will not prevent the Turkish government [Greek government] from making the teaching of the Turkish language [Greek language] obligatory in the said schools.
In towns and districts where there is a considerable proportion of Turkish nationals belonging to non-Moslem minorities [Muslim minorities], these minorities shall be assured an equitable share in the enjoyment and application of the sums which may be provided out of public funds under the State, municipal or other budgets for educational, religious, or charitable purposes.
The sums in question shall be paid to the qualified representatives of the establishments and institutions concerned” (italics in square brackets are ours).
Misreading and misapplication of Lausanne
Both Turkey and Greece apply the Treaty of Lausanne’s provisions on educational rights to religious groups. In practice, this means that linguistic minority rights are being recognised through a religious lens. However, the drafters of the Treaty were well aware that the religious communities in both countries were not culturally or linguistically homogeneous. By indirectly protecting mother tongue education without explicitly naming the languages concerned, the Treaty ensured that non-Muslims in Turkey and Muslims in Greece would receive education in their respective native tongues.
Thus, minority schools in Turkey are not required to teach in the Greek or Turkish languages per se, but rather in the languages of the relevant minority communities. Accordingly, Turkey has recognised Greek, Armenian, Jewish, and Assyrian languages as mediums of instruction in its minority schools.
Greece, by contrast, imposes Turkish-language education on all members of the Muslim minority, including groups such as the Pomaks, whose native language is not Turkish. This is what we refer to in this blogpost as a fundamental misreading and misapplication of the Lausanne Treaty.
The consequences of this approach are significant. Greece’s “one-size-fits-all” policy purports to protect its Muslim minorities, but in practice it forces them into a homogenised Turkish identity that may not reflect their true ethnic or linguistic heritage.
What should be done?
First and foremost, the misreading and misapplication of this century-old treaty must be rectified. The Lausanne Treaty was clearly framed within the context of modern state-building. The notion of “modernity” must now be interpreted in light of today’s principles. Granting rights to certain groups while excluding others in comparable circumstances without any legitimate justification is not a feature of a modern state, either today or in the past. Pomaks deserve equal protection without being required to relinquish their identity. Equal treatment of all citizens is a fundamental characteristic of modern states.
Second, Greece has yet to ratify several key international instruments aimed at protecting minority rights, including the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM). Aligning its laws and policies with these updated Council of Europe instruments would provide a more robust legal foundation for the protection of all minority groups within Greece.
