* Photo: HDP
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Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Central Executive Committee has released a statement to mark the 65th year of September 6-7, 1955 Pogrom.
Underlining that the September 6-7 pogrom is one of the most painful and shameful incidents in Turkey's history, the statement has briefly read:
"On September 6-7, 1955, Christian and Jewish citizens, primarily the Rums (Greek) and Armenians, living in İstanbul, İzmir and several parts of Turkey were subjected to a wave of planned and systematic attacks.
"According to the official figures, as a result of militarist powers' guidance and inhuman attacks of groups mobilized by lies and black propaganda, 73 churches, 8 holy springs of Orthodox Greeks, 2 monsateris and 5,538 houses and workplaces, 3,584 of which belonged to Rums, were burned down and ravaged only in İstanbul.
'Religious leaders battered'
"While several people were massacred in the pogrom, religious leaders were battered, cemeteries were damaged and tens of thousands of citizens had to leave Turkey due to pressures and threats to their safety of life.
"Hundreds of women were subjected to sexual assault, which showed that all attacks of harassment and rape targeting women also lived on racist and belligerent mentality.
'Assaulters were rewarded with promotions'
"Special War Bureau Chief and National Security Council Secretary General Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu said, 'September 6-7 was also done by the Special War. It was a terrific organization. It achieved its purpose.' These words prove that the pogrom was committed as a policy of the state. The attack is also a striking indication of how power holders use racism and animosity towards the other in every period to overshadow social problems and economic crisis.
"Even though 65 years have passed since the attack, the assaulters have been protected and the massacre has been covered up, as in the case of every sad and shameful incident in the Republican history. On the contrary, the assaulters have been rewarded by being promoted.
'Damages have not been compensated in any way'
"The state has not faced up to the September 6-7 pogrom, apologies have not been offered to Christain and Jewish citizens, primarily Rums and Armenians, and the damages have not been compensated in any way at all.
"It is our major demand and a must of living together that this shame targeting the old peoples of Turkey be faced, the perpetrators be identified and the material and immaterial losses of suffered by the aggrieved people or their families be compensated."
September Events The Istanbul pogrom, also known as the Istanbul riots or September events were organized mob attacks directed primarily at Istanbul's Greek minority on 6–7 September 1955. The riots were orchestrated by the Tactical Mobilisation Group, the seat of Operation Gladio's Turkish branch; the Counter-Guerrilla, and National Security Service, the precursor of today's National Intelligence Organisation. The events were triggered by the false news that the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki, in northern Greece—the house where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had been born in 1881—had been bombed the day before. A bomb planted by a Turkish usher at the consulate, who was later arrested and confessed, incited the events. The Turkish press, conveying the news in Turkey, was silent about the arrest and instead insinuated that Greeks had set off the bomb. A Turkish mob, most of which had been trucked into the city in advance, assaulted Istanbul’s Greek community for nine hours. Although the mob did not explicitly call for Greeks to be killed, over a dozen people died during or after the attacks as a result of beatings and arson. The police remained mostly ineffective, and the violence continued until the government declared martial law in İstanbul and called in the army to put down the riots. The pogrom greatly accelerated emigration of ethnic Greeks from Turkey, and the Istanbul region in particular. The Greek population of Turkey declined from 119,822 persons in 1927, to about 7,000 in 1978. In Istanbul alone, the Greek population decreased from 65,108 to 49,081 between 1955 and 1960. The 2008 figures released by the Turkish Foreign Ministry placed the number of Turkish citizens of Greek descent at 3,000–4,000;while according to the Human Rights Watch (2006) their number was estimated to be 2,500. (Source: Wikipedia) |
(RT/SD)
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