50TH ANNIVERSARY OF POGROMS OF NON-MUSLIM POPULATION IN ISTANBUL MARKED 6 SEPT.
By Hakob Chakrian
AZG Armenian Daily #159
07/09/2005
Turkish Papers Highlight the Event
With an aim to prevent future tragedies, all central Turkish newspapers
highlighted yesterday the events of September 6 1955 when authorities
in Istanbul organized massacres. On September 5, the eve of the
pogroms, a bomb went off in the house where Kemal Ataturk was born in
Thessalonica. The explosion only broke the windows of the house, and
Greek law enforcers detained law student at Thessalonica University,
Oktay Engin, and the guard of Turkish consulate.
The consulate was located right by the house. The arrested student,
Turkish agent as disclosed later, was soon released under Turkey’s
diplomatic pressure and soon fled to Turkey. He was given a position
in Istanbul municipality and was appointed governor of Nevsehir
after graduation.
These facts make clear that the explosion in Thessalonica was a state
organized provocation to open doors for pogroms of Greek, Armenian
and Jewish minorities of Turkey.
Turkish state radio aired the news of explosion at 1.30 pm local time.
Istanbul-based Ekspres paper informed about the explosion at 4.30 pm
local time September 6. Representative of “Turkish republic of Northern
Cyprus”, Kmail Onal, makes a statement on the pages of the paper,
“Those attacking our sanctities will pay high price”. 2 hours later,
members of student unions and representatives of the “Turkish republic
of Northern Cyprus” gather at the square of Bera in Tksim. The mob
is armed with knives and bludgeons. The pogroms start after speeches.
The Turkish mob robs firstly the stores of the Greeks then churches
and homes killing residents and lynching Greek priests. Armenians
and Jews are not spared massacres, and the anti-Greek pogroms soon
flowed into massacre of all non-Muslims.
Greeks of Istanbul’s considerably big Greek community headed for their
fatherland after the pogroms. Repatriation continued till 1960s. Today
there are only 2000 Greeks in Istanbul. The number of Armenians there
is around 50.000.
As there are almost no Greeks in Istanbul and the Jews are not
favorable to attack, Armenians, as a rule, suffer Turkish mob’s
aggression. A cause is always at hand: recognition of the Armenian
Genocide in various parliaments and the Nagorno Karabakh issue.
The point here is that no matter how reformed Turkey becomes,
it still needs squaring off with its history. That history is
continuous. Armenian Genocide was carried out in days of the Young
Turks. The September 6 pogroms were carried out in modern Turkey
founded by Kemal Ataturk and in days of Adnan Menderes’ Democratic
Party. Times are changing, self-consciousness of the Turks should
also change.