Turkish Nationalists Hurl Eggs, Protest Photography Show about 1955 Pogroms

http://www.thenationalherald.com

CONSTANTINOPLE (AP) – A group of Turkish men threw eggs, unfurled a Turkish flag and shouted slogans this past Tuesday, September 6, 2005, briefly interrupting a photography show marking the 50th anniversary of anti-Greek riots in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), witnesses and news reports said.

The group called itself the "Alliance for Turkish Struggle," private NTV television said.

Turkish police detained at least two demonstrators after they stained the walls with egg and tore down photographs, said Natalie Papamitrou, a Greek studying Turkish in Constantinople.

The show was organized by the History Foundation of Turkey, a non-governmental organization, and contained around 250 photographs depicting violence against Constantinople's then-sizeable Greek minority. The two-day riots on September 6-7, 1955 were eventually suppressed by the Turkish military, but thousands of Greeks fled the country.

Black and white photographs from the series show Turkish tanks driving down Istiklal Caddesi, Istanbul's main thoroughfare, with wreckage from destroyed Greek-owned shops strewn on either side of the street.

Greek-Turkish tensions were high at the time, largely due to conflict over the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

Fahri Coker, a former Turkish military judge, donated the photographs for the series to be used after his death.

"As rich as Turkey is in ethnic, religious and cultural diversity, it also carries the same amount of tension. Even today, in some places, we see the marks of these tensions," Foundation Chairman Orhan Silier was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency at the opening of the show.

Constantinople's Greek minority now numbers less than 2,000 people.

The Associated Press posted the above on September 6. The original headline is, "Turkish Protesters Throw Eggs at Photo Show of Istanbul’s 1955 Anti-Greek riots."