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Fifty years ago this month, erroneous reports spread
that Greeks had set fire to the childhood home of
Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey's founder, in Salonika,
Greece. The rumors prompted an angry mob to converge
on Taksim Square in Istanbul for an anti-foreigner
pogrom that left thousands of houses and many
hundreds of shops destroyed.
Gallery officials said about a dozen people were
killed, but the death toll has never been confirmed
because of official secrecy. Cemeteries were
desecrated, dozens of churches were burned, and many
schools were plundered.
Fahri Coker, a former assistant military prosecutor,
served as a legal adviser to the military
investigation of the events of Sept. 6-7, 1955, an
inquiry that historians describe as a whitewash.
Coker had 250 photographs taken by foreign news
photographers and government employees, and even a
few by Ara Guler, one of Turkey's few
internationally known photographers. Judge Coker
held on to the pictures and left word that they
could be displayed only after his death, which
occurred in 2001.
To mark the 50-year anniversary of the long night of
violence, Karsi, a gallery in the Beyoglu
neighborhood, where the pogrom occurred, organized
an exhibition of the photos to open on Sept. 6.
Although curators were no doubt aware that the
pictures would arouse strong feelings, given the
emotion surrounding historical discussions in
Turkey, they have been surprised by the passions
unleashed by the show.
The Sept. 6 opening was disrupted by a group of
nationalists who entered the gallery, carrying a
Turkish flag. Chanting slogans like "Turkey, love it
or leave it!," they vandalized some of the
photographs and tossed others out the window. They
also threw eggs at the pictures, leaving a vivid
testimonial to how controversial free expression
remains in Turkey.
"We left it that way, but unfortunately, after a few
days it started to smell," Ozkan Taner, one of the
gallery's directors, said of the exhibition, which
the gallery then cleaned and restored. It remains on
view through Sept. 26.
News of the attacks spread quickly to the front
pages of the Turkish papers and to television and
radio news broadcasts, turning the show into a
national topic of conversation.
Attendance has been heavy, easily exceeding
expectations. On a recent day, dozens of people
crowded into the gallery to study the images. The
pictures, as might be expected, show faces riven by
anger and fear, but the photos are also packed with
small surprises.
One centers on the familiar monument at the center
of Taksim Square, so crowded with young protesters
that some are falling off as others rise to take
their places. At the top of the image, a small group
is working to hoist the Turkish flag, while a young
man in a crisp, clean suit holds unsteadily over his
head a small portrait of Ataturk. But away from the
monument, the people in the crowd turning to face
the photographer have blank, uncertain expressions,
as if they are as unnerved by the outpouring as many
of the gallery's visitors have been.
In the beginning, the photo exhibition was hailed as
a major step forward for a country trying to show a
more democratic face in preparation for possible
membership in the European Union.
"For the first time in the history of Turkey, a
shameful happening has been brought out into the
open," said Ishak Alaton, chairman of the Alarko
Holding company and a leader of Turkey's tiny
population of Jews. "September 6, 1955, was our
Kristallnacht."
Ozcan Yurdalan, a freelance photographer here who
took part in a recent news conference denouncing the
attacks on the exhibition, said the straightforward
documentary style of the photos made them more
disturbing.
"They show directly what they saw in life," he said.
"If you take straight photographs, they show the
reality - the faces of the people, some fearful,
some thinking, Yeah, we are doing something well
against our enemy."
"The pictures showed me this is not the past," he
said. "We are still living in the same condition
today. I am ashamed of that, and also very fearful."
Greek-Turkish tensions over the future of Cyprus
were running high in 1955, and the future of that
island remains unresolved, threatening to hold up
Turkey's bid to begin negotiations to join the
European Union. More broadly, Western ideas of the
rightful role of dissent have made limited inroads
in Turkey. The acclaimed author Orhan Pamuk has been
charged with "public denigrating of Turkish
identity" for telling a newspaper: "Thirty-thousand
Kurds were killed here, one million Armenians as
well. And almost no one talks about it."
Mehmet Guleryuz, an Abstract Expressionist-style
painter who helped organize a protest against the
attack on the exhibition, said: "We're going through
sensitive times. We have to have the ability to open
up hidden parts of our history and deal with it. We
have to have the ability to argue."
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