Türkiye – three days in September

The writer of Petros Markaris was seventeen when the bloody raids on ethnic minorities in Istanbul occurred. Markaris lived on the island of Heybeliada (in Greek Chalki) during the riots on September 6 and 7, 1955. His parents had a summer house there. “A colorful mix of petty -bourgeois summer freshmen, Greeks, Armenians and Jews lived on the island,” said his memories “repeat offenders” (2008). His father was Armenian, his mother Greek. The writer recalls on the island, “the prince’s islands were spared from the riots”. But his father was alarmed and the next morning drove to Istanbul, “to determine whether his office and our apartment had been attacked”. So far everything was fine, but the city: a pile of rubble.

Markaris drives to Istanbul a day later and sees »the extent of the disaster. Half of the shops on the central shopping street in the center of Istanbul, in Beyoglu, was completely destroyed «. A week later the school starts again. His Turkish classmates don’t say a word about the pogroms. Only a young teacher who taught Turkish literature came to him during a break and whispered: »I will only tell you one thing. I am ashamed!”

Nights of the shame

The Turkish journalist Can Dündar, in exile in Berlin since 2016, holds the cracked bridge over the Bosphorus in his history. A century of Turkish Republic and the West «(2023) together: On the night of September 6, 1955, an explosive device was thrown into the garden of the birthplace of the republic founder Ataturk in Saloniki. Not a big deal, rather a symbolic attack, a few slices broke. It later came out that the perpetrator had connections to the Turkish secret service and a Turkish Brigadier, who is involved, speaks of the “special war”.

“The Turkish government at the time under Adnan Menderes immediately accused the Greek government,” recalls Markaris, “however, this rejected any participation.” Militarist nationalists in Turkey used the explosion for their agitation, poisoned the climate, called the attack. “One of the most shameful nights in Turkish history was imminent,” says Dündar. 3000 houses, 5000 shops and 60 schools of the Greek, Armenian and Jewish minorities were attacked and looted. War law was imposed, tanks drove up, Istanbul was like a battlefield. 15 dead, 500 wounded – “above all, the centuries -old tradition of living together was wounded,” writes Dündar.

Thousands of Greeks fled: Out of 90,000 people, the municipality shrank “within a year and a half to 30,000, later to 5000”. Neureiche from Anatolia took over apartments and shops at ridicule prices, a turning point in the history of Türkiye: “The rule of the province began,” says Dündar.

“Three days” is the name of a 90 -page story by Markaris in the volume “The death of the Odysseus” (2016). It begins on Monday, September 5, 1955, and ends with an epilogue on Thursday, September 8, 1955. In it, the author outlines the prehistory of the riots: the aftermath of the “Asia Asian disaster” from 1922; The deeply rooted distrust between Greeks and Turks; The fear of the Armenians moving from the 1915 genocide; the “Cyprus conflict”; The violent nationalist vapors; The poisoning role of the churches; Economic problems and political rankings behind the scenes. On September 6th, shortly after midnight, there is a bomb explosion in Thessaloniki. “There will be riot,” warns a Turkish commissioner in Istanbul. In the afternoon, newspaper sellers roar out the headlines of the tabloid press. And then: “A dull roar”, from half past half past five the bursting of shop windows. “A disaster of biblical dimensions!” Shouts a Greek eyewitness. Then, from Tuesday to Wednesday, “the caterpillar chains of the tanks”.

Riots or pogrom?

“For two days, Istanbul was transformed into hell for all non -Muslims,” ​​recalls Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish writer and Nobel Prize winner from 2006. In his book »Istanbul. It is said: “In the morning after that night, in which every non-Muslim ran to be gelynched, the Istaklal-Straße in Beyoglu was littered with the remains of things that the looters had not been able to carry out of the destroyed shops, but had nevertheless ruined. On fabrics, carpets and clothes in all colors and sizes, there were ramped refrigerators, radio apparatus and washing machines, all of the things that just came up in Turkey … “Later it came out” that state agitators had promised the mob that it could be looted to their hearts’

What Can Dündar calls “the change of ownership of capital in a single night for a ridicule price” means in the crime novel “The Nanny” by Markaris “illegal enrichment”. He writes of “riots” and “tumulties”, at one point also of the “September pogrom”. What was that, I ask the writer personally? “Turks still refer to the events as riots,” he replies, “everyone else calls them pogroms.”

The responsible Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes (1899–1961) still enjoys “very high reputation in Turkey,” says Wikipedia. In the 1980s there are streets and the international Izmir Airport named after him, in Istanbul a monumental mausoleum, the Adnan Menderes Anit Mezar, was built. A university also received its name.

The causes of hate and other skirmishes have not yet been removed, and it continues to bubble between Turkey and Greece.