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Istanbul pogrom

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The Istanbul Pogrom (aka Istanbul Riots; Greek: Σεπτεμβριανά; Turkish: 6–7 Eylül Olayları: both literally Events of September), was a pogrom directed primarily at Istanbul's 100,000-strong Greek minority on 6 and September 7, 1955. Jews and Armenians living in the city and their businesses were also targeted in the pogrom, which was orchestrated by the Demokrat Parti-government of Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. The events were triggered by the false news that the house in Thessaloniki (Turkish: Selânik), Greece, where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was born in 1881, had been bombed the day before.[1]

A Turkish mob, most of which was trucked into the city in advance, assaulted Istanbul’s Greek community for nine hours. Although the orchestrators of the pogrom did not explicitly call for Greeks to be killed, between 13 and 16 Greeks (including two Orthodox clerics) and at least one Armenian died during or after the pogrom as a result of beatings and arsons.[2]

Turkish mob attacking Greek property

Thirty-two Greeks were severely wounded. In addition, dozens of Greek women were raped, and a number of men were forcibly circumcised by the mob. 4,348 Greek-owned businesses, 110 hotels, 27 pharmacies, 23 schools, 21 factories, 73 churches and over a thousand Greek-owned homes were badly damaged or destroyed.[2]

Estimates on the economic cost of the damage vary from Turkish government's estimate of 69.5 million Turkish lira, the British diplomat estimates of 100 million GBP, the World Council of Churches’ estimate of 150 million USD, and the Greek government's estimate of 500 million USD.[2]

The pogrom greatly accelerated emigration of ethnic Greeks, reducing the 200,000-strong Greek minority in 1924 to just over 5,000 in 2005.[3]

Background

The Greeks of Constantinople/Istanbul

Constantinople (modern Istanbul) was the capital of the Byzantine Empire until 1453, when the city was conquered by Ottoman forces.[4] In fact, the city’s Greek population, particularly the Phanariotes, came to play a significant role in the social and economic life of the city and in the political and diplomatic life of the Ottoman Empire in general.[5] This continued after the establishment of an independent Greek state in 1829.[6] Following the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, the Greek population of Constantinople, officially Istanbul from 1930 onward, began to decline.[7]

Punitive measures, such as the 1932 parliamentary law, barred Greek citizens living in Turkey from a series of 30 trades and professions from tailor and carpenter to medicine, law and real estate).[2] The Varlik Vergisi capital gains tax imposed in 1942 also served to reduce the economic potential of Greek businesspeople in Turkey.

Context

Since 1954, a number of nationalist student and irredentist organisations, such as the National Federation of Turkish Students, the National Union of Turkish Students, and the editor of the major newspaper Hürriyet Hikmet Bilâ's Cyprus is Turkish Party, had protested against the Greek minority and the Ecumenical Patriarchate.[2]

In 1955 a state-supported propaganda campaign involving the Turkish press galvanized public opinion against the Greek minority.[2]

In the weeks running up to September 6, Turkish leaders made a number of anti-Greek speeches. On August 28 Prime Minister Menderes claimed that Greek-Cypriots were planning a massacre of Turkish-Cypriots. The Turkish plan to detonate an explosive on 5–6 September at the Turkish consulate (and birthplace of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) in Greece’s second largest city, Thessaloniki, sparked the pogrom. Former Prime Minister Menderes and former Foreign Minister Fatin Rüştü Zorlu were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging for violating the constitution at the Yassiada Trial in 1960–1961. During the trial, it was revealed that the consulate bomb fuse was sent from Turkey to Salonica on September 3. Oktay Engin, the MAH agent, who was then in Thessaloniki under the cover of a university student, was given the mission of installing the explosives.[2]

In addition to the Cyprus issue, the chronic economic situation also motivated the Turkish political leadership into orchestrating the pogrom. 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.[2]

Contrary to the secularity of Kemalism, Prime Minister Menderes built a thousand mosques during his tenure of office.

Organization

The 1961 Yassiada Trial against Menderes and Foreign Minister Zorlu exposed the detailed planning of the pogrom. Menderes and Zorlu mobilized the formidable machinery of the ruling Demokrat Parti (DP) and party-controlled trade unions of Istanbul. Interior minister Namik Gedik was also involved. According to Zorlu's lawyer at the Yassiada trial, a mob of 300,000 was marshalled in a radius of 40 miles around the city for the pogrom.[2]

In addition, ten of Istanbul’s 18 branches of Cyprus is Turkish Party were run by DP officials. This organization played a crucial role in inciting anti-Greek activities.[2]

