The Istanbul pogrom, also known as the Istanbul riots, were a series of state-sponsored anti-Greek mob attacks directed primarily at Istanbul's Greek minority on 6–7 September 1955. The pogrom was orchestrated by the governing Democrat Party in Turkey with the cooperation of various security organizations (Tactical Mobilisation Group, Counter-Guerrilla and National Security Service). The events were triggered by the bombing of the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Greece, the house where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was born in 1881. The bomb was actually planted by a Turkish usher at the consulate, who was later arrested and confessed. The Turkish press was silent about the arrest, and instead, it insinuated that Greeks had set off the bomb.
A Turkish mob, most of whose members were trucked into the city in advance, assaulted Istanbul's Greek community for nine hours. Although the mob did not explicitly call for the killing of Greeks, over a dozen people died during or after the attacks as a result of beatings and arson. Armenians and Jews were also harmed. The police were mostly ineffective, and the violence continued until the government declared martial law in Istanbul, called in the army and ordered it to put down the riots. The material damage was estimated at US$500 million (equivalent to $6 billion in 2025), including the burning of churches and the devastation of shops and private homes.
After the military coup of 1960, Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and Foreign Minister Fatin Rüştü Zorlu were convicted of inciting the pogrom in the Yassıada trials. Being found guilty in other cases, they were sentenced to death by hanging.
The pogrom, together with the 1964–1965 expulsion of Istanbul Greeks, initiated under İsmet İnönü’s CHP-led government, greatly accelerated the emigration of ethnic Greeks from Turkey. The Greek population of Turkey declined from 119,822 in 1927, to about 7,000 in 1978. In Istanbul alone, the Greek-speaking 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. The attacks have been described as a continuation of a process of Turkification that started with the decline of the Ottoman Empire, as roughly 40% of the properties attacked belonged to other minorities. The pogrom has been compared in some media to the Kristallnacht, the 1938 pogrom against Jews throughout Nazi Germany.
Background
Greeks of Istanbul
Constantinople (modern Istanbul) was the capital of the Byzantine Empire until 1453, when the city was conquered by Ottoman forces. A large indigenous Greek community continued to live in the multi-ethnic Ottoman capital city and enjoyed a relatively protected status under the Ottoman Millet system. The city's Greek population, particularly the Phanariotes, came to play a significant role in the social and economic life of the city and in the political and diplomatic life of the Islamic but multi-ethnic, multi-religious Ottoman Empire in general. This continued even after rebellions against Ottoman rule in Greece and the establishment of an independent Greek state in 1829, although during the Greek War of Independence massacres against local Greek communities occurred. A number of ethnic Armenians and Greeks, who served in the Ottoman Imperial diplomatic service and were even leading politicians in the 19th and early 20th century, were targeted.
Into the 19th century, the Christians of Istanbul tended to be either Greek Orthodox, members of the Armenian Apostolic Church or Catholic Levantines. Greeks and Armenians form the largest Christian population in the city. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, the population exchange agreement signed between Greece and Turkey resulted in the uprooting of all Greeks in modern Turkey (and Muslims in Greece) from where many of them had lived for centuries. But due to the Greeks' strong emotional attachment to their first capital as well as the importance of the Ecumenical Patriarchate for Greek and worldwide Orthodoxy, the Greek population of Istanbul was specifically exempted and allowed to stay in place. Nevertheless, this population began to decline, as evinced by demographic statistics.
Punitive Turkish nationalist exclusivist measures, such as a 1932 parliamentary law, barred Greek citizens living in Turkey from a series of 30 trades and professions from tailoring and carpentry to medicine, law and real estate. The Varlık Vergisi tax imposed in 1942 also served to reduce the economic potential of Christian and Jewish businesspeople in Turkey.
