Spartan
02-19-2006, 08:02 PM
HellenicPride,
that is one great site. It just goes to show that sooner or later once Turkey looses it's "Strategic Position" they will have to answer to all these crimes. That is why they are really hoping to be accepted into the E.U. This way they would be allies and would not hve to pay for their crimes. But at the same time, in order to be admitted into the E.U the Turks must admit and confess of these crimes, pay restitution, etc..
My great grandfather left Mani and moved to Smyrna in the mid 1800's. He built a beautiful home and grain trading business on the water front. His widow(he was killed by Turkish bandits during a trip to central Turkey for grain trade) barely survived the attack on Smyrna with her 4 children. Luckily due to a good education, speaking fluid French and having a light complexion and red hair, she managed to get herself and her 4 children by the Turkish guards at the Harbor and board a French ship.(The French were not allowing any Greeks to board their ships. Instead they stood by and watched the massacre!) So due to a lot of luck they survived!
The house he built still stands today! My aunt visited Smyrna about 8 years ago and found the house. She knocked on the door to just ask to see inside and to her surprise a Greek priest opened the door!!:blink: When she asked if she could come in and look around HE FLATLY TURNED HER DOWN and slammed the door in her face! I believe that he was afraid that since the Greek church owned the house since the Smyrna affair, he knew my family has ALL LEGAL RIGHTs to re-claim the house. When I return to Greece to live, I am thinking about pursuing the matter with my cousins!
One more interesting point on the destruction of Smyrna is that one of the biggest Greek cemeteries of the time IS NOW A BUS TERMINAL PARKING LOT!!:mad:
This whole Turkey issue is going to reach it's boiling point very soon. The more information technology inproves the more pressure the Turkish government will have on them, until they are finally forced to capitulate!
Orphic_Hymn
02-19-2006, 08:08 PM
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.
Orphic_Hymn
02-19-2006, 08:18 PM
We must note that there were some brave Turkish citizens that refused to take part in the goverment organized pogrom against their neighbors and friends.
From the same author as before, Spiros Vryonis and his book titled "The mechanism of Catastrophe"
"Above this store was the clinic of Dr Alexis Meliopoulos. Here, they [the locals] did not allow the demonstrators in, as they loved him especially and also needed him... He had saved many and helped others by giving them free medicine"
"One of the Turkish ladies who rented from us told us: "the same is going to happen here. Try to save yourselves"
The husband hurriedly took his sick mother-in-law from her bed and carried her to a room on the other side of the house. No sooner had he removed her from her bedroom than a huge rock was thrown through the window, landing exactly on top of her bed. Eventually, the other members of the family made theyr way through the basement to the apartment of the Turkish woman on the second floor"
"Our neighbor had survived without damage, thanks to a neighboorhood friend, Ali Riza, the assistant director of the civil police. Ali Riza was a Turk from Crete and he... stood at the crossroads of our neighboorhood's central street and refused to allow the demonstrators to pass. Thus, thanks to the Turko-Cretan, the Greek homes of our neighboorhood were saved from disaster...
Meanwhile a boat from Istanbul full of demonstrators arrived at Kuzguncuk toward midnight. The village's [area's] muhtar and an officer threatened to shoot the ship's captain if he dared to land. Finally, the ship left and unloaded at Cengelkoy, where the demonstrators were reinforced by the cadets from the military school of Kuleli and did great damage..."
"My father, after countless struggles, managed to open a small tavern that attracted many Turks. One of these latter was an old friend of my father. He came then, at five in the afternoon, to my father's shop, and told him: "take whatever money you have and run to your home so as to be close to your wife and children". My father asked him why but he would not tell him, but simply repeated to hurry....
During the course of the looting, a Turko-Cretan family came from accross the street and gathered us in their house to protect us....
One soldier remained outside the house, while the second said to the third: "You rape the mother and I'll rape the child". I was a child of 8 years that September. I did not know or understand the meaning of what they had said. I thought they had arranged to kill us, and I began to shout, "not my mother. She has an infant to raise".
Then like a Deus Ex Machina, the Turkish friend of my father, who had tried the previous evening to return to our house but found the roads blocked, appeared. He ran into the yard and shouted at the soldiers: "what else do you want? You've burned down their livelihood [the shop], you've blackened their souls. Leave their honor alone..." He was so furious that he grabbed both of them and threw them out of the house. Thus we were saved..."