The Pogrom

Planning

In his 2005 book, Harvard-trained Byzantinist historian Speros Vryonis documents the direct role of the Demokrat Parti organisation and government-controlled trade unions in amassing the rioters that swept Istanbul. Most of the rioters came from western Asia Minor. His case study of Eskişehir shows how the party there recruited 400 to 500 workers from local factories, who were carted by train with third class-tickets to Istanbul. These recruits were promised the equivalent of $6 USD, which was never paid. They were accompanied by Eskişehir police, who were charged with coordinating the destruction and looting once the contingent was broken up into sub-groups of 40–50 men, and the leaders of the party branches.[2]

Execution

Municipal and government trucks were placed in strategic points all around the city to distribute the tools of destruction — shovels, pickaxes, crowbars, ramming rods and petrol — while 4,000 private taxis were requisitioned to transport the pogromists.[2]

A protest rally on the night of September 6, organised by the authorities in Istanbul, on the Cyprus issue and the alleged arson attack in Thessaloniki at the house where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was born, was the cover for amassing the rioters. At 17.00, the pogrom started and from its original centre in Taksim Square, the trouble rippled out during the evening through the old suburb of Pera, the smashing and looting of Greek commercial property, particularly along Yuksek Kaldirim street. By 18.00, many of the Greek shops on Istanbul's main shopping street, Istiklal Caddesi, were ransacked. Many commercial streets were littered with merchandise and fittings torn out of Greek-owned businesses.

According to the account of one eyewitness, a Greek dentist, the mob chanted "Death to the Gavurs", "Massacre the Greek traitors", "Down with Europe" and "Onward to Athens and Thessaloniki" as they executed the pogrom.

The riot died down by midnight with the intervention of the Turkish Army and martial law was declared. Eyewitnesses reported, however, that army officers and policemen had earlier participated in the rampages and in many cases urged the rioters on.

Personal violence

While the pogromists were not instructed to kill their targets, sections of the mob went much further than scaring or intimidating local Greeks. Between 13 and 16 Greeks and one Armenian (including two clerics) died as a result of the pogrom. 32 Greeks were severely wounded. Men and women were raped, and according to the account of the Turkish writer Aziz Nesin, men, mainly priests, were subjected to forced circumcision by frenzied members of the mob and an Armenian priest died after the procedure. Nesin wrote [citation needed]:

A man who was fearful of being beaten, lynched or cut into pieces would imply and try to prove that he was both a Turk and a Muslim. "Pull it out and let us see," they would reply. The poor man would peel off his trousers and show his "Muslimness" and "Turkishness": And what was the proof? That he had been circumcised. If the man was circumcised, he was saved. If not, he was "burned". Indeed, having lied, he could not be saved from a beating. For one of those aggressive young men would draw his knife and circumcise him in the middle of the street and amid the chaos. A difference of two or three centimetres does not justify such a commotion. That night, many men shouting and screaming were Islamized forcefully by the cruel knife. Among those circumcised there was also a priest.

Material damage

The physical and material damage was considerable and over 4,348 Greek-owned businesses, 110 hotels, 27 pharmacies, 23 schools, 21 factories, and 73 churches and over 1,000 Greek-owned homes were badly attacked or destroyed.

Church property

File:Athenagoras.jpg
Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in the ruins of the church of Saint Constantine

In addition to commercial targets, the mob clearly targeted property owned or administered by the Greek Orthodox Church. 73 churches and 23 schools were vandalized, burned or destroyed, as were 8 asperses and 3 monasteries. This represented about 90 percent of the church property portfolio in the city. The ancient Byzantine church of Panagia in Veligradiou was vandalised and burned down. The church at Yedikule was badly vandalised, as was the church of St. Constantine of Psammathos. At Zoodochos Pege church in Balikli, the tombs of a number of ecumenical patriarchs were smashed open and desecrated. The abbot of the monastery, Bishop Gerasimos of Pamphilos, was severely beaten during the pogrom and died from his wounds some days later in Balikli hospital. In one church arson attack, Father Chrysanthos Mandas, was burned alive. The Metropolitan of Liloupolis, Gennadios, was badly beaten and went mad. Elsewhere in the city, Greek cemeteries came under attack and were desecrated. Some reports also testified that relics of saints were burned or thrown to dogs.

Witnesses

An eyewitness account was provided by journalist Noel Barber of the London Daily Mail on 14 September 1955:

The church of Yediküle was utterly smashed, and one priest was dragged from bed, the hair torn from his head and the beard literally torn from his chin. Another old Greek priest [Fr Mantas] in a house belonging to the church and who was too ill to be moved was left in bed, and the house was set on fire and he was burned alive. At the church of Yenikoy, a lovely spot on the edge of the Bosphorus, a priest of 75 was taken out into the street, stripped of every stitch of clothing, tied behind a car and dragged through the streets. They tried to tear the hair of another priest, but failing that, they scalped him, as they did many others.

