(Anadolu) Athens has “no right” to appoint the chief Islamic cleric, or mufti, of Muslims living in Greece according to the Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey’s president said on Friday.
“How can you do that? We don’t appoint the patriarch,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in the metropolis Istanbul, adding that the ecumenical patriarch in Turkey is elected by the Holy Synod, the decision-making body of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate.
Erdogan said Greece does not pay the “necessary care” for the citizenship of the 150,000 Turks living in Western Thrace, most of whom are Muslim.
He stressed that only officials of this group, such as muftis and imams, could choose a chief mufti in Greece.
