1955 Pogrom Amidst Post-Ottoman Turkification
In 1955, amidst intensified nationalism, an Anti-Greek pogrom led to the destruction of İstiklal Avenue and much of its surrounding neighbourhood. Beyoğlu district was then home to many Greeks. As quoted by Pamuk, Yahya Kemal Beyatlı, late 19th-century Turkish poet and writer, described Pera as “the district where one never hears a call to prayer” (Pamuk, 257). Pamuk himself, who was born in 1953 offers a snapshot into the contemporary sentiment about the Greeks:
“Like most Istanbul Turks, I had little interest in Byzantium as a child. I associated the word with spooky, bearded, black-robed Greek Orthodox priests, with the aqueducts that still ran through the city, with Hagia Sophia and the red-brick walls of old churches” (Pamuk, 170).
This pogrom marks a moment when Turkish nationalism has intensified beyond the clarification of eastern and western identities that crystallised during the War of Independence. This tension, one between Turks and Greeks, is divided along finer lines. It can also be read as a break between historic and modern, with the Turkish Republic coming to separate itself from its Byzantine roots. In 1953, Turkey had begun to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Conquest of Istanbul. “It was westernization and Turkish nationalism that prompted Istanbul to begin celebrating the conquest” (Pamuk, 172).
“In order to adequately understand the dynamics behind these riots one first needs to situate them in the broader historical context of the emergence, development and crystallisation of Turkish nationalism and national identity that marked the non-Muslim citizens of the republic as the ‘others’ and potential enemies of the real Turkish nation” (Kuyucu).
“So for that night, every non-Muslim who dared walk the streets of the city risked being lynched; the next morning the shops of Beyoğlu stood in ruins, their windows smashed, their doors kicked in, their wares either plundered or gleefully destroyed. Strewn everywhere were clothes, carpets, bolts of cloth, overturned refrigerators, radios, and washing machines; the streets were piled high with broken porcelain sets, toys, kitchenware, and fragments of the aquariums and chandeliers that were so fashionable at the time. Here and there, amid the bicycles, overturned and burned cars, hacked-up pianos, and broken mannequins gazing up at the sky from the cloth-covered streets, were the tanks that had come too late to quell the riots” (Pamuk, 173-174).