Greek minority school on Gökçeada starts new term with only two students

GÖKÇEADA - Doğan News Agency

DHA Photo

The new school year has opened with only two students at an elementary school for the Greek minority on the island of Gökçeada, which was reopened last year after 49 years of being closed.

The Hagia Todori Elementary School, which was first opened in 1951 but which closed in 1964, reopened after the Education Ministry accepted in 2013 the demand to open a school for the Greek minority on Gökçeada, an island off Turkey’s northwestern province of Çanakkale.

Four students, 6-year-old Musa Avcı, 7-year-old Dimitri Kalpas, 9-year-old Sofia Avcı and 11-year-old Kaan Kaleci, enrolled at the school last year. Kalpas returned to Greece with his family while Kaan Kaleci left to enroll in a secondary school in Istanbul, reducing the number of students to two this year.

Kaleci enrolled in Istanbul as the opening of a minority secondary school on Gökçeada has been delayed due to incomplete repair works.