07.05.2014 European elections: Greek and Muslim Rromni without chance

Tzafalias (2014) reports on the candidacy of the Greek and Muslim Rromni Sabiha Suleiman for the European Parliament. Suleiman runs for the left-wing opposition party Syriza, but was dropped from the list again shortly after her nomination. The reasons for her being dropped, Suleiman Tzafalias describes as driven by ethnic disputes: Dimitris Christopoulos, who actively championed for the removal of Suleiman, referred to the supremacy of the Turkish Muslims in the region: “Suleiman’s candidacy would be a show of support for nationalism in an area of Greece which is plagued by it, to the detriment of those Greek Muslims who define themselves as ethnically Turkish. He [Christopoulos] even said that the Muslim minority in Thrace is a “unified Turkish thing”, and – initially – made no mention of those Muslims who define themselves as Roma or Pomak, a Slav-speaking ethnic group. […] Suleiman, who defines herself as a Greek Roma Muslim woman, said all this was happening because the Turkish consulate in Thrace was targeting her, as they wanted to ensure that the Muslim Roma were absorbed into the Turkish minority.” The case described by Tzafalias is a prime example of what is known in the social sciences as “intersectionality”: the simultaneous membership to different groups and the associated special features and difficulties. To better understand the case of Thrace, Tzafalias refers to the Lausanne Peace Treaty of 1923. As a result of the demise of the Ottoman Empire, two million people should be exchanged between Greece and the newly founded Turkey: the Muslim Greeks to Turkey and the Christian-Turks to Greece. The Rroma are still caught in the crossfire of political efforts to homogenize ethnic states. A worrying development (compare Wordbulletin News 2014).