Memory Is Not the Past
What September 1955 still asks of us
History becomes dangerous in two very different ways.
It becomes dangerous when it is used to cultivate hatred.
But it can also become dangerous when it is deliberately softened, fragmented or forgotten in the name of political convenience.
The events of 6–7 September 1955 in Istanbul belong to a history that should be approached with neither revenge nor silence.
They deserve something more difficult.
They deserve memory.
A catastrophe does not begin with the first broken window
During those September days, violence was directed overwhelmingly against Istanbul’s historic Greek community. Homes and businesses were attacked and looted. Churches, schools, cemeteries and community institutions were desecrated or destroyed. Armenians, Jews and other non-Muslims were also affected.
The physical destruction was enormous.
The human consequences were deeper.
A community that had lived in the city for centuries received a devastating message: belonging could no longer be taken for granted.
This is one reason the events matter far beyond the history of Greeks in Istanbul.
They show us something about the anatomy of collective violence.
Catastrophe rarely begins at the moment violence becomes visible.
It begins earlier.
It begins as language changes.
As minorities become convenient explanations for wider problems.
As political interests discover the usefulness of fear.
As propaganda transforms neighbours into categories.
As institutions become passive.
As ordinary people learn that certain forms of prejudice are acceptable.
And eventually, what would once have appeared unthinkable can begin to appear permissible.
The mechanism matters
Speros Vryonis chose a particularly revealing phrase for his major study of September 1955:
The word mechanism matters.
It directs attention away from the comforting explanation that collective violence simply erupts from nowhere.
Historical catastrophes have contexts. They have political conditions. They have narratives, organisers, enablers and opportunities. They also have people and institutions that could have resisted but did not.
The Istanbul pogrom unfolded during a period of increasing tension over Cyprus and at a complicated moment in Cold War politics. Nationalism, geopolitical interests, public mobilisation and political calculation became entangled.
The result was not an abstract diplomatic dispute.
It entered streets, homes, shops and places of worship.
This is one of history’s recurring warnings.
Political language spoken at the highest level can eventually acquire a human face at the lowest.
Someone loses a home.
Someone loses a livelihood.
Someone becomes afraid to speak their language.
Someone decides that the country of their birth is no longer safe for their children.
Statistics describe destruction.
They rarely describe fear.
Memory must also be honest
Remembering the suffering of one community does not require forgetting the suffering caused by members of another.
Historical responsibility cannot be selective.
Greeks should be able to confront crimes committed by Greeks.
Turks should be able to confront crimes committed by Turks.
Every society should be capable of examining the darkest parts of its own history without believing that doing so diminishes its dignity.
The opposite may be true.
A mature society does not need innocence.
It needs truth.
This principle becomes particularly important in Greek-Turkish and Cyprus relations, where competing memories are frequently used as political weapons. One atrocity is presented to cancel another. One period is remembered while another disappears. Victims become arguments.
That leads nowhere.
There should be room in historical memory for every victim without constructing a competition between victims.
Justice does not require us to decide whose suffering deserves remembrance.
It requires us to refuse deliberate forgetting.
Reconciliation needs memory
There is sometimes an understandable temptation to believe that difficult history should be left behind so that societies can move forward.
But forgetting and reconciliation are not the same thing.
A peace built upon silence remains vulnerable because the underlying narratives survive beneath the surface. They can be revived whenever political circumstances make them useful again.
Reconciliation requires something stronger.
It requires the ability to say:
This happened.
These people suffered.
This was wrong.
We will not hide it.
And we will not use it to justify another wrong.
Such recognition does not imprison societies in history.
It can release them from it.
The responsibility of remembrance
Seventy-one years after September 1955, the most important question is therefore not simply how accurately we remember those two terrible days.
It is whether we recognise the processes that made them possible.
Our own century has not eliminated propaganda, nationalism, scapegoating or the political exploitation of fear. Technology has merely given them new instruments and extraordinary speed.
That makes historical memory a civic responsibility.
We remember not to inherit old hatreds.
We remember to recognise their return.
We remember because minorities remain vulnerable wherever citizenship becomes conditional.
We remember because democratic institutions can weaken gradually before they fail visibly.
We remember because words can prepare the ground for actions.
And we remember because human beings who disappear from public memory can suffer a second injustice: first their lives are shattered, and later their experience is treated as inconvenient.
The strongest memory is therefore neither angry nor passive.
It is demanding.
It asks us to look at the past without manipulating it, to recognise suffering without monopolising it, and to defend human dignity without asking first for the identity of the victim.
The events of September 1955 belong to history.
Their warning does not.
- Artemis Kechagioglou is a political writer and analyst whose work explores political philosophy, historical memory, human rights and contemporary social thought, with a particular interest in the responsibilities of democratic societies and the conditions of a good society.