Istanbul Pogrom

The Istanbul Pogrom (also known as the Istanbul Riots or Constantinople Pogrom; (Events of September); (Events of September 6–7)), was a pogrom directed primarily at Istanbul's Greek minority on 6–7 September 1955. The riots were orchestrated by the Turkish military's Tactical Mobilization Group, the seat of Operation Gladio's Turkish branch; the Counter-Guerrilla. The events were triggered by the news that the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki, north Greece—the house where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was born in 1881—had been bombed the day before. A bomb planted by a Turkish usher of the consulate, who was later arrested and confessed, incited the events. The Turkish press conveying the news in Turkey was silent about the arrest and instead insinuated that Greeks had set off the bomb.

A Turkish mob, most of which had been trucked into the city in advance, assaulted Istanbul’s Greek community for nine hours. Although the mob did not explicitly call for Greeks to be killed, over a dozen people died during or after the pogrom as a result of beatings and arson. Jews, Armenians and Muslims were also harmed.

The pogrom greatly accelerated emigration of ethnic Greeks () from Turkey, and the Istanbul region in particular. The Greek population of Turkey declined from 119,822 persons in 1927, to about 7,000 in 1978. In Istanbul alone, the Greek population decreased from 65,108 to 49,081 between 1955 and 1960. However according to the Human Rights Watch, the Greek population in Turkey was estimated at 2,500 in 2006.

Some see the pogrom as a continuation of a process of Turkification that started with the decline of the Ottoman Empire, To this end, Britain diplomatically encouraged Turkey to agitate Greece. The British ambassador to Greece also incited, saying in an August 1954 speech that Greco-Turkish ties were superficial, so nothing would be lost if, for example, something were to happen to Atatürk's house in Thessaloniki. More bluntly, an official of the Foreign Office said that some agitation would be much to Turkey's benefit. In any case, said parliamentarian John Strachey, Turkey had a large ethnic Greek minority in Istanbul as a card to play against Greece if it considered annexing an independent Cyprus to Greece.

Deflecting domestic attention to Cyprus was politically convenient for the Menderes government, which was suffering from an ailing economy. Although a minority, the Greek population played a prominent role in the city’s business life, making it a convenient scapegoat during the economic crisis in the mid-50s which saw Turkey's economy contract (with an 11% GDP/capita decrease in 1954).

While the DP took the blame for the events, it was recently revealed that the pogrom was in actuality a product of the Turkey's Tactical Mobilization Group; a clandestine special forces unit. who led the Turkish outpost of Operation Gladio under the Tactical Mobilization Group (), proudly reminisced about his involvement in the pogrom, calling it "a magnificent organization".

Execution

According to a September 2005 episode of the weekly show Files on the Greek Mega Channel, the accompanying photographs were seen by Salonican photographer Yannis Kyriakidis on September 4 (two days before the actual bombing). The consul's wife had brought the film to the photo studio that belonged to Kyriakidis' father to be printed. The photographs were then photomontaged, according to the program. Perin's innocence, however, was cast into doubt after intrepid journalist Uğur Mumcu published an excerpt from a 1962 letter between Perin and the undersecretary of the NSS, Fuat Doğu, stating that in his 25 years of journalism, he had acted in full knowledge of the NSS and had not refrained from doing anything.

At 17:00, the pogrom started in Taksim Square, and rippled out during the evening through the old suburb of Beyoğlu (Pera), with smashing and looting of Greek commercial property, particularly along Yüksek Kaldırım street. By six o'clock at night, many of the Greek shops on Istanbul's main shopping street, İstiklal Avenue, were ransacked. Nesin wrote:

Material damage and cost

For some Turkish eyewitness accounts, read Ayşe Hür's article in Taraf.

Mater later rose all the way to Commander of the Air Force, making him third in the military line of command. His son Tayfun, who witnessed the pogrom, maintains ties with those who survived and fled to Greece. On September 12, the government blamed Turkish Communists for the pogrom, arresting 45 "card-carrying communists" (including Aziz Nesin, Kemal Tahir, and İlhan Berktay).

87 CTA leaders were released in December 1955, while 17 were taken to court on 12 February 1956. The indictment initially blamed the CTA only for inciting some students to burn Greek newspapers in Taksim Square. In response to police chief Kemal Aygün's question about the Cominform's role in the affair, Şevki Mutlugil of the NSS cooked a report, which concluded that the Comintern and Cominform had conspired to sabotage NATO. As proof, the prosecution submitted some brochures from the Communist Party of Turkey and a pair of letters from Nâzım Hikmet which called on the workers of Cyprus to stand against imperialism. To bolster the claims, the indictment claimed that NSS agent Kamil Önal had contacted the Comintern while on duty in Lebanon and defected, effectively exonerating the NSS. The context of the Cold War led Britain and the U.S. to absolve the Menderes government of the direct political blame that it was due. The efforts of Greece to internationalize the human rights violations through international organizations such as the UN and NATO found little sympathy. British NATO representative Cheetham deemed it “undesirable” to probe the pogrom. U.S. representative Edwin Martin thought the effect on the alliance was exaggerated, and the French, Belgians and Norwegians urged the Greeks to “let bygones be bygones”. Indeed, the North Atlantic Council issued a statement that the Turkish government had done everything that could be expected.

By popular vote, the Cyprus issue was dropped from the U.N. agenda on 23 September 1955. Britain had successfully avoided a potential diplomatic embarrassment. ethnic Greeks without Turkish citizenship were deported from Turkey with two day's notice, and the Greek community of Istanbul shrunk from 80,000 (or 100,000 by some accounts) persons in 1955 to only 48,000 in 1965. Today, the Greek community numbers about 2,500, mostly older, Greeks. kept documents and photographs of the event in order to educate posterity. He entrusted them to the Turkish Historical Society, stipulating that they be exhibited 25 years after his death. When the date passed and the documents were exhibited in 2005, a group of ultranationalist Ülküculer raided and defaced the exhibit by hurling eggs at the photographs and trampling over them.

The editor of the Istanbul Ekspres, Gökşin Sipahioğlu, went on to found Sipa Press; an international photo agency based in France. The owner, Mithat Perin, became a parliamentarian; he was already in the DP.

Oktay Engin continued his studies at Istanbul University's Faculty of Law. His school in Salonica refused to share his transcript, so with only a certificate of showing she had completed the first year, the university senate allowed Engin to continue from the second. After graduation, he started an internship in Cyprus. However, he was summoned by Orhan Öztırak, the minister of internal affairs, to monitor Greek radio stations. Next he placed first in a government exam that led to his to becoming the governor (kaymakam) of the most important district, Çankaya. One year later, the chief of the police force, Hayrettin Nakipoğlu, invited him to be the chair of the Political Affairs Branch (). Under normal conditions, reaching such a position would require 15–20 years of work starting from his position as a district governor. He remained in the police force thereafter, working his way up to the chief of the security department, and the deputy chief of the entire police force. Finally, in 1991 he was promoted to the governor of Nevşehir Province. Engin rejects all allegations of culpability—indeed, of even being a spy or any acquaintance of General Yirmibeşoğlu.

In August 1995, the US Senate passed a special resolution marking the September 1955 pogrom, calling on the President of the United States Bill Clinton to proclaim 6 September as a Day of Memory for the victims of the pogrom.

References

Further reading

External links

Category:Conflicts in 1955 Category:1955 in Turkey Category:History of the Republic of Turkey

Category:Religiously motivated violence in Turkey Category:Ethnic riots Category:Ethnic cleansing Category:Massacres in Turkey Category:Greece–Turkey relations Category:Pogroms Category:Religious riots Category:Anti-Armenian pogroms