The Turkish Pogrom of 1955 and the Elimination of the Greek Minority of

With an official statement, issued on 7 September 1955, the Menderes government expressed its deepest suffer for the losses suffered by Greek minority in Istanbul. The Turkish tip Minister blamed the riots on communists, beneathlining its commitment to the exemplary punishment of the perpetrators (Xristidis 2000). The rendering of the pogrom as a conspiracy of international communism was repeated during the peculiar meeting of the Grand National Assembly, which took place on September 12, 1955. However, under the force of circumstances, Adnan Menderes admitted that the government knew about the demonstration on September 6th, in advance. Also, the Turkish Prime Minister argued that, the riot was a spontaneous appearance of national sentiment of the Turkish people who was stimulated by the news show about the imminent massacre of Turkish Cypriots on 28 August. Moreover, he verbalise that the hysteria that gripped the crowd was so strong that immobilized the police forces, whic h gear up themselves between their quest to restore order and their commitment to the homeland, thus deviation full freedom of movement to the protesters. The claim of the Turkish government that the republic suffered a severe blow because of the Communists was met with scepticism by foreign observers (Guven 2006). frontmost of all, the number of Communists in Turkey was small and secondly, their activities were under the watchful eye of the Turkish Intelligence Services (MIT). It seems that, only a small serving of people who were arrested immediately after the episodes were communists. The arrest of those who had communist beliefs, such as the well-known Turkish writer Aziz Nessin, was totally unjustified, since there was no conclusion for their participation i... ...itly the Christian Orthodox and Jews, which were the largest minority groups from Turkey. In addition, according to jingoistic elites, these minorities were assimilable thus, were not capable of becoming part of the Turkish nation. Also, they stated that, the Non-Muslim minorities, mainly the Greek, were not composed of loyal citizens but possible traitors to the Turkish state (Guven 2006). Adnan Menderes believed that was national and extremely important responsibility of every Turk to weapon the Turkification, in an attempt to establish an independent Turkish state. A corollary of this sentiment was the effort of assimilation of the Greek minority by force, exercising a policy of discrimination and restrictions against it. In this context, the language, culture and desires of Non-Muslim minorities had to be connected with the autobiography and dignity of Turks.