As a total of 16 million students, including primary and high school students, attended Turkey’s public and private schools in what was the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year last week, crowded classrooms were a problem in many of the big city schools, but not at all for the schools of the Greek community, whose population is close to the point of extinction, Today’s Zaman reports.

One such school is Zapyon Greek Primary and High School of Istanbul. A long time ago when it was established in 1875, it was a lively school with 1,500 students; now, it only has 110 students. It remains the only Greek school in Turkey comprising a kindergarten, primary and high school. There are only eight students in the first grade this year.

“In the next school year, we expect only about three students in the first grade. After that, probably none; if it goes on like this, we will have no graduates in around 10 years,” said Nikos Kefalas, the representative of the founder of Zapyon.

He noted that Kadıköy Greek Primary School was not opened this school year as it only had one student.

A report released in 2010 by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) stated that for decades both states have held “their own citizens hostage, pitting them against each other in the name of defeating the other in foreign policy.”

Even though the Greek population in Turkey was no less than 100,000 in the 1930s, tension between Turkey and Greece has greatly affected their survival in Turkey. Following the Istanbul Riots of Sept. 6-7, 1955 and the 1964 deportation of roughly 12,000 ethnic Greeks without Turkish citizenship, the Greek population has been in constant decline. Mihail Vasiliadis, editor-in-chief of the Apoyevmatini daily, which has been facing serious financial problems over the past few months, says that by 1966, the Greek population in Istanbul was reduced to less than 30,000, and it has been diminishing ever since. The population of Turkey’s Greek community is estimated to be around 3,000 today.

“The Greek community of Turkey faces extinction now. The schools need to be given a different status,” Kefalas said, explaining that being a student in a minority school requires being a Turkish citizen belonging to the Greek Orthodox faith.