"It had been saved [the business] because a Turkish neighbor, a bookkeeper, who, immediately upon learning what was happening, contacted a hamal [porter], Hasan, and told him to run and save our business. He, with another Kurd, stood in front of the store and did not allow the demonstrators to destroy it. Thus, it survived with minor damage. We asked Hasan who had wished to destroy the store. He replied, "do not ask me for you are acquainted with most of them, but I cannot tell you their names". What is interesting in this incident is that the man responsible for saving the Vafeiades business was a Turkish bookkeeper who obviously knew the owners personally, doubtlessly through business contacts, while the two men who actually saved the shop were a crypto-Armenian and a Kurd"
(1) Note: Vafeiades gives a brief aside about Hasan: "everyone believed that Hasan was a Kurd. In reality, he was of Armenian descent. In 1916, during the massacres, he was then a little boy and he had been taken in by a Turkish family. The fates of his parents remained unknown. When he grew up, he managed to locate relatives in France and he corresponded with them"
"At that moment our doorman, Sadik, came and asked us if we had a Turkish flag. Inasmuch as we are [sic] Greek citizens, we did not have one.
Meanwhile , they [the rioters] smashed the outside door. Sadik, however, placed his body in front of the door, and while holding on to both doorjambs, shouted that everyone was absent and that only his family was present and that presently he would be displaying a Turkish flag. The demonstrators stated that they would return. And so they departed... in a hurry, so that they could smash, destroy, rape and plunder as many Greeks as possible. Sadik went out, he detached a Turkish flag, that is, stole it from another apartment building, and hung it outside our partment building, and thus we were saved.
Of course, our doorman was a Kurd and the next day the owner of the building rewarded him"
"Kostantinos Katsaros's family lived in Cihangir but had been summering on Heybeliada; when they returned to their house in Cihangir the next day, they learned that it "had been saved because our doorman, Omer, probably of Kurdish descent, prevented the barbarians from entering""
"Peter Tsoukatos was 9 years old at the time and staying with his aunt; when he returned to his family's house, "I learned that our apartment building had been saved because our doorman - a Kurd from Van - Mehmet... a pallekari [a brave and stalwart youth], stood before our apartment building keeping guard and would not allow the mob to destroy it." Mehmet insisted that no Greeks lived in the building and had taken care to hang a Turkish flag in front of it."
"In Pasabahce on the Bosphorus, the good police komiseris who saved the church and people from pillaging and burning appeared; a komiseris with only a pistol in his hand saved the church of Ferikoy. A third saved the island of Antigone [Burgazada]. Imagine what would have happened if the entire police force had acted thus.. In the Pasaj Agnavor [a shopping area in New Istanbul], the Turkish guard and his wife struggled with the mob... And they did not let them enter. Thus were the stores saved. The shopowners raised 8,000 liras as a reward to guard and his wife for saving them. The other pasajes were given over to the flames."
"A little higher up from Yiayia's house in a corner of the garden of her building, it was as though a bomb had exploded inside. THe building had been trasnformed into a pile of rubble.
Short, rotund, and though advanced in age, the red of her plump cheeks had not paled... She shed tears.. as she contemplated the ruins. At her side was her daughter, Athena... who now tore her hair and head: "I don't have anything, no passport,[she lived in Greece], no identity card, for they tore them to pieces. Now how can I return to my house", and she continued to weep.
Yiayia's hunting dog, Rex, had been savagely beaten with a club by the demonstrators. The poor animal's glance was turned towards Yiayia as though thanking her for saving its life from the hands of the mob.
The half-demented child, Osanna, lamented on her knees. Their heads crowded together, a voice came out from them but it was incomprehensible as to who said what. It was difficult to separate them but finally I was able to touch.. Yiayia's shoulder. For awhile she stared at my face and then she came to and cried out: "look at what has befallen us.." and she fell at my feet.
I took her by the shoulder, raised her, and said to her, "come now, let's get a grip on ourselves. THere's no sense in our remaining here." And taking all theree, I brought them to my house. They washed their faces and I gave them sedatives, and then forced them to eat a bowl of soup. They lay down for a while until Yiayia's oldest son came and took them"
"Hasan was in Galata taking his coffee on a street, when the riots began and a group of Greek owners of large-ship supply stores approached him. Hasan told them: "if you give me TL 10,000, I'll take 2 or 3 men from the streets and defend your stores until the riots end". The storeowners paid him the money willingly. Accordingly, Hasan was able to save their stores on this street from the attackers."
vBulletin® v3.7.4, Copyright ©2000-2008, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.