COMING SOON TO THE OWNER

 million Greeks and Armenians, and forced them to flee. Do any of you guys know what the Istanbul Pogrom is? No? They were organized mob attacks directed primarily at Istanbul’s Greek Minority on 6–7 September 1955. A Turkish mob, most of which had been trucked into the city in advance, assaulted Istanbul’s Greek community for nine hours. Although the mob did not explicitly call for Greeks to be killed, over a dozen people died during or after the attacks as a result of beatings and arson. Armenians were also harmed. The police remained mostly ineffective, and the violence continued until the government declared marshall law in Istanbul and called in the army to put down the riots. By the way, Turkey doesn’t recognize that these events took place. Men and women were raped and Islamized by force, and according to accounts including those of the Turkish writer Aziz Nesin, men, including a priest, were subjected to forced circumcision by members of the mob. An Armenian rite and a Christian priest died after the procedure. Priests were also scalped and burnt in their beds and Greek women were raped. Nesin wrote: A man who was fearful of being beaten, lynched, or cut into pieces would imply and try to prove that he was both a Turk and a Muslim. "Pull it out and let us see," they would reply. The poor man would peel off his trousers and show his "Muslimness" and "Turkishness": And what was the proof? That he had been circumcised. If the man was circumcised, he was saved. If not, he was doomed. Indeed, having lied, he could not be saved from a beating. For one of those aggressive young men would draw his knife and circumcise him in the middle of the street and amid the chaos. A difference of two or three centimeters does not justify such a commotion. That night, many men shouting and screaming were Islamized forcefully by the cruel knife. Among those circumcised, there was also a priest.

These things that happened were atrocities that led the Greeks to flee. Constantinople will always be Greek, even if former churches are forced to become museums in order to not become mosques.