THE MIRACLE
A True Story |
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in a state of terror and those who had survived the ordeal
were aware of a menacing atmosphere. Hellenism in
Constantinople was never to recover from the severe blow
it received that night. Gradually the Greeks began to
stream out of the city; having lost their properties, they
now had to concerned themselves with saving their lives.
The exodus of Greeks from Constantinople took on
gigantic proportions. Whole suburbs and settlements once
densely populated by Greeks were decimated. Churches
formerly brimmed to overflowing, their congregations
filling the courtyards as well, were now deserted. The
number of children attending the Greek schools began to
dwindle and one by one the schools were obliged to close
down.
Shortly after the events of that September night, Oktay
Engin, the Muslim student who had delivered the bomb
to the Turkish Consulate in Thessaloniki, was arrested by
the Greek police. When he was released on 15th June,
1956 he escaped to Turkey were he was given a welcome
befitting a national hero. The supposedly serious Turkish
newspaper, Cumhurriyet, employed him to translate news
and comments broadcast by Athens Radio. He was later
to be made Chief of Police in Ankara.
Only three days after the incidents of 6th September,
1955, the leader of the Turkish opposition People's Party,
Ismet Inonu, made a provocatively clear statement at his
party's headquarters:
"It is a good thing that our party was not involved in
the incidents; nonetheless, the events were a well-organised
national action and beneficial in ridding the country of
the Greeks, who are a trial and tribulation to the Turks!"
Five years later, when a military coup overturned the
government of Adnan Menderes in May, 1960, the prime
minister and his foreign minister, Fatin Rüstü Zorlu, were sent to appear at a court martial on the island of
Plati. At the trial, which lasted from 20th October, 1960
to 5th January, 1961, both men were found guilty of,
among other charges, the organisation and execution of
the acts of vandalism carried out on the night of 6th
September, 1955.
The trial verdict said they were found guilty not because
they organised the pogrom but because of the bad publicity
and damage to Turkey's international image which the
incidents provoked.
A few weeks after the incidents, the village of Gerze in
Asia Minor, from where most of the Lazes who had been
involved in the rioting came, was totally destroyed in a
major fire, while two other villages whose inhabitants
also took part in the raid were razed to the ground in a
powerful earthquake.
69 and 70
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