Παναγιώτης Ήφαιστος
Καθηγητής, Διεθνείς Σχέσεις-Στρατηγικές Σπουδές
Πανεπιστήμιο Πειραιώς, Τμήμα Διεθνών και Ευρωπαϊκών Σπουδών
www.ifestos.edu.gr -- www.ifestosedu.gr -- info@ifestosedu.gr -- info@ifestos.edu.gr
Για μετάβαση στην κεντρική σελίδα, άνοιγμα σε άλλο παράθυρο, κλικ εδώ www.ifestos.edu.gr ή www.ifestosedu.gr
THE
MECHANISM OF CATASTROPHE
The Turkish pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the destruction of the Greek
community in Istanbul
Speros Vryonis, Jr
Greek American Net http://www.greekamerica.net/pastissues/7-1/eyeonhistory.wu
Eye
on History: September 6, 1955
Krystallnacht in Constantinople
State Department Concealed Report of Turkish Atrocities for 40 Years
By Speros Vryonis Jr.
Most Greek Americans and most Americans generally are unaware of the fact that
on the evening of Septembare unaware of the fact that on the evening of
September 6, and in the early hours of September 7, 1955, the Turkish government
carried out the most destructive pogrom that had been enacted in Europe since
the infamous Krystallnacht which Hitler and the Nazis inflicted upon the Jewish
communities, businesses and synagogues on the eve of World War II. Further, most
are unaware that the Turkish government had unleashed the mobs on the Greek
community of Istanbul, on its churches, houses, businesses, schools, and
newspapers; and they are unaware that this resulted in the ultimate destruction
of Turkey’s oldest historical community, about 100,000 Greek Orthodox Christians
who were the heirs of Byzantium. On September 6-7 of 1995, the Greek press in
Greece, and the Greek American, the Greek Canadian and the Greek Australian
presses memorialized this great tragedy so that more than forty years after the
events, Greeks, and humanity more generally, might not forget the victims and
might recall that the forces restraining barbarians are to be kept at the ready
at all times. This is an example wherein the press serves as mankind’s
historical and ethical teacher. I should add that many Greeks and Greek
Americans have lost their sense of history, of whence they came, of who they
are, and of what they are becoming. Is it possible today in America, where we
constitute an affluent, politically powerful, and highly educated Hellenic
diaspora, that we know so little about something so simple and yet so fatefully
significant about the Turkish pogroms that destroyed this ancient Greek
community in Constantinople in 1955? That we are unaware that on September
6,1955, the Turkish mobs and government organized and carried out the worst and
most destructive pogrom in Europe since Hitler and the Nazis destroyed the
synagogues and businesses of the Jewish community in Germany? What then was this
Turkish pogrom inflicted on the Greek community in 1955? The chronology of the
pogrom falls in a very difficult period, when the Cyprus problem had complicated
the political relations of Greece, Turkey and England. The Turkish press, which
was to play a crucial role in preparing the political atmosphere of the pogrom,
received significant financial support from British sources. Specifically, the
British gave financial assistance to two Turkish newspapers and to their
owners/editors: to Hikmet Bil (editor of the newspaper Hurriyet and leader of
the political organization Kibris Turktur— Cyprus is Turkish), and Ahmet Emin
Yalmas, owner of the older Istanbul paper Vatan. Trips by these two journalists
to London had become prominent in 1954-55. In 1952, the Turkish government had
mobilized two large student organizations. By July 1955, the Turkish press and
these organizations activated intense pogroms and demonstrations aimed at the
defenseless Greek minority in Istanbul. The tripartite discussions, among
Greece, Turkey and England, commenced in London in August of 1955. On the 27th
of that month, the Turkish press condemned the Patriarch, ostensibly for
collecting funds for the Greek Cypriot movement for Enosis with Greece. Three
days later, on August 30, the anniversary of the day when the Kemalist forces
smashed the Greek line in western Asia Minor, the Turkish press launched a
particularly vile attack on the Patriarch. Previously, on the 27th, the Istanbul
newspapers published false rumors that the Greeks of Cyprus were planning mass
genocide of the Turkish Cypriots. Finally, on September 5, one day prior to the
pogrom, Turkish student organizations asked permission from the authorities to
stage political demonstrations in Istanbul regarding Cyprus, to be staged on
September 13. Also on September 5, the Turkish prime minister’s executive
council, which included the minister of the interior in charge of security, the
governor of Istanbul, and the chief of police, among others, met to discuss the
petition and the situation more generally. It should be noted that prior to the
tripartite meetings in London, it is generally accepted that the British
government asked that the Turks stage a public demonstration on Cyprus, inasmuch
as this would strengthen the Anglo-Turkish position against that of the Greeks
during the tripartite meetings. The Explosion of the Bomb in the Turkish
Consular Complex as the Ostensible Cause of the “Spontaneous” Riots On the 6th
of September, the Turkish press and other media announced the explosion of a
bomb in the Turkish consular complex in Thessaloniki, within which is located
the ancestral house of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. This news was announced quickly
and simultaneously throughout Turkey, and the prearranged plan of the pogrom was
applied and put into action, rhythmically, by its organizers, who were in effect
the Turkish state. As the examination by the Greek police of Thessaloniki
demonstrated soon after the explosion, the bomb was not thrown into the compound
from outside the walled compound, but was placed on the grounds by an individual
from inside the compound; a conclusion arrived at after a police examination of
the actual form of the explosion, evidenced by the directions of the damage.
