(AFP) EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said Thursday there was an “urgent need” to stop illegal departures from Turkey as Greece struggles to cope with a sharp increase in the refugee arrivals. “Irregular arrivals to Greece increased over the past weeks and […]
(AFP) Greece said Monday it wanted to start sending back thousands of migrants to Turkey, a day after a deadly fire sparked riots at an overcrowded camp on the island of Lesbos. The decision, taken at an emergency cabinet meeting, came as […]
(AP) Migrants protesting at an overcrowded camp on the Greek island of Lesbos set fires and clashed with police Sunday, killing at least one person, authorities said. A burned body was brought to a local hospital and there is information about an […]
(AP) There’s no room left at Europe’s largest refugee camp. New arrivals on the Greek island of Lesbos have to fend for themselves outside its barbed wire perimeter — in a maze of tents, each sprayed with a number in black paint. […]
(AFP) The arrest in Greece of a Lebanese man accused of involvement in a 1985 plane hijacking is a case of mistaken identity, Lebanese officials said on Monday. Greek authorities detained the 65-year-old man last week on the island of Mykonos. They […]
(Anadolu) Parents and students of a Turkish minority school in Greece on Monday protested a move splitting up the school day into two shifts due to inadequate classroom space. Some 2,000 protesters, according to local media, at the Xanthi (Iskece) Muzaffer Salihoglu […]
(Reuters) Greek police have arrested a 65-year-old Lebanese man suspected of involvement in the 1985 hijacking of a Trans World Airlines (TWA) plane in which a U.S. navy diver was killed. A Greek police official said on Saturday the suspect had disembarked […]
(AP) A perpetually overcrowded refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos can’t accommodate any more newly arrived asylum-seekers after the number of people already housed exceeded the camp’s intended capacity by 400%, authorities said Friday. Migrants who made it to Lesbos […]
(CBS) Human smuggling is a big business in Athens and CBS News has found evidence that ISIS members are being moved through Greece to the rest of Europe. In central Athens, an area around Omonia Square is notorious as a center of criminal […]
(Anadolu) Students in a high school of Greece’s Turkish minority prevented the entrance of a Greek-appointed mufti (Muslim cleric) by calling him an “unwanted” person, according to local media. Western Thrace region of Greece is home to a Muslim-Turkish minority numbering around […]
(Reuters) Turkey plans to resettle 1 million refugees in northern Syria and may reopen the route for migrants into Europe if it does not receive adequate international support for the plan, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday. Turkey, which hosts 3.6 million […]
(AP) French President Emmanuel Macron and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis agreed to push for more solidarity in the European Union over the migrant crisis. Mitsotakis, who took office [in] July, met with Macron in Paris on Thursday. He said the migrant […]
(Daily Sabah) Greece’s Education Ministry shut down five more schools attended by students from the country’s Turkish minority, drawing criticisms from the minority population. Schools were shut down due to the low number of students according to the ministry. The number of […]
(AP) Police in Thessaloniki have arrested 61 migrants for illegal residence in the country, in a crackdown following a string of violent incidents near the northern Greek city’s main railway station. Officers were patrolling the area and carrying out identity checks Tuesday […]
(Anadolu) Athens does not consult with the ethnic Turkish minority in its northeast on the group’s own affairs, a Greek political party garnering overwhelming support from the minority said on Friday. Greece’s Western Thrace region is home to around 150,000 Muslim Turks. […]
(Kathimerini) Greece on Saturday rejected Turkish accusations that Muslim religious leaders will be under the control of a newly established government body, saying there are no such plans and called for an end to interventions in the country’s domestic affairs. The Greek […]
(Anadolu) Turkey on Friday decried a decision by Greece that local religious leaders, known as muftis, among the Turkish minority living in the Western Thrace would henceforth be appointed by the state instead of being elected by the local people. “Greece violates […]
(Greek Reporter) The leader of the Party of Friendship, Equality and Peace (KIEF), representing part of the Muslim minority of Greece’s Western Thrace region, said on Wednesday that her party is “Turkish.” Cigdem Asafoglu, whose KIEF party swept the prefectures of Xanthi […]
(Greek Reporter) Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu spoke about Greece’s Muslim minority in Thrace during a speech at an Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday. Cavusoglu said that the minority in Thrace ”does not benefit from […]
(AP) Greek authorities say dozens of asylum-seekers have turned up at the home address of European border agency employees helping police the border with Turkey. Police say 61 men, women and children who had just crossed illegally from Turkey headed straight for […]
(Reuters) Hungarian authorities detained a Syrian man on Friday accused of taking part in beheadings in Syria as a member of Islamic State, Budapest prosecutors and the European judicial co-operation agency Eurojust said. The 27-year-old man, identified by Hungarian authorities as F. […]
