Turkey's Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955

[Nikephoros]

218
The Mechanism of Catastrophe
The religious hatred behind this physical violence against Orthodox ecclesiastics was not restricted to them but included Orthodox communicants. The pogromists repeatedly yelled out a variety of pejoratives, including: gavur (infidel); Kahrolsun, gavurdur (Damn him, he's an infidel); Rum haram (the Greek is illicit); Yıkın, kırın, gavurdur (Destroy, smash, he's an infidel); and ihtar gecesi (night of warning), which was completed by the phrase, Dün seker bayramı, bugün kurban bayramı (Yesterday was the holiday of sugar, today is the holiday of sacrifice).50 In destroying Greek merchandise, the rioters often yelled out, "We do not need infidel goods."51 So it was that the local Greek masses bore the brunt of the attacks. The Greek government estimated that some hundreds of Greeks were assaulted that night.52 We are, accordingly, looking at mass assaults in which the police intervened only when it seemed that the attack might lead to the victim's death, which nevertheless occurred in a number of cases.
Fred Sondern writes of a particular incident in which a Greek storeowner and his wife were present when the demonstrators appeared: "The owners of the store, an elderly Greek-Turk and his wife, had pulled down their shutters but had stayed in the shop. The old man had courage: 'You filth,' he shouted as the first rioters broke in, my family lived in Istanbul for six generations. We are as good Turks as you.' He was silenced with a blow of a club. In a few minutes the store was a shambles."53 Reference has already been made to the frightful clubbing by demonstrators of the teacher Alexandros Iatropoulos.54 The author, Leonidas Koumakes, himself bom in Istanbul and present in the city that night, records the experience of his father, who had been forewarned by a Turkish friend and neighbor to stay home the next day. The elder Koumakes had ignored his friend's warning, however, and was closing his shop the following evening when he heard strange noises:
He hurriedly turned off the lights and slipped out of the shop. That instant he was approached by five people who had detached
naming their sources out of fear of compromising them.
50 See footnote 26 above, and also Koumakes, Miracle, p. 65. For "gavur" and "Rum haram," see National Archives, Foreign Office Dispatch No. 116, American Consul General, Istanbul, September 14, 1955; for "ihtar gecesi" and "Dün şeker bayram, bugün kurban bayram," see Paulos Palaiologos, Diagramma, p. 35; and for "Kahrolsun, gavurdur" and "Yıkın, kırın, gavurdur," see Leonidas Koumakes in Tsoukatou, Septemvriana, p. 183.
51 B. E./Khosdegian, "A Historical Night," II, "The demonstrators shouted, 'we do not need the merchandise of infidels'"; also, footnote 38 above.
52 Greek Embassy, Washington, No. 45871/T4, Ep, October 11, 1955; also, footnote 38 above.
53 Sondern, "Istanbul's Night of Terror," p. 186.
54 Tsoukatou, Septemvriana, pp. 179-180.

Moral and Material Damages, and the Economics and Politics of Compensation 219
themselves from the mainstream of the mob. They closed in on him menacingly....
"Hey, gavur, why don't you hoist a Turkish flag in your shop, eh," asked one of them. That was the signal. The five of them fell on him immediately, punching and kicking him.
My father, dizzy from the pummeling, tried, hopelessly, to protect himself with some defensive punches. But his situation was not good at all.
Fortunately, a noisy ambulance passing by distracted his attackers and, "bleeding badly and still dizzy from the blows, he ran for his life as fast as he could, pulling in the last ounce of his strength."55
The same author records the vicious attack on Apostolos Nikolaides, whose shop was in Galata. Hearing that there would be demonstrations over the purported Greek bombing in Thessalonike, he closed his shop early and crossed over to his home at Kuzguncuk, in the district of Yeni Mahalle. There, he and his family witnessed and heard the destruction of Greek businesses, churches, and dwellings. Although it seemed to be over by midnight, a new wave of rioters appeared on the scene and eventually reached Nikolaides's home. The leader of this particular mob, a certain Kemal who was well-known to Nikolaides since the latter had often helped him, placed the Greek in a dilemma as to how to avert pending disaster. He hesitated over whether to lock the door or to try and reason with his acquaintance. Taking a Turkish flag with him, he decided to reason with him. Thus, armed with the flag, he descended the steps of his house and appeared suddenly before the assembled crowd. He stated that he was loyal to Turkey and that he had actually served in the Turkish armed forces on three different occasions. The suddenness of their intended victim's appearance before them, with the Turkish flag and military service, temporarily silenced the crowd, but, after this temporary hesitation, they attacked him nonetheless. He was hit from behind, struck forcefully in the back of the head by a mace, and collapsed, unconscious. The victim's fifteen-year-old son screamed loudly, "Brother Kemal, you're murdering my father,"56 which finally succeeded in turning away the mob. The family decided that night that they would abandon their home early in the morning, taking with them only what they could wear (so as not to attract attention), and never return. Despite two subsequent surgeries, Nikolaides never recovered and suffered partial amnesia for the rest of his life.
In her seventh month of pregnancy, Gedikouliane Ioannidou-Moysidou
55 Koumakes, Miracle, p. 49.
56 Ibid., pp. 63-65.

