ISTANBUL’S KRISTALLNACHT TURNS 60

[Draggingtree]

Front Page Magazine: ISTANBUL’S KRISTALLNACHT TURNS 60

The forgotten ethnic cleansing.

 

September 7, 2015 Andrew Harrod

 

On September 6-7, 1955, Istanbul’s Greek Christians underwent the “most destructive pogrom…in Europe since the infamous Kristallnacht” of 1938 Nazi Germany, eminent Greek-American historian Speros Vryonis, Jr. haswritten. As he wrote in the extensively documented 2005 book The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul, these important events remain “virtually unknown” even today.

 

As the Greek Consul General of Constantinople (Istanbul) wrote in September 1955, Istanbul’s Greek community that dated from the city’s founding in 668 B.C. “suffered a complete and destructive catastrophe in only seven hours.” Turkey’s ruling Demokrat Parti (DP) and allied groups as well as Turkish Special Forces had recruited Turkish rioters in Istanbul. Other rioters arrived by train, truck, and some 4,000 taxis from Turkey’s provinces, some 100,000 in all. A faked bomb attack against the Turkish consulate in Thessalonica, Greece, whose grounds contain the birth house of Turkish republic founder Kemal Mustafa Atatürk, would trigger a feigned popular outburst.