Diatribe: Constantinople 1955 Pogrom – The case for Genocide

The representation of the Greeks of Constantinople stirs the heartstrings of our people. It evokes an ever absent presence, a assemblage whose voices, though agelong silenced, proceed to haunt the boulevards of Pera, the shores of the Bosporus, the sokaks of Fanari. Their lack is palpable, for they stay everyplace successful representation while scarcely contiguous successful fact. The calamity that befell them successful September of 1955 is often called by us a διωγμός, a violent expulsion, 1 successful a bid of many. At times it is adjacent described arsenic a pogrom, a word that hints astatine mob violence yet conceals the deeper plan down the catastrophe. Increasingly, however, ineligible and genocide scholars reason that what took spot successful Constantinople implicit the people of those harrowing September days constitutes a signifier genocide, orchestrated with intent to destruct a radical whose roots successful the City stretched backmost to its very founding.

International jurisprudence and captious theory alike punctual us that representation is ne'er static. It is contested, framed, and fixed signifier done power. The 1948 Convention connected the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, acold from being an inert ineligible document, functions arsenic a surviving instrumentality of motivation judgment. Article 2 does not measurement crimes against humanity done the fig of corpses oregon done the erection of exterminatory camps. Instead, it identifies the essence of genocide arsenic intent, the demonstrable will to destruct successful whole oregon successful portion a national, ethnic, racial, oregon spiritual group.

It is precisely present that the 1955 Constantinople pogrom becomes relevant. Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, jurist and student of planetary law, has argued persuasively successful his The Genocide against the Armenians 1915–1923 and the Relevance of the 1948 Genocide Convention that the demolition of minorities successful Turkey, including the events of 1955, satisfies the criteria acceptable distant by the Convention. The orchestrated quality of the pogrom, conceived within the apparatus of the Menderes government, is simply a substance of record. The systematic targeting of Greek spot was nary spontaneous eruption of fashionable anger. It was state-sponsored devastation designed to terrorise a assemblage into flight, and to erase its humanities beingness successful the Queen of Cities.

The model of genocide that emerges from the assistance of Raphael Lemkin, William Schabas, Leo Kuper, Helen Fein, and Jacques Semelin illuminates the meaning of the September catastrophe. Lemkin, successful Axis Rule successful Occupied Europe (1944), who gave the world the very term genocide, insisted that taste annihilation was arsenic cardinal to the transgression arsenic carnal extermination. In Constantinople, churches were desecrated, cemeteries such arsenic that astatine Valoukli defiled, and schools attacked, acts intended to sever the continuity of a community. The pogrom so exemplifies precisely the benignant of taste and spiritual demolition that Lemkin feared and sought to define.

Later jurists such arsenic William Schabas, successful Genocide successful International Law (2000, 2009), person demonstrated that numbers cannot service arsenic the decisive criterion successful defining genocide. What matters is intent, the demonstrable purpose to extinguish a community’s existence. The Greek deaths successful 1955 whitethorn person been constricted successful number, yet the terror unleashed, the displacement that followed, and the instauration of conditions that made continued residence intolerable align precisely with the principles Schabas identifies. By this measure, the pogrom speaks unmistakably of genocidal purpose.

The orchestrated quality of the pogrom besides reflects Leo Kuper’s reflection successful Genocide: Its Political Use successful the Twentieth Century (1981) that genocide often conceals itself under the disguise of nationalist upset while being directed from above. The proviso of vehicles to transportation looters, the mentation of lists of Greek owned shops, and the studied paralysis of the constabulary uncover an cognition coordinated by the state itself. Far from being the merchandise of mob frenzy, the pogrom demonstrates Kuper’s penetration that the state often operates done the guise of fashionable tumult successful bid to execute its destructive ends. Critical theorists of violence, from Hannah Arendt to Giorgio Agamben, agree, having demonstrated that the powerfulness of the state often manifests itself done the instauration of zones of exception, successful which instrumentality is suspended successful bid to annihilate the other.

Helen Fein’s characterisation of genocide arsenic the demolition of a collectivity, articulated successful Accounting for Genocide (1979) and aboriginal successful Genocide: A Sociological Perspective (1993), captures the longer trajectory of Hellenism successful Constantinople. Already weakened by the confiscatory wealth tax of 1942 and continuing restrictions connected spot and nonrecreational life, the Greek assemblage faced successful 1955 a stroke that destroyed the foundations of its κοινωνικά viability. The demolition of homes, businesses, and ineffable institutions ensured that communal beingness could nary longer beryllium sustained, forcing thousands into exile and leaving lone fragments of a erstwhile flourishing beingness successful the city.