Context
In the early 1950s, Turkey had close relations with Greece. In 1952, Paul of Greece became the first Greek Monarch to visit a Turkish head of state, which was soon followed by Turkish president Celâl Bayar's visit to Greece. However, the relations soured starting in 1953, when the armed struggle of the Greek Cypriots, the majority of the island's population, aiming for political union of Cyprus with Greece, started. Soon after, Georgios Grivas formed the armed organization EOKA. This turn of events was politically exploited in Turkey by the Turkish nationalists of Kıbrıs Türktür Cemiyeti (Cyprus is Turkish) organization
The Greek government had appealed in 1954 to the United Nations to demand self-determination for Cyprus. Britain had a ruling mandate over the mostly ethnic Greek island, and wanted the Cyprus dispute to be resolved without being taken to the United Nations Security Council, due to fears of how the Greek and Greek Cypriot parties would portray the conflict. To this end, the British government resolved to temper Greek demands by encouraging the Turkish government to publicly express their support for Turkish-Cypriot cause, which they estimated would ensure the issue would not reach the UN Security Council. British reports from the period made disparate assessments on the state of Greco-Turkish relations; one by the British Embassy in August 1954 stated that the relationship was of a superficial nature and that a minor source of tension, such as a hypothetical Greek destruction of Atatürk's house in Thessaloniki, would cause permanent damage; while an official of the Foreign Office said that a stern stance towards Greece would be to Turkey's benefit. MP John Strachey warned that Turkey had a large ethnic Greek minority in Istanbul as a card to play against Greece if it considered annexing an independent Cyprus against the wishes of Turkish-Cypriots.
The concerns about the events in Cyprus led to the formation of a number of nationalist student and irredentist organizations in Istanbul, such as the National Federation of Turkish Students (Turkish: Türkiye Milli Talebe Federasyonu), the National Union of Turkish Students, and Hikmet Bil's (editor of the major newspaper Hürriyet) "Cyprus is Turkish" Association (Turkish: Kıbrıs Türktür Cemiyeti), who had protested against the Greek minority and the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
In 1955, a propaganda campaign involving the Turkish press galvanized public opinion against the Greek minority, targeting Athenogoras, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, in particular, accusing him of collecting donations for Enosis. Leading the pack was Hürriyet, which wrote on 28 August 1955: "If the Greeks dare touch our brethren, then there are plenty of Greeks in Istanbul to retaliate upon." Ömer Sami Coşar from Cumhuriyet wrote on 30 August:
Neither the Patriarchate nor the Rûm [i.e. Greek] minority ever openly supported Turkish national interests when Turkey and Athens clashed over certain issues. In return, the great Turkish nation never raised its voice about this. But do the Phanar Patriarchate and our Rûm citizens in Istanbul have special missions assigned by Greece in its plans to annex Cyprus? While Greece was crushing Turks in Western Thrace and was appropriating their properties by force, our Rûm Turkish citizens lived as free as we do, sometimes even more comfortably. We think that these Rûms, who choose to remain silent in our struggle with Greece, are clever enough not to fall into the trap of four or five provocateurs.
Tercüman, Yeni Sabah, and Gece Postası followed suit. The "Cyprus is Turkish" Association (CTA) stepped up activities in the weeks leading up to the riots, increasing the number of branches from three in August to ten by the time the attacks took place. On September 4, Hikmet Bil ordered students at Taksim Square, the heart of the city, to burn Greek newspapers. The same day, Kamil Önal of the CTA – and the National Security Service – handed out to students twenty thousands banners emblazoned "Cyprus is Turkish".
The intercommunal violence in Cyprus prompted Turkey to transmit a diplomatic note to the British government, which invited the Turkish and Greek governments to a conference in London, which started on August 26. The day before the Tripartite London Conference (29 August–7 September 1955) began, Prime Minister Menderes claimed that Greek Cypriots were planning a massacre of Turkish Cypriots. Sensing an opportunity to temper Greek demands, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan advised the Turkish delegates that they should be stern. Turkish Foreign Minister Fatin Rüştü Zorlu launched a harsh opening salvo, stating that Turkey would reconsider its commitment to the Treaty of Lausanne unless Greece reconsidered its position on Cyprus. The Greek delegates, surprised by harshness of the speech, backed down during the negotiations, although they did not abandon the idea of enosis with Cyprus.