Vryonis, Speros. The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom Of September 6-7, 1955, And The Destruction Of The Greek Community Of Istanbul. Greekworks.com (New York, 2005) pp. 218-219.

[Nikephoros]

Background and Institutions of the Pogrom
33
some thirty-one laws during the period between the two world wars severely crippled and, finally, paralyzed the community as a result of these efforts to reduce its political, legal, economic, and cultural presence. The laws against the etablis, for example, forbade them from some thirty trades, including those of tailor, itinerant merchant, photographer, carpenter, and doorman, as well as from professions of more "elevated" social and economic status such as medicine, law, insurance, and real estate. Some 10,000 Greek etablis were thus deprived of their livelihoods and forced to abandon their homes and businesses in Istanbul and emigrate, penniless, to Greece (at the expense of the Greek state).16 It is noteworthy that, alongside this more general xenophobia, a certain antisemitism was soon manifest in Turkish government policy at the same time that it was mushrooming in Nazi Germany.17 The law on language in turn placed the Greek minority under constraint not to speak Greek in public and subjected it to "correction" by its ethnically Turkish co-citizens, who were in fact legally enjoined to vigilance against and public rectification of these infractions, which were all liable to punishment.
Even more serious, however, were the discriminatory, intimidating, and economically ruinous laws passed by the Turkish government during the Second World War. The first, in 1941, led to the forced conscription into labor battalions (amele taburları) of all Christian and Jewish males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. Many of these men died from the heavy labor they were compelled to do (particularly in road-building).18 This discriminatory mobilization, and the hardships imposed, led not only to the death of many conscripts but to the terrorizing of their communities. The labor battalions were finally disbanded for reasons not immediately apparent.19
Just a few months later, however, in 1942, the government of Şükrü Saraçoğlu passed legislation that was not only highly discriminatory against non-Muslim minorities but actually punitive. It thus set the foundation for
Turkey. (In Turkish, by the way, "etabli" was rendered as etabli.)
16 Alexandris, The Greek minority, pp. 184-185; Syllogos Imvrion-Konstantinoupoliton-Tenedion and Anatolikothrakon Thrakes, Oi paraviaseis tes Synthekes tes Lozanes, second edition, Komotene, 1993, pp. 19-28.
17 Faik Okte, The tragedy of the Turkish capital tax, London, 1987, pp. 38-39, "a new class of tax payers, the Dönme Class (D) (of Jewish converts to Islam) was instituted, which was taxed at rates double those for Muslims (M)...." Also, Alexandris, The Greek minority, pp. 215-216.
18 Nikos G. Apostolides, Anamneseis apo ten Konstantinoupole, Athens; 1996, pp. 210-213, was among the Greeks sentenced to hard labor in Anatolia, although he had faithfully performed his military service in the Turkish army during 1935-1936. He estimates that the number of Greeks conscripted into the labor battalions at 20,000, and refers to them as the "twenty generations."
19 Alexandris, The Greek minority, pp. 213-214, speaks of very large groups containing 5,000 men each by the end of 1941, pp. 207-233; Lewis, Modern Turkey, pp. 297-302.

Vryonis, Speros. The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom Of September 6-7, 1955, And The Destruction Of The Greek Community Of Istanbul. Greekworks.com (New York, 2005) p. 33.

It would be nice to have more sources on this "speak Turkish, citiziens" law used to terrorize minorities in Turkey into speaking Turkish in public.