(Kathimerini) Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has criticized Greece of failing to uphold the rights of its Muslim minority in Western Thrace and of forbidding its members to call themselves “Turks.” He was speaking after the 54th meeting of the European Union-Turkey […]
(AFP) Outwardly, Komotini looks like other Greek cities, but there is a major difference: it has nine mosques whereas there are none in Athens. The northeastern city has existed from the second century and was captured by Ottoman-era Turkey in the 14th. […]
(Anadolu) Greece just gave a new date for the inauguration of the mosque in Athens. Kostas Gavroglu, Greek minister of education, research and religious affairs, told that the inauguration of the mosque, for which five different dates were previously given with no […]
(Breitbart) A Greek Orthodox priest was beaten by a pair of Syrian asylum seekers in front of his own church. The priest observed the migrants parking their motorcycles in the courtyard of the sanctuary of St. Nicholas in Patisia, a neighbourhood in Athens, […]
(Kathimerini) The Justice Ministry on Thursday responded to a ruling against Greece by the European Court of Human Rights over an inheritance dispute, saying the case predates a change in laws adopted in 2018. “Those who try to distort the European court’s […]
(AP) Greece violated a prohibition on discrimination by applying Islamic religious law to an inheritance dispute among members of the country’s Muslim minority, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Wednesday. The court, based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, ruled […]
(Washington Times) Hatice Molla Sali will discover Wednesday whether she faces a life of poverty in her twilight years. That is when the European Court of Human Rights is expected to rule on the 68-year-old Muslim widow’s case against an Islamic court […]
(Anadolu) A Turkish minority association in Greece celebrated its 90th foundation anniversary, though shut down by the government for over 30 years due to a name dispute. Among the associations Greece closed in the Western Thrace because it had the word “Turkish” […]
(Anadolu) Head of Greece’s Friendship, Equality and Peace (FEP) Party on Wednesday called on Athens to return the guaranteed rights of the Turkish minority in the Western Thrace. The Turkish minority in Western Thrace faces the threat of assimilation as they cannot […]
(Anadolu) A top European body criticized Greece for not implementing European Court of Human Rights’ (ECHR) verdicts on Greece for closing associations of the Turkish minority in the country. Committee of Ministers of Council of Europe’s decisions, published on Thursday, said ten […]
(Pew) As the number of international migrants reaches new highs, people around the world show little appetite for more migration — both into and out of their countries, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 27 nations conducted in the spring […]
(Anadolu) Following a controversial decision, Athens is likely to take steps to preserve the balance between Turkish and Greek language lessons in the curriculum of Muslim religious schools in Western Thrace, according to an expert on minority affairs in Greece. Earlier this […]
(Greek Reporter) Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Friday once again called people belonging to the Muslim minority of Western Thrace “Turks” whose rights are being violated by Greece. The statement came in response to a European Court of Human Rights decision […]
(AP) Several hundred asylum-seekers camped outside a police station Monday in northern Greece, lining up to be arrested and formally processed as a surge in illegal migration overwhelmed authorities in the region. After sleeping on benches and patches of grass in a […]
(AFP) Germany wants a stronger EU border agency to handle migration to Europe, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Thursday while judging “unsatisfactory” the squalid living conditions for thousands of migrants in Greece. Maas said he was favourable “to proposals on strengthening Frontex” […]
(Kathimerini) The lawyers of two Muslim religious leaders (muftis) said on Friday they plan to appeal to European Union judicial bodies against a provision voted through the Greek Parliament last month that stipulates their retirement. The August provision states that muftis in […]
(Katherimini) Turkey has called on Greece to “re-examine” a provision voted through Parliament last month that stipulates Muslim religious leaders (muftis) in the Greek border region of Western Thrace must retire at the age of 67. Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy […]
(AP) Several hundred supporters of Greece’s extreme right Golden Dawn party have staged a protest near central Athens against plans to build a state-funded mosque in the Greek capital. Authorities used riot police buses to block roads near the construction site during […]
(Reuters) Germany has reached an agreement with Greece to send back migrants to the Mediterranean country if they have already applied for asylum there, the German Interior Ministry said on Friday. Last week Germany and Spain sealed a similar deal on returning […]
(Kathimerini) The coalition is, according to sources, poised to push through the retirement of two government-appointed muftis in the Greek border region of Western Thrace. Muftis are Muslim legal experts who are empowered to give rulings on religious matters. Turkey has in […]
(AFP) Greece will process 1,500 asylum applications from Germany as part of a deal signed between the two countries, Greece’s migration minister said Wednesday. “In the first half of 2018 there were 1,500 requests for processing by Germany, and they will be […]
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