Greece Will Abolish Law Targeting Turks Article 19 Had Allowed Authorities To Strip Minorities Of Citizenship

The Greek government announced Friday it will abolish a law that has allowed authorities to strip Greek minorities and political opponents of their citizenship.

Government spokesman Dimitris Reppas said Parliament will be asked to approve a repeal of Article 19, a 60-year-old decree that critics say enables Greece to undertake its own form of ethnic cleansing.

“We decided to abolish the specific article. … It won’t be replaced,” Reppas said. He did not specify when the vote would take place, other than to say it would be held soon.

Under Article 19, nonethnic Greeks who leave the country can be stripped of their citizenship if authorities determine they do not intend to return.

As a result, tens of thousands of Greek-born Muslims and communists have lost their citizenship. Inside Greece, it has created a class of about 1,000 stateless residents - dubbed “living ghosts” - who cannot vote, attend public school, obtain a driver’s license, use the health care system or enjoy other benefits of citizenship.

During the 1950s, Article 19 was used to strip citizenship from an estimated 50,000 communists who fled Greece after the 1946-1949 civil war.

From 1981-1996, about 7,000 Muslims of Turkish descent have been stripped of their citizenship. Most were passport holders who made a trip to Turkey - Greece’s longstanding foe - and discovered they were no longer Greeks when they tried to renew their passports.

“This was the way of ethnic cleansing in Greece,” charged Parliament member Birol Akifoglou, a member of Greece’s 120,000-strong Muslim minority, which is largely of Turkish origin.

Some ultra-conservative lawmakers have opposed doing away with the article, arguing that the state needs a way to control possible Turkish-backed spies. Andonis Samaras, head of a small right-wing party, called dropping Article 19 a “reckless” move.

Turkey has demanded abolition of the law, claiming its only purpose is to shrink the ethnic Turkish minority in Greece.

The Greek government will not make the abolition retroactive, leaving the future of the nearly 1,000 stateless people living in Greece uncertain. Reppas refused to say what would happen to them, but government sources said an effort would be made to restore citizenship to some.

The government’s decision to overturn the law, which has come under sharp attack by civil rights activists, comes on the heels of a recent campaign by a 20-year-old woman to restore her citizenship.

Aysel Zeibek and her family, descendants of the once-nomadic Pomak people, lost their citizenship in 1984 after traveling from their northern Greek village to Istanbul, Turkey, to visit relatives.

By losing her citizenship, Zeibek became ineligible for a marriage license because she could not prove her identity: Greek authorities had wiped her off the books. Human rights groups came to her aid, and Greek newspapers publicized her case, creating momentum to strike down the law.

In December, Public Order Minister Giorgos Romeos granted Ms. Zeibek and other “ghosts” travel and identity documents.

The documents allow her to do many of the things she was denied, such as attend school and use the Greek health care system. But it does not restore her citizenship.