Recep Tayyip Erdogan struck a decidedly conciliatory tone on Friday in statements to a mostly Muslim audience that gathered at a hotel in the northeastern city of Komotini to greet him, on the second day of the Turkish president’s official visit to Greece.
“We’re not referring to assimilation but to your integration in Greece,” he characteristically said, adding that just as Turkey has “one flag”, the same holds true for Greece.
“It is not possible to put aside the Greek flag,” he stressed.
Greece’s northeast Thrace province, comprised of three prefectures and bordering on the frontiers of Bulgaria and Turkey, is home to upwards of 250,000 people identified as an autochthonous Muslim minority, recognized as such by the 1923 Lausanne Treaty.
“Whatever national origins exist in Turkey, they all comprise one people … The same exists in Greece. Whatever national origins that may exist, they all together comprise one people,” was the unprecedented – as far as a Turkish leader is concerned – statement by Erdogan.
The Turkish president and his entourage left Komotini by motorcade at 4:55 p.m. (14.55 GMT) for Alexandroupolis airport and a return flight to Turkey.