This conclusion is confirmed by other independent evidence. The damage inflicted
by the bomb on buildings inside the walled compound of the Turkish consulate was
purportedly revealed in the photographic evidence published by the Istanbul
Express, which went to press in Istanbul on the same afternoon of the day of the
explosion. How was it possible to bring the photographs from Thessaloniki to
Istanbul, develop them and publish them on the same afternoon, in a day and age
when there were no airplane flights between Thessaloniki and Istanbul, and at a
time when the bus would not have arrived in Istanbul until well into the night?
The answer comes from the report of the investigation by the Thessaloniki police
who reported the following incontrovertible facts: First, the Turkish consul had
left his post for Istanbul long before the event in question, leaving behind his
wife to take care of “last minute details” before departing herself to join her
husband. Among these “last minute details,” she was to telephone a photographic
studio in Thessaloniki to hire a Greek photographer to photograph the inside of
the walled complex of the Turkish consulate. A few days before the explosion of
the bomb, she departed with the photographs for Istanbul. It was this
photographic material which appeared in the afternoon edition of the Istanbul
Express on September 6. Thus, there had been ample time to bring the
photographic films to Istanbul and have them developed before the bomb exploded.
However, the original photographs had been tampered with and had been altered to
show purported damage to the house of Ataturk— all this before the actual
explosion of the bomb. Thus, the Thessaloniki police could compare the
photographic “evidence” published in the afternoon edition of the Istanbul
Express on September 6 and identify it with the photos produced by the Greek
photographer, and to show, on the basis of their investigation, that the Turkish
version of the explosion had been falsified. Thus, the Turkish forgery had been
both detected and reported. It was recorded in a British consular report to the
British Foreign Office. The Foreign Office official who received the report in
London wrote on the margin of the report, “The Greeks will go to ridiculous
extremes to deny their responsibility in the placing of the bomb in the Turkish
consulate of Thessaloniki.” The Greek police charged a Turkish student, a Greek
citizen with having placed the bomb, with the willing complicity of the Turkish
doorman of the consulate. His name was Oktay Engin. When Demirel was, in recent
years, reelected to power, he appointed Octay Engin as chief in charge of the
affairs of the Turkish community in Greek Thrace, 37 years after the fact of the
bomb. The guilt of the Turkish government and of its consular official in
Thessaloniki in placing the bomb on the grounds of the consulate was further
confirmed by the Turkish court martial of Yassiada in 1960-61, which condemned
Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and his Foreign Minister Zorlu for the
organization and execution of the Pogrom of September 1955 and for the bomb
exploded in the consular compound. The Pogrom and the Destruction of the Greek
Community of Istanbul, September 6-7, 1955 Let us now glimpse briefly at the
pogrom itself, ostensibly set off by the announcement of the bomb explosion at
the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki, but which in fact had been carefully
planned by the Turkish government. At this point, I quote specific paragraphs
from an official Greek document with the title: “A Note of Summation of the
Consul General of Constantinople, Vyron Theodoropoulos, on the anti-Greek Events
of September 6, 1955.” This official report was written by a diplomat who had
served as consul general during the events in question, and who was appointed by
the Greek Foreign Office to make an investigation and report to the ministry The
document impresses with its wealth of information as well as by the objectivity
of the analytical nature of its perceptions. In this official report we read the
following, terse catalogue of the events during the destructive night of the
pogrom. “The execution of the plan [for the pogrom] reveals two basic
characteristics: (1) A well-effected and harmonized time schedule of actions,
and (2) effective coordination. “The time schedule of events unfolds, generally,
as follows: “1:30 p.m., announcement on the radio of the bomb in the house of
Ataturk in Thessaloniki. “4:00 p.m., a special supplement of the newspaper
Istanbul Express circulates, publishing this ‘news’ and featuring an
artificially altered photograph of the purported destruction of the house [of
Ataturk]. “4:30 p.m., groups of young people roam about the main streets of Pera,
