The Istanbul Riots, September 1955

Istanbul is Turkey=s largest city and the home to its largest ethnically Greek population, a remnant of the Byzantine and Ottoman periods. It remains a Aholy city@ to Greeks, the Constantinople of its last great empire and the seat of the Eastern Orthodox patriarchate. The outbreak of violence there at the time the Cyprus issue was becoming nettlesome for the two Amotherlands@ was a calculated attempt by Turkey=s leaders to arouse the Turkish nation to resist Greek Cypriots= intention to unify with Greece. The passage below, from Robert Holland=s Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 1954-1959, explains the politics of this brutal episode, which still rankles in Greek memory.

On the afternoon of 6 September anti-Greek riots erupted in Istanbul and continued for nearly twenty-four hours. News of what happened filtered out only very gradually over the next few days. A full account was subsequently cobbled together by the British Consul-General, Michael Stewart (later Foreign Secretary in a Labour Government). The riots had allegedly been sparked by rumours of a bomb planted at Ataturk's birthplace, currently the Turkish Consulate in Salonica. In fact, rumours of an assault on this establishment were a ritualized signal for any Turkish action of an anti-Greek kind, and Stewart's enquiries soon discounted the spontaneity of the demonstrations. Zorlu's uncompromising statements in London had worked on the emotions of the Turkish mob in Istanbul, which proceeded 'to display in a peculiarly brutal and useless way their hatred of the Greeks'. From its original epicentre in Taksim Square, the trouble rippled out during the evening through the old suburb of Pera, the smashing and looting of Greek commercial property being executed, Stewart reported, 'with a method and determination which would have done credit to any thorough-going barbarian'. The Turkish Police were not only largely passive towards this destruction, but discriminated in the protection which they afforded to western embassies. Guards were stationed around some European legations even before the violence got under way. Only a single policeman, however, appeared in front of the British residence, who shortly drifted off. Army troops remained, meanwhile, in the side streets, and when they did enter the main avenues, did nothing to restrain the looters. The brunt of the damage was sustained by Greek business premises and residential areas in old Istanbul, but also extended to Greek centres along the Bosphorus. Greek Churches were especially singled out, the Panayia, one of the oldest Byzantine structures, being gutted. At least one Orthodox priest died as his Church was incinerated. There were also, allegedly, a number of rapes of Greek women. Similar, though rather less uncontrolled, disturbances occurred elsewhere in Turkey where there was a Greek presence, especially at Izmir, where the families of Greek officers serving at NATO Regional Headquarters were evacuated. In fact, what was universally recognized to be a highly reprehensible outburst in retrospect constituted something more profound. It marked, as one historian has noted, 'the beginning of the end of the historic Greek community in Turkey '."

Who was responsible? The very simultaneity with which the trouble had erupted in various places, both in European and Asiatic Turkey, indicated a degree of planning. The Turkish Government blamed the Communists, though few if any others found this convincing. The 'Cyprus is Turkish Party', led by the fanatical Hikmet Bil, had been a visible presence in the streets, but in Stewart's opinion it was not capable of the 'methodical destruction' involved. He blamed extreme nationalists in league with hooligan elements. As the dust settled, officials in the British Foreign Office entertained no doubt that Menderes and Zorlu 'knew all about the business' from the start, even if the riots had gone beyond what was originally intended. Their political purpose was to demonstrate unequivocally the seriousness of the Turkish claims over Cyprus. In this vein the actions were directed principally against Greece, but they were a vivid reminder, as well, to the British (and also to the Americans, presently unpopular in Turkey following a cut in aid payments, whose Embassy was also afforded scant protection). In these ways the riots in Istanbul and Izmir were a necessary coda to the London conference. British responses were mixed from the start. Some in Whitehall shared Stewart's disgust. Others welcomed the fact that the Greeks were being given 'a taste of their own medicine@ -- the phrase was in vogue -- whilst one even greeted the burning down of the ancient Panayia as the welcome liquidation of a 'major eyesore'. " The most telling reaction was that of Macmillan himself, who, when advised by his own officials, as well as Ambassador Bowker in Ankara, that the United Kingdom should 'court a sharp rebuff by admonishing Turkey, omitted to do so." Instead, a note of distinctly mild disapproval was dispatched to Menderes. There was no doubt that the Turkish outburst had been an embarrassment, not least with the United Nations in view; but it had its uses, as Macmillan was not too fastidious to grasp.

