Exactly 50 years after the tragic events that decimated the Greeks of Turkey’s greatest city, greekworks.com published The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul by Speros Vryonis, Jr. This monumental work of a decisive moment in modern Turkish and Greek history is the first study of its depth and range to be published on this critical subject in any language.

On the night of September 6-7, 1955, the Greek community of Constantinople was violently struck throughout the expanse of Turkey’s most important metropolis. Within hours, businesses, homes, and even the churches of the Greeks were in ruins, with the British press calculating the damage at £100 million. It was the beginning of the end for the ethnic descendants of the city’s founders, who had first settled this eastern tip of Europe over two and a half millennia earlier.

This vicious and unprovoked attack quickly became entangled in the Cold War politics of the time, and the truth of it was just as quickly suppressed. There is an excerpt to read (pdf), or you can get the book right now.

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