5. States shall take measures to create favourable conditions to enable persons belonging to minorities to express their characteristics and to develop their culture, language, religion, traditions and customs, except where specific practices are in violation of national law and contrary to international standards. 6. States should take appropriate measures so that, wherever possible, persons belonging to minorities may have adequate opportunities to learn their mother tongue or to have instruction in their mother tongue. 7. States should, where appropriate, take measures in the field of education, in order to encourage knowledge of the history, traditions, language and culture of the minorities existing within their territory. Persons belonging to minorities should have adequate opportunities to gain knowledge of the society as a whole. Article 6 States should cooperate on questions relating to persons belonging to minorities, inter alia, exchanging information and experiences, in order to promote mutual understanding and confidence. To begin with educational matters, Article 4.3 of the Declaration gives persons belonging to minorities the right to have instruction in their mother tongue. Similarly, many human and minority rights instruments and Peace Treaty of Lausanne state that, members of the minority have the right to establish, manage and control their own schools and to use their own language freely. But, as a result of the Greek governments’ continuous interference in the educational issues of the Turkish Minority, the type of education provided at Minority primary and secondary schools has gradually changed. That is, minority education that was supposed to be private and autonomous has now a sui generis character; it is a combination of private and public in which the impact of the Minority over issues of education remains highly restricted, which fails to serve fundamental educational needs. The Greek state has put in force a number of laws, decrees and governmental decisions regarding the minority education from nursery to secondary level. These regulations not only contributed more to the improvement ofthe state language instruction (Greek) at minority schools but also undermined the educational autonomy and increased the weakness of the instruction of the Turkish curriculum. Regarding bilingual primary education, as for the year of 2011 there were 188 minority primary schools functioning across Western Thrace. In May 2011, this number decreased to 174 with the decision of Ministry of Education, Lifelong Learning and Religious Affairs that enabled combining schools across the country. However, the combination in Western