25/04/2008 Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Strasbourg, 25.04.2008 - For the purposes of preparing his report on the Gökçeada/Imbros and Bozcaada/Tenedos islands, Andreas Gross (Switzerland, SOC), Rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), will make a fact-finding visit from 27 April to 2 May to the two Turkish islands, where he will meet inhabitants and local authorities. He will then stop over in Ankara for talks with representatives of the Ministries of the Interior, Education, Justice and Foreign Affairs.
Mr Gross considers that, since the 1960s, many islanders of Greek origin – as a result of policies carried out at the time – have left the islands, whose population was exclusively (in the case of Gökçeada/Imbros) or mainly (in the case of Bozcaada/Tenedos) Greek under the Ottomans. A new policy dating from 1993 allows exiles to return to visit the island from which they come, but problems seem to persist.
The objective of the Rapporteur, whose assignment is the result of a joint initiative on the part of the Turkish and Greek delegations to PACE, is to seek an equitable solution so that these two islands can provide a positive example of Greco-Turkish co-operation that will be mutually beneficial.