Deflecting domestic attention to Cyprus was politically convenient for the Menderes government, which was suffering from an ailing economy. Although a minority, the Greek population played a prominent role in the city's business life, making it a convenient scapegoat during the economic crisis in the mid-50s which saw Turkey's economy contract (with an 11% GDP/capita decrease in 1954). The DP responded first with inflationary policies, then when that failed, with authoritarianism and populism. DP's policies also introduced rural-urban mobility, which exposed some of the rural population to the lifestyles of the urban minorities. The three chief destinations were the largest three cities: Istanbul, Ankara, and İzmir. Between 1945 and 1955, the population of Istanbul increased from 1 million to about 1.6 million. Many of these new residents found themselves in shantytowns (Turkish: gecekondus), and constituted a prime target for populist policies.
Finally, the conference fell apart on 6 September, the first day the subject of Cyprus would be broached at the conference, when news broke of the bombing of the Turkish consulate (and birthplace of Atatürk) in Greece's second-largest city, Thessaloniki.
Pogrom events
Planning
The 1961 Yassıada Trial after 1960 coup d'état accused Menderes and Foreign Minister Fatin Rüştü Zorlu of planning the riots. Though both of them rejected the claims, it is believed by scholars that Menderes assented to the organization of protests in Istanbul against the Greeks, but the extent of knowledge of Zorlu, who had been in London for the conference, is unclear. Interior Minister Namık Gedik was also accused of involvement, though he was not tried as he committed suicide before the trials started. According to Zorlu's lawyer at the Yassiada trial, a mob of 300,000 was marshaled in a radius of 40 miles (60 km) around the city for the attacks. The role of the National Security Service was not clarified at the trials, since the sole aim of the junta was to sentence the DP government.
The trial revealed that the fuse for the consulate bomb was sent from Turkey to Thessaloniki on 3 September. During the Yassıada Trial it was claimed that a twenty-year-old university student named Oktay Engin was given the mission of installing the explosives, two sticks of gelignite, in the consulate's garden. The consul M. Ali Balin allegedly first pressured consulate employee Hasan Uçar, but Engin was brought in when Uçar resisted. Both of them were arrested in Greece after the attack.
Engin was born in the Greek town of Komotini (Turkish: Gümülcine) to Faik Engin, a well-known parliamentarian in the late '40s and one of the three ethnic Turkish members of the Greek parliament between 1946–1950. Oktay Engin became one of the few ethnic Turkish students to graduate from Greek gymnasiums in those years. Turkish officials encouraged him to study law, offering him a scholarship, so that he could promote the interests of Turkish citizens in Greece. He thus entered Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1953. When he was in his second year, he was accused of incitement in the bombing incident. Engin said that he had been followed by Greek intelligence agents so closely from the start of his university education, that he could name one ("Triondafilos").
In his 2005 book, Speros Vryonis documents the direct role of the Demokrat Parti organization and government-controlled trade unions in amassing the rioters that swept Istanbul. Ten of Istanbul's 18 branches of the "Cyprus is Turkish" Association were run by DP officials. This organization played a crucial role in inciting anti-Greek activities. Most of the rioters came from western Asia Minor. His case study of Eskişehir shows how the party there recruited 400 to 500 workers from local factories, who were carted by train with third class-tickets to Istanbul. These recruits were promised the equivalent of 6 USD, which was never paid. They were accompanied by Eskişehir police, who were charged with coordinating the destruction and looting once the contingent was broken up into groups of 20–30 men, and the leaders of the party branches.
While the DP took the blame for the events, it was revealed in 2005 that the riots were also a product of the Turkey's Tactical Mobilization Group; a clandestine special forces unit. Four star general Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu, the right-hand man of General Kemal Yamak who led the Turkish outpost of Operation Gladio under the Tactical Mobilization Group (Turkish: Seferberlik Taktik Kurulu), proudly reminisced about his involvement in the riots, calling them "a magnificent organization".
Before the events in September 6, some buildings owned by Greeks and other non-Muslim minorities were marked with cross signs in order to make the arson easier.