In this connection, note must also be taken, however, of the allegation made in Greek quarters that the British were directly compromised in these events. There are at least a few wisps of evidence which might lead to this apparently wild charge not being rejected totally out of hand. When Zorlu was on trial for his life in Turkey after the 1960 revolution in that country, some of the charges related to the disturbances of September 1955, and it emerged from state records that the Foreign Minister had telephoned Istanbul from London to say that 'a little activity will be useful); the similarity to language being used in the British Foreign Office ('a few riots. . . will do us nicely') is transparent. One imponderable here is the growing involvement in Cyprus matters of MI-6, who, it appears from the memoirs of one agent, were presently bugging the Greek Embassy in London. The Americans did not feel able to reject outrightly Greek allegations of British complicity; he 'could not read the British mind' was all a senior State Department official felt able to say privately on the matter. A balanced judgement is that whilst there was no direct complicity of the sort alleged, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that someone, somewhere on the British side exhibited a calculated complaisance when 'a little activity' was broached by the Turks (with whom extensive talks were going on outside the conference throughout). Whatever the truth may have been, the effect in Athens could only be very damaging. >I think that for the first time I have been here', one of Ambassador Peake's staff summed it up grimly, 'we face the prospect of having the whole country against us.=

What was more important than the largely lost cause of Anglo-Greek relations were the repercussions for the integrity of NATO. In Washington it was admitted that, given the provocation offered, the Greek Government acted throughout the crisis with 'exemplary coolness'. The withdrawal of the Greek contingent from NATO Regional Headquarters in this light was an understandable sop thrown by the Athenian authorities to their own public opinion. One American action at this time, nevertheless, grated badly in Greece, and began a slow but inexorable slide not only in Greek-American relations, but in Greece's relations with the Western Alliance as a whole." In the wake of the disturbances, President Eisenhower sent identical notes to Prime Ministers Menderes and Constantine Karamanlis (the latter a relatively young politician who, with the backing of the Americans and King Paul, had succeeded to the Greek premiership on Papagos' death) deploring antagonism between the two nations and calling for calm. This failure to make any distinction between perpetrator and victim sent a shock-wave through highly-strung Greek feelings. Over the following weeks American diplomacy played the leading role in trying to limit the damage to NATO and to coax the Greek contingent back to Regional Headquarters, so plugging a hole on the south-eastern flank of the alliance. The United States succeeded when at the end of October, in a piquant ceremony, the Greek flag was raised again in Izmir in the presence of Greek and Turkish troops, as well as a minister from Ankara. Despite this, for the first time since the civil war neutralist forces received a boost in Greek politics, with long-term effects not only for Cyprus, but for the future of Greek democracy. It was the riots in Istanbul and their aftermath, flowing in no small part from the conference in London, which first made plain what in Washington was described as 'the most dangerous smell' of the Cyprus quarrel . . .

. . . Nowhere, of course, was this ugly smell more pungent than in Cyprus, where the local administration had to do what it could to keep the situation from disintegrating. It was in the wake of the Istanbul disturbances, Lawrence Durrell related in his memoir, Bitter Lemons, that there was a sharp change of atmosphere in his village of Bellapaix, and that the local makhtar advised him to leave (what was known as the old 'Kyrenia colony', ever-popular with expatriate painters and writers, soon became depleted). For the administration, the presence of the Archbishop was always the eye of the storm. This was illustrated when it fell to be considered what would happen if the Archbishop got stopped at a road block. Armitage's conclusion was that whilst Makarios should not himself be subjected to a search -- he would, the Governor remarked, hardly be hiding a machine gun under his cassock -- those travelling with him should be. Any such searches had, it was felt, to be carried out speedily, to forestall the possibility of a crowd gathering, leading to a disturbance which might quickly get beyond the control of the Police. On 8 September Makarios' car was stopped at a check in Famagusta. As luck would have it, the British soldiers concerned did not recognize the Archbishop, or the golden rod by his side. There was a commotion until a Greek Police Sergeant came along and identified the Primate. By then there was a crowd of over 2,000 people milling angrily about. After hurried requests for instructions to Police Headquarters, Makarios was allowed to proceed (though his companions were frisked). This incident was reported on the BBC lunchtime news in Britain, and Lennox-Boyd found himself lobbied by some Conservative MPs as to why the Archbishop had been left alone. The minister promptly complained to Armitage that Makarios should either have not been stopped at all, or, if he were stopped, the search operation should have been 'rigorously carried through', including the person of His Beatitude. The episode was relatively petty, but it showed not only the practical difficulties of keeping order in Nicosia, but also how the 'realities' -- and the logic arising from those realities -- facing the British and Cyprus Governments were by no means always the same.

The Cyprus authorities, in fact, had decided that it could not make further progress in stemming disorder unless it took decisive action to restore its battered prestige. An address by the Archbishop at Kykko monastery on 10 September in which he declared that he 'would fight to the end for self-determination', and EOKA pamphlets circulating on the same occasion affirming that after recent events 'the real conflict will now begin'.

From Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 1954-59 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 75-78. Footnotes are not included.