writing on the walls insulting slogans against the Greeks. “5:30 p.m., the first
groups of demonstrators gather in Taxim Square. “6:00 p.m., the gathering in
Taxim Square listens to various speakers who are making inflammatory speeches
against the Greeks and Greece. “6:30 p.m., the assembly is transformed into a
demonstration, in which one group reaches the General Consulate of Greece but is
dispersed by the immediate appearance of police forces, who close off all access
to the consulate. “7:00 p.m., there commences the smashing of display windows
and iron doors of the Greek shops on Taxim Square and of the shops on Pera
Street Almost simultaneously, acts of violence begin to be manifested in the
remaining neighborhoods and suburbs, so that, within two hours, the attack on
and destruction of Greek property has become general and widespread through the
enormous territorial triangle formed by the east tip of the Bosphoros-Sariyar
and Yeni Mahalle— as far as the Propontis- St. Stephan and the Isles. “2:00
a.m., September 7, or just a little thereafter, martial law is declared and the
first military contingents make their appearance. After this, the situation
becomes quiet.” The consular report continues: “The timing and coordination of
the demonstration (riots) acquire even greater significance inasmuch as they
were combined with a strategy of burning and destruction. One can distinguish,
more or less, three waves of attackers: “1. The first wave has as its goal to
break down the doors and display windows (prosthekes) of the stores and the iron
doors of the (Greek) houses, thus to prepare the way for the actions of the
second wave. “2. The second wave was to pillage and carry off all that was
capable of transport. “3. The third wave had as its task the complete
destruction of (all property) that remained. “However, the organizers of the
events had accomplished other noteworthy deeds, for instance: “a) In the center
of the city, with very few exceptions, private houses were not looted. Looting
of the houses was limited to the neighborhoods and the suburbs. “b) Blood was
not shed, not because the rioters were unable or did not want to shed it, but
because they were not permitted to proceed to violence against the people.” (In
effect, recent studies showed that some 28 Greeks were murdered, and original
reports reveal extensive rape of women -Speros Vryonis, Jr.) “c) The attack
groups were fully equipped with the necessary instruments: crow bars, sledge
hammers, iron rods, even with acetylene blow torches for breaking safes open.
“d) The equipping of the attackers with these tools obviously took place
following a prearranged plan via trucks stationed in convenient sites throughout
the city... It is reported that vehicles belonging to the municipality (of
Istanbul) were also seen carrying out these functions.” From these observations,
the experienced Greek diplomat drew the following conclusions in his report:
“That which is certain, and which is addressed in the following chapter (of the
report), is that there was a long period of methodic preparation so as to
achieve such a perfect organization of the riots. Characteristic of this fact
are the very statements and confessions of the Prime Minister Adnan Menderes to
the Patriarchal committee, which visited him after the riots, to the effect that
these riots had been started and planned over a five-year period.” It is
significant to examine the time schedule of the events attendant upon the pogrom
so as to see how, actually, the Hellenism of Constantinople was physically
destroyed between 7:00 p.m., September 6, when the Turkish mobs began to smash
the doors and windows of thousands of shops and houses, churches, schools, Greek
newspaper establishments and then to loot the goods and possessions of the
Greeks, and, finally, to destroy the physical establishments themselves, often
with fire, until 2:00 a.m., September 7, when the Turkish authorities
established martial law in the city. In other words, this historic Greek
community which had lived and created in the city on the Bosphoros from its
first foundation in 668 B.C. up to 1955, for some 2,623 years (some 104
generations), suffered a complete and destructive catastrophe in only seven
hours.No one moved even so much as one finger to save this most historic Greek
diasporic community, neither Greek nor Christian, nor so-called civilized man or
woman, and certainly not the Turkish government or the Turkish nation. Let us
now leave this Greek consular report on the pogrom lest it be thought that I am
relying on a Greek.
IN THIS WEEK'S TLS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The fate of the Turkish Greeks Richard Clogg 30 November 2005
Full story displayed Not so long ago, the Church of |