Ankara University’s Faculty of Language and History-Geography (DTCF) has cancelled plans to mark World Greek Language Day after receiving threats and condemnation on social media, ahvalnews.com reports.
The events, “planned as a scientific activity” and organised jointly by Ankara University, Istanbul University and Trakya University, were shelved after “causing a perception exceeding the initial purpose,” the faculty noted in a statement.
On Monday, social media users running a Twitter account named Eastern Mediterranean Political launched a campaign against the universities’ plans.
“Celebrating World Greek Language Day on Anatolian lands where heroes have marched to martyrdom and the blood of martyrs has watered the soil is only fit for sycophants lacking national consciousness,” the group claimed in a tweet.
“Organising a foolish event and harbouring sympathies for the Greek language puts a dagger in the back of Muslim Turks’ sovereignty in Western Thrace, and means that you have trampled on the Republic of Turkey’s interests in the Sea of Islands (Aegean Sea) and Eastern Mediterranean”, the group added.
The anti-Greek sentiment is pervasive among nationalists in Turkey and has been exacerbated by political and military tensions between the two neighbours over rights to natural resources in the Mediterranean and territorial boundaries in the Mediterranean and the Aegean.
Read the full report at Ahval.
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