In our conversations with my mother, we sometimes talk about the old days and our old neighbors. Recently, she said something I had never heard of. While talking about an old Armenian neighbor in our apartment building in Kurtuluş, she said, “His wife didn’t see anyone much, she was traumatized after September 6th.” The neighbors she mentioned lived in that apartment building throughout the 70s and 80s. In other words, the poor woman experienced that trauma for decades.My mother also witnessed the September 6th-7th (1955) pogrom when she was a teenager. Sometimes she would tell stories about how the mob passing in front of their house in Kumkapı Nişanca and headed for the student dormitory where the local Greek girls were staying at the other end of the street. She would always stop talking there and wouldn’t continue. I wouldn’t ask either.
My mother also witnessed the September 6th-7th (1955) pogrom when she was a teenager. Sometimes she would tell stories about how the mob passing in front of their house in Kumkapı Nişanca and headed for the student dormitory where the Rum (Greeks live in Turkey) girls were staying at the other end of the street. She would always stop talking there and wouldn’t continue. I wouldn’t ask either. The fact that she chose to stop there also tells a lot.
Exactly 69 years have passed since the pogrom. Especially in the last 20 years, many books have been published, panels have been organized, and we have rarely come across programs on television that try to properly commemorate this pogrom. Of course, we should also mention the series ‘Club’, which is broadcast on Netflix and touches on the subject to a considerable extent.
Historically, there must be no aspect of the pogrom that has not been researched. The most striking of all these publications, was the publication consisting of photographs taken by the Patriarchate photographer of the period, Dimitrios Kalumenos, reflecting the brutality experienced in all the Greek schools, churches, cemeteries and shops that were looted in those two days. The book, prepared by Serdar Korucu and published by İstos Publications, includes 60 of the approximately 1500 photographs that Kalumenos took in these places, as well as his biography.
Despite the military restrictions on taking photographs in those days, Kalumenos took to the streets with his Leica camera and documented the pogrom with thousands of photographs.
We later learned that the government, disturbed by Kalumenos’ photography activities on September 6-7, 1955, arrested the photographer in 1957, and deported him, accusing him of being an “enemy of the Republic of Turkey.” We also know that the Democrat Party government, which was in power at the time, held a group of leftists responsible for the incident and imprisoned them immediately after. These people were later released, and it was revealed that the pogrom was actually organized by the Democrat Party government and the state.
Let’s go back to our question: Did we face with September 6-7? It is very difficult to say “yes”. Maybe we came close at one point – I am talking about the years when the solution process for the Kurdish issue was on the table, when a commemoration could be held in Taksim for the Armenian Genocide.
We have unfortunately passed that point. Yes, we have not gone back to 1955, but we are in an era where the voice of nationalism is louder as a mentality, the far-right has found a wide ground especially on social media, and thousands of people follow false, inaccurate, and fake information. The ‘post-truth era’ does not explain what we are living in, this is the reign of lies.
With such information, looting and lynching rituals are organized against immigrants, and fake information is shared thousands of times on social media. In March this year, dozens of racist comments were made under a post we shared on 'Agos’ social media account commemorating the 1964 exiles. They all got the subject wrong, but that didn’t matter. Since they were Greeks, it was perfectly "normal" for them to be expelled.
On the other hand, even in the years we were closest to confrontation, there were people – from the right or the nationalist circles – who "seemed" to be critical of the subject. And according to them, September 6-7 was a British plot. Otherwise, such things wouldn’t have happened in these lands.
This logic has always existed in this country. The 'others' had plotted the events before September 12, 1980, and the September 12, 1980 coup was the work of the US. Of course, there may be some truth to these and similar theories – I emphasize, some – but it is one thing, for someone to benefit from what is happening, and another thing for what we do as a society, whether we confront what we do or not. How the state treats its own citizens is another thing. We still haven’t confronted this, and we can’t.
