It was a warm September evening in 1955, in the heart of Constantinople, a city still echoing with the ghosts of its Greek Byzantine past. The Greek community, though diminished, thrived in neighborhoods like Pera and Fener, their lives woven into the city’s fabric through shops, churches, and schools. The Greek minority, already marginalized by years of discriminatory policies, felt the weight of suspicion.
On September 6, a false report spread like a spark in dry grass: a bomb had allegedly damaged the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki, near the house where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was born.
The bombing was a staged provocation, orchestrated by Turkish authorities to incite rage. By dusk, the city was a tinderbox. Mobs, organized and armed with clubs, knives, and gasoline, poured into the streets, targeting Greek homes, businesses, and churches. The government’s role was clear; lists of Greek properties had been prepared in advance, and the police stood by, complicit or indifferent.
Dimitris, a baker in Beyoğlu, is locking up his small shop. Suddenly, a roar of voices fills the air. A crowd, chanting Kemalist slogans, smashes his windows, looting everything; shelves, ovens, even family photos. Down the street, Eleni, a widow running a grocery, watches helplessly as her store is set ablaze. The mob moves with precision, targeting Greek-owned properties with chilling efficiency. Churches, like the Zoodochos Pigi in Balat, are desecrated; holy icons are shattered, and altars burned. The Greek cemetery in Şişli is vandalized, graves defiled in an orgy of destruction.
4,348 Greek businesses, 110 hotels, 27 pharmacies, 23 schools, and 73 churches were damaged or destroyed.
At least 11 people were killed, though some sources claim up to 15, with hundreds injured and numerous women assaulted. The violence wasn’t random; it was a calculated assault, fueled by propaganda and enabled by state inaction. The mobs, often transported from outside Constantinople, carried out their rampage over two days, September 6–7, leaving the Greek community in ruins.
The pogrom was a death knell. Many lost everything; homes, livelihoods, security. The psychological toll was immense; the exodus of Greeks from Turkey, reduced a once-vibrant community of over 150.000 to fewer than 2.000 (maybe more) today.
As dawn broke on September 7, Constantinople became "Istanbul". The last Greeks, descendants of those who found the City, who built the city, who defended the City, who had history in this City, were expelled from their ancestral homeland. Streets were littered with broken glass and shattered dreams.
The Greek community, a cornerstone of the city’s history, was left to pick up the pieces.
That was, the anti-Greek "Istanbul pogrom" that took place on 6–7 September 1955.
How can we forget all the thing they did to us? They came and they expelled Greeks from their homes.
Constantinople, Asia Minor, Cappadocia, Pontus, Cyprus, Ionia.
We will never forget, everything they did to us.
We will never coexist with them.