Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Greek photography exhibit recalling 1955 riots attacked in Istanbul

Ahh, what a moderate and enlightened Muslim nation. We should let them into the EU. Where is Jan Sobieski when you need him?

Greek photography exhibit recalling 1955 riots attacked in Istanbul

Ultranationalist Turkish militants attacked an exhibit in Istanbul of rare photographs of violent anti-Greek incidents that occurred in the city 50 years ago, ripping photos off the walls and throwing eggs at the display. Shouting, "Turkey is Turkish and will stay that way", the assailants burst into the exhibit on its opening night, scuffling with the guests. Riot police arrived and roughly rounded up the militants, arresting three of them, police said. "I'm merely defending my country," one militant said. Serious riots that broke out in Istanbul on the night of September 6, 1955, led to looting in Greek neighborhoods and the destruction of many of the city's churches and synagogues. More than 5,000 shops belonging to the Greek minority were looted by an emotional crowd of several thousand people reacting to rumors of a bomb attack at the birthplace of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, in Salonika, northern Greece. The army had to intervene to quell the violence. Turkey is officially 99 percent Muslim. Its 45,000 Armenians, 35,000 Jews, 20,000 Syrians and 4,000 Greek Orthodox faithful live primarily in Istanbul. Known as Constantinople under Greece's last great empire, Istanbul remains the seat of the Eastern Orthodox patriarchate, the highest authority in the Orthodox world.

Turkey: On-the-spot circumcisions

Published this month by Greekworks.com, the work subtitled The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul shows that riots which destroyed 4,500 Greek homes, 3,500 businesses, 90 religious institutions and 36 schools in 45 distinct communities, resulted not only from “fervid chauvinism, or even [from] the economic resentment of many impoverished rioters, but [from] the profound religious fanaticism in many segments of Turkish society.” Greeks and Armenians were savagely beaten and there were gang rapes. Turkish writer Aziz Nessin says that any male passer-by the Turks considered a Greek was forced to show if he had been circumcised. In some cases, Nessin says, Turks carried out “circumcisions” on the spot with knives.

Letter To the Hellenic Parliament: Do Not Deny Genocide

The Turkish state's elimination of its Armenian, Greek and Assyrian populations was part and parcel of the same effort to obliterate Turkey's Christian minorities. All were perpetrated during the same time frame, by the same governments, and using the same methods - namely, massacres, labor camps and death marches under the guise of deportations.

Turkey Says 523,000 Were Killed by Armenians

Turkey flatly denies that there was any systematic effort at killing or forcing the Armenians out of eastern Anatolia, where the Armenians were trying to establish a separate state. with support from the French, British and Russians. Turkey contends that, instead, hundreds of thousands of Turks were killed by Armenians as they tried to establish themselves as the majority population in that region.

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