In the second paragraph of Article 4 of the "Framework Agreement for the Protection of Minorities", which was signed by the members of the Council of Europe including Greece, it is stated that in order to achieve real and full equality between the members of the minority and the majority in all the fields of economic, social, political and cultural life, all parties promise to take necessary measures. However, Greece generally follows a contradictory policy to this provision.
Greece's intervention in the political life of minority has been seen in two ways; to prevent the reflection of voters' will and to narrow the scope of political actors.
The prevention from voting of Greek citizens of Turkish ethnic origin who stay in Turkey for higher education or tourism reasons by closing down the borders a few days before the elections, bringing in military troops from outside of the region to vote in Western Thrace in order to outweigh the Minority's votes, making the process of voting more difficult by limiting the number of ballot-boxes especially in the Turkish dominated regions have been the usual practices of the Greek administration although some of these practices have been softened to some degree during the last years.
In addition, as it is not possible for members of the minority to transfer their registers of birth from their place of birth to place where they live, a member of the minority has to travel to his place of birth to vote if he is not residing there. There is no such an obligation for ethnic Greeks.
All of these measures distort the choices of the voters and do not allow the democratic will to be truly expressed.
The great success achieved by "independent" Turkish candidates in the earlier parliamentary elections disturbed Greek policy-makers who brought a % 3 national threshold for the election of independent candidates. Greece, which could not manage to abrogate the racist Article 19 of Greek Citizenship Law for years has become the only country in the world to apply a national threshold for independent candidates.
It is seen that despite some changes in the policies of the Greek administration regarding the political representation of the Minority during the last years, the Turkish Minority still faces legal hurdles on fair representation in the political process. The %3 threshold which was mentioned earlier continues to curb the ability of the Minority to send independent representatives to the Parliament. Currently, the Minority is being represented at the Greek Parliament by only two deputies though it constitutes % 1.5 of the population of Greece.
As another impediment before the political representation of the Turkish Minority, one can mention the settlement of Greek origin immigrants from the ex-Soviet geography in the Turkish Minority populated regions. This policy further reduces the political power of the Minority.
Moreover, Greece has adopted the “Capodistrias Plan” which stipulates the administrative restructuring of the regions, provinces and municipalities. This plan has led to the unification of the electoral constituencies of the Turkish majority with that of the Greek majority. For instance, the province Rhodope which has a Turkish majority was unified with Evros which has a Greek majority. By the same token, Xanthi was unified with the two provinces of Kavala and Drama where only Greeks live. Such a plan has helped to dilute the Turkish Minority’s political representation. As a result of this practice, the number of local governments that are controlled by the Turkish Minority remains arbitrarily limited. As openly expressed by the Greek politicians, this system was particularly designed to avoid the possibility of the election of a Turkish governor.