Finally, Jacques Semelin, successful his Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide (2007), has emphasised the symbolic magnitude of genocidal violence, where the annihilation of taste and spiritual symbols becomes a means of erasing the individuality of a group. The profanation of Orthodox altars, the desecration of beatified icons, and the violation of tombs during the pogrom cannot beryllium dismissed arsenic vandalism. They were ritualised gestures of destruction, calculated to state that the Greek assemblage was to beryllium erased some physically and spiritually.

Contemporary genocide scholars such arsenic Dominik Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer person located the transgression within broader structural processes of state enactment and taste homogenisation. In Late Ottoman Genocides (2009), Schaller examines the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek cases arsenic interrelated strategies of the precocious Ottoman and aboriginal Republican elite, aimed astatine dissolving pluralism and producing a homogeneous nation. Zimmerer, successful Colonial Genocide and the Holocaust (2008), likewise interprets genocide arsenic a recurring instrumentality of statecraft, used to destruct perceived obstacles to nationalist oregon imperial projects. Within this framework, the 1955 pogrom successful Constantinople cannot beryllium work arsenic an isolated episode. It represents the continuation of policies of taste cleansing that had begun with the demolition of Armenians successful 1915 and extended done the expulsions of Greeks from Asia Minor. The September catastrophe emerges arsenic portion of a continuum of state-directed attempts to forge a culturally uniform polity done the elimination of minorities, alternatively than arsenic an aberration of mob violence. It is, a genocide.

Accepting the events of 1955 arsenic genocide carries important implications for planetary law. Such a designation would corroborate that astronomical assemblage counts oregon the infrastructure of extermination camps are not required for the transgression of genocide to beryllium established. In the lawsuit of Akayesu, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda affirmed that rape and forced displacement, when carried retired with the intent to destruct a community, autumn within the explanation of genocide. In its judgments connected Srebrenica, the International Criminal Tribunal for the erstwhile Yugoslavia underscored that the demolition of adjacent a portion of a radical within a geographically confined space could represent genocide. Precedents of this benignant show that the pogrom of Constantinople belongs squarely within established jurisprudence, where intent carries decisive weight and the method of demolition is legally secondary.

The designation of the pogrom besides sharpens the kinds of questions that indispensable beryllium asked astir conflicts successful our ain time. When communities are uprooted en masse, when their taste symbols are deliberately obliterated, and when connection is deployed to dehumanise them oregon to telephone for their disappearance, does this not rise the aforesaid ineligible and motivation concerns? Ongoing debates implicit whether the violence successful Ukraine oregon successful Gaza should beryllium framed successful terms of genocide, together with akin questions arising from conflicts elsewhere successful the world, exemplify however contested and fraught such determinations remain. The lawsuit of Constantinople demonstrates that genocide tin take the signifier of devastation directed astatine homes, churches, and livelihoods arsenic readily arsenic it tin manifest done wide killing. Recognition strengthens the rule that planetary instrumentality indispensable defender against each signifier of annihilation, careless of standard oregon method.

The bequest of 1955 besides invites reflection connected the broader Hellenic experience. The penetration of Cyprus successful 1974 brought wide displacement, the demolition of taste heritage, and the semipermanent severance of communities from ancestral homes. Can such events beryllium understood done a akin lens? Scholarship has seldom addressed this question within the model of genocide studies, yet the echoes are undeniable. Raising the question does not illness chiseled histories into one. Instead it underscores the value of applying ineligible categories consistently and confronting hard truths astir intent, destruction, and accountability. This is peculiarly pertinent considering that successful 2020, the Turkish Parliamentary Speaker’s Office rejected a draught measure seeking to person the pogrom recognised arsenic a nationalist time of mourning. Parliamentary Speaker Mustafa Şentop noted that helium recovered the wording used successful the draught measure arsenic “rough and hurtful.”

Calling the Constantinople pogrom a genocide is an enactment that demands coherence and integrity successful planetary law. Such a step would affirm that smaller-scale yet decisive campaigns of eradication autumn within the scope of the Genocide Convention. It would corroborate that the demolition of a group, whether achieved done displacement, humiliation, oregon taste annihilation, is nary little grievous than the demolition of beingness itself. In an property when planetary bodies hesitate to use the word genocide for fearfulness of governmental repercussions, Constantinople offers a touchstone: an insistence that planetary instrumentality indispensable speak intelligibly against immoderate intent to destruct a people.