\n<\/p>\n
The riots followed a bomb explosion at the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki, housed in the birthplace of Mustafa Kemal Atat\u00fcrk. The blast caused limited damage. Subsequent investigations in Greece and later Turkish accounts identified Oktay Engin, a Turkish student connected to the consulate, as the person who planted the device with help from staff. Turkish newspapers, notably an extra edition of \u0130stanbul Ekspres<\/em>, framed the incident as a Greek attack. Demonstrations that afternoon in Taksim Square quickly turned into widespread looting and arson.<\/p>\n Historians and later official records describe significant state involvement or facilitation under the Democrat Party government of Adnan Menderes. Police largely failed to intervene until the army was deployed and martial law declared.<\/p>\n Casualty and damage figures vary by source:<\/p>\n The Greek population of Istanbul numbered roughly 65,000\u201380,000 in 1955. After the pogrom, the 1964 expulsions and earlier discriminatory measures such as the 1942 wealth tax, the community contracted sharply. Today an estimated 2,000\u20133,000 Greeks remain in the city.<\/p>\n The events, sometimes compared to Kristallnacht, accelerated the decline of a community present in Constantinople for centuries. Limited compensation was later promised; prosecutions after the 1960 coup did not result in comprehensive accountability. Some Turkish commentators now describe 6\u20137 September as a national disgrace, while official commemoration in Turkey remains muted compared with Greek and diaspora remembrances.<\/p>\n\n