Turkey this year commemorates a little known or unknown made public: the expulsion of the Greeks of Istanbul in 1964, on background of confrontation between Ankara and Athens around Cyprus.

By Samin Akgönül *

Population lacks the cosmopolitan Istanbul. The Greeks of Constantinople, players for centuries as bright as a dramatic story. Yet leaving not the date of the fall of the Byzantine empire. It is much more recent. On 14 March 1964, the Ankara government decides to deport twelve thousand inhabitants of Istanbul Greek citizenship. They are ordered to leave the city in twelve hours, allowed to take twenty dollars and twenty kilos of personal belongings. They will be followed by more than thirty thousand Greeks, Turkish citizens for their part: husbands and wives, children, partners, friends, comrades and companions. In total, a few months forty-five thousand Greeks ever leave their city, bitter, surprised, accused of Greeks in Turkey and Turks in Greece … A handful of them escaped the forced evacuation . Today the Greeks of Istanbul, the oldest community in the city are only a few thousands1.

These Greeks say “Rum” and are so called by the Turks because they are considered descendants of the Eastern Roman Empire, we now call the Byzantine Empire. Thus the winner of Christians saw things. Mehmet II said the “Conqueror” was held for the successor of the Roman emperors. In 1453, after the fall of Constantinople – or the conquest of Istanbul, the historiographical side where we place – so it keeps the Greek Orthodox Aboriginal population of the city. For nearly half a millennium, the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire then lived within a system of religious nations (millet), alongside Muslims and Armenians. Without idealizing this period of tension during which the hierarchy between Muslims and non-Muslims was real, we can still say that in comparison with other regions of the world, the system has provided a societal relative peace.

TREATMENT A NATIONALIST

Things fester with the invention of the “nation.” The long nineteenth century is that of wars, massacres and expulsions. Turkish nationalism, late compared to others, is reactionary, radical, sometimes destructive. Thus, the non-Muslim nations of the empire is treated in a never-ending attempt to homogenize the population. Three dates are significant:

1915 symbolic date of the extermination of the Armenians, whose centenary will be next year;

1923, the forced exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey, whose country has just commemorated the 90th anniversary with numerous events;

1964 we mark the 50th anniversary this year.

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