461) 1955 Anti-Greek Riots in Istanbul

I often encounter references to the 1955 riots against Greek-Turks living in Istanbul, as evidence of how barbaric modern Turkey can be. But were these government-sponsored, or were they just... riots? Let's see what TIME Magazine reported. . . .

An explosion shattered windows in the Turkish consulate in Salonika, Greece's second largest city, and broke a single pane of glass at the modest house near by where the late great Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, had been born to a minor official of the Ottoman Empire. As reports of the incident sped across the Aegean Sea, they became wildly embellished in the Istanbul headlines. Soon thousands of angry Turks were surging through the streets, bent on destroying stores run by Istanbul's Greek-speaking minority. The rioters shattered shop windows, tore down steel shutters, littered the pavement with heaps of merchandise, and beat up policemen who tried to restrain them. Shouting "Cyprus is Turkish," rioters set fire to buildings and Greek Orthodox churches, while others seized a Cadillac belonging to Greek Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras (a gift from Cinemogul Spyros Skouras) and shoved it into the Golden Horn's muddy waters.

In the Turkish capital of Ankara, police dispersed with tear gas a mob marching on the Greek embassy. In Izmir (the ancient Smyrna), Turkey's third largest city and NATO's southeastern headquarters, homes of Greek NATO officers were pillaged, and the Greek consulate was razed. Turkey's Prime Minister Adnan Menderes declared martial law in the three cities. The army moved in with tanks, imposed a curfew and, by dawn, had locked up more than 2,000 rioters. Throughout Turkey more than 4,000 stores and 78 churches lay gutted.

From "Spreading Flames," Sep. 19, 1955

Sounds Like a Riot!

What's a riot? Riots are caused by crazed mobs unable to be constrained by reason. Riots are not a phenomenon restricted to the nation of Turkey.

It's terrible that hateful, propagandistic forces have latched on to this episode, deceptively presenting it as an example of how naturally savage the Turks have a predisposition for being. Some police were beaten in an attempt to restrain the rioters. Probably matters got so out of hand, the police force refrained from engaging the rioters, which doesn't say much about the police force, if true. (As with the riots resultng from Rodney King's beating in the United States, where the Los Angeles police force was roundly criticized for failing to do their utmost to stop the rioters.)

Yet this failure to stop the rioters became read as though the government was behind the riot.

TIME is not known for sympathetic coverage of matters Turkish. (From Cyprus-related articles I've read, generally, the Turks edge out as the aggressors; I didn't come across references to Greek massacres of Turkish civilians.) The magazine posted a follow-up a couple of weeks later, where there is an implication the government might have played a hand.


Oct. 3, 1955 Act II, Scene I. Tempers simmered on all sides—in Turkey, in Greece and on Cyprus. A small bomb exploded in the Turkish consulate in Salonika and triggered wholesale riots against Greek minorities in Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara (TIME, Sept. 19). At first, under martial law and strict censorship, much of the story of the riots' nature was suppressed by the government of Turkish Premier Adnan Menderes, who has a supposedly democratic regime but cracks down on free speech and free press with totalitarian ease. But by last week, from piecemeal reports, diplomatic dispatches and the tales of travelers from Turkey, the outside world began to learn how wanton, yet organized, the riots were.

Damage amounting to perhaps $300 million was wreaked on the stores, homes and possessions of Greeks in Turkey; scores of Greek Orthodox churches in the country were fired or defaced; some 300 persons were injured. It became evident that the Turkish government had not wanted to halt the violence or—worse from a standpoint of stability in a NATO country—had been unable to stem it. "I must admit," said Menderes, "that we were exposed to a national catastrophe, the object of a real attack by surprise." Western diplomats were also slow to realize how deep and serious was the revulsion in Greece. The Greek government went so far as to charge that the bombing that touched off the affair was engineered by the Turks themselves, arrested the Turkish watchman of the Salonika consulate as the alleged fuse lighter.


Unfinished Tragedy, Oct. 3, 1955

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© Holdwater
http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/Riots1955.htm

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