One significant eyewitness was Ian Fleming, the James Bond author, who was in Istanbul covering the International Police Conference as a special representative for the London Sunday Times. His account, entitled "The Great Riot of Istanbul", appeared in that paper on 11 September 1955.

Secondary action

While the pogrom was predominantly an Istanbul affair, there were some outrages in other Turkish cities. On the morning of 7 September 1955 In Izmir (Smyrna), a mob overran the Izmir National Park, where an international exhibition was taking place, and burned the Greek pavilion. Moving next to the Church of Saint Fotini, built two years earlier to serve the needs of the Greek officers (serving at NATO Regional Headquarters), the mob destroyed it completely. The homes of the few Greek families and officers were then looted.

Documentation

Considerable contemporary documentation showing the extent of the destruction is provided by the photographs taken by Demetrios Kaloumenos, then official photographer to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Setting off just hours after the pogrom began, Kaloumenos set out with his camera to capture the damage and smuggled the film to Greece.

Reactions

Although the Menderes government attempted to blame Turkish Communists for the pogrom, most foreign observers were aware of who was to blame. In a letter of 15 November 1955 to prime minister Menderes, Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras graphically described the crimes inflicted on his flock. “The very foundation of a civilisation which is the heritage of centuries, the property of all mankind, has been gravely attacked”, he wrote, adding: “All of us, without any defence, spent moments of agony, and in vain sought and waited for protection from those responsible for order and tranquillity”.

The chargé d’affaires at the British Embassy in Ankara, Michael Stewart, directly implicated Menderes’ Demokrat Parti in the execution of the attack. “There is fairly reliable evidence that local Demokrat Parti representatives were among the leaders of the rioting in various parts of Istanbul, notably in the Marmara islands, and it has been argued that only the Demokrat Parti had the political organisation in the country capable of demonstrations on the scale that occurred,” he reported, refusing to assign blame to the party as a whole or Menderes personally, however.

Although British Ambassador to Ankara, Bowker advised British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan that the United Kingdom should “court a sharp rebuff by admonishing Turkey”, only a note of distinctly mild disapproval was dispatched to Menderes. 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 internationalise the human rights violations through international organisations such as the UN and NATO found little sympathy. British NATO representative Cheetham deemed it “undesirable” to probe the pogrom. US 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.

More outspoken was the World Council of Churches, given the damage wrought on 90 percent of Istanbul’s Greek Orthodox churches, and a delegation was sent to Istanbul to inspect the havoc.

Aftermath

As private insurance did not exist in Turkey at the time, the only hope the pogrom’s victims had for compensation was from the Turkish state. Although Turkish President Mahmut Celal Bayar announced that “the victims of the destruction shall be compensated”, there was little political will or financial means to carry out such a promise. In the end, Greeks ended up receiving about 20 percent of their claims due to the fact that the assessed values of their properties had already been vastly reduced.

Tensions continued and in 1958–1959, Turkish nationalist students embarked on a campaign encouraging the boycott of all Greek businesses. The task was completed eight years later in 1964 when the Ankara government reneged on the 1930 Greco-Turkish Ankara Convention, which established the right of Greek etablis (Greeks who were born and lived in Istanbul but held Greek citizenship) to live and work in Turkey. Deported with two day’s notice, 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 5,000, mostly older, Greeks.

At the Yassiada Trial in 1960–61, Menderes and Zorlu were charged with violating the constitution. The trial also made reference to the pogrom, for which they were blamed. While the accused were denied fundamental rights regarding their defence, they were found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.

Oktay Engin, the agent who attempted the arson in Salonica, had continued to work at MİT for years until 1992 when he was promoted to the office of governor for Nevşehir Province.

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.

Notes

  1. ^ Dilek Güven, “6–7 Eylül Olayları (1)”, Radikal, 6 September 2005
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Speros Vryonis, The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6–7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul, New York: Greekworks.com 2005, ISBN 978-0-9747660-3
  3. ^ According to figures presented by Prof. Vyron Kotzamanis to a conference of unions and federations representing the ethnic Greeks of Istanbul."Ethnic Greeks of Istanbul convene", Athens News Agency, 2 July 2006.
  4. ^ However, a Greek community continued to live in the city.
  5. ^ See the article on the Phanariotes.
  6. ^ A number of ethnic Greeks served in the Ottoman diplomatic service in the 19th century.
  7. ^ As evidenced by demographic statistics.

References

See also

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