All events · The War's Long Shadow

Istanbul Pogrom and the Departure of Turkey's Greeks

c. 1955–1966 · Europe & Northern Eurasia

Displacement

Displaced

52,000

The Greek foreign ministry states that more than 12,000 Greek citizens were deported within two years from 1964 and that a further 40,000 Turkish citizens of Greek origin left with them, and that some 9,000 Greeks had already left following the 1955 riots. The Greek Orthodox population of Turkey, over 130,000 after 1923, is now under 3,500.

Share of the population affected

52%

of the Greek Orthodox population of Istanbul on the eve of the September 1955 pogrom, 1955

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What happened

On the night of 6-7 September 1955, after a false report that Atatürk's birthplace in Salonica had been bombed, organised crowds attacked the Greek minority of Istanbul; the Greek foreign ministry records the destruction of 1,004 houses, some 5,000 businesses, 73 churches, 23 schools, two cemeteries and five community centres. Scholarship in Genocide Studies and Prevention describes the riots as government-instigated and argues they amounted to a crime against humanity; Turkish courts later tried members of the Menderes government at Yassıada, and the events remain politically sensitive in Turkey. Emigration followed, and in March 1964 Turkey abrogated the 1930 establishment convention and expelled Greek citizens living in Istanbul, seizing or freezing property; the Greek foreign ministry puts the expulsions at more than 12,000 people over two years, with about 40,000 Turkish citizens of Greek descent, largely their relatives, leaving too. The community that had numbered over 130,000 in the 1920s is now a few thousand.

Parties

Organised crowds attacked Greek homes, businesses and churches in Istanbul in September 1955, and in 1964 the Turkish government expelled Greek citizens resident in the city and froze their assets

Disputed

Turkish and Greek accounts differ over whether the 1955 riots were organised by the Menderes government or were a manipulated popular outburst, and the figures cited here come from the Greek foreign ministry, a party to the dispute; independent aggregate counts of deaths and departures are scarce.

The denominator

Turkish censuses and community registers put Istanbul's Greeks at roughly 100,000 in the mid-1950s, down from about 130,000 in the 1920s; by the late 1960s, after the pogrom and the 1964 expulsion of Greek citizens and their families, the community had fallen to some 30,000-48,000, and it numbers around 2,000 today. Community and Turkish official estimates differ at the margins.

Where the baseline comes from

Istanbul pogromopen-edited
Greeks in Turkeyopen-edited

On the death toll

Deaths in the 1955 riots were few relative to the scale of destruction, and published figures differ from around a dozen to several dozen; none of the sources cited here provides an authoritative count, and no death toll attaches to the 1964 expulsions.

Documented forms of violence

Destruction of PropertyCultural Destruction

The Hellenic foreign ministry itemises the houses, businesses, churches, schools and cemeteries destroyed on 6-7 September 1955, and the Genocide Studies and Prevention analysis treats the destruction as deliberate and state-instigated.