by Filippo Ortenzi * –
On 6 September 1955, fomented by the Democratic Party of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and by the imams of the Sunni mosques, tens of thousands of Turkish Muslims attacked the Greek Orthodox Christian minority of Istanbul, then made up of over 200,000 people, killing about twenty Christians, injuring dozens of women, looting and setting fire to over 4,000 homes, 110 hotels, 27 pharmacies, 23 schools, 21 pharmacies and 73 churches.
The violence as well as on the Romanian minority (Greek-speaking Romans and Orthodox religion) also extended against other Christians: Armenians and Assyrians and against the Jewish community.
The consequence of the pogrom was the Christian diaspora from Istanbul, reducing from 55 to today the Greek Orthodox presence of what for over 1600 years was called Constantinople – New Rome to just 2,500 people. The vaunted clemency and mercy of what Pope Francis has defined as “a religion of Peace” had already manifested itself in the last century, when from 1915 to 1919, Turkish Muslims had been responsible for the genocide (Medz Yeghern) and ethnic cleansing of the Armenians of Anatolia, who had 1,500,000 (one and a half million) dead and hundreds of thousands of displaced people, and of the lesser known Assyrian genocide (Seyfo) which involved 750,000 people, two ethnic groups massacred solely because of the Christian religion and, consequently, “infidels”.
It should be remembered that Islam has a different concept of morality and good from the Christian one and the Koran (2:191) expressly orders Muslims: “Kill them wherever you meet them and drive them out…”
Why do we remember the events of ’55? Not only in order not to forget the danger represented for Christian minorities in Islamic land but also for the potential represented by the Islamic invasion in progress in countries with a Christian majority and also because, in these days, there is a risk of a new genocide and ethnic cleansing, by the Azeris supported by Turkish jhaid militias, against the ethnic Armenian and Orthodox Christian populations of Nagorno-Karabakh.
It seems that no one cares about the fate of the Armenians of Karabakh, the Vatican does not care (the Pope champions only Muslims
Rohingya of Myanmar or Uyghurs of China, forgetting that these populations when they had their own Islamic governments, the first thing they did was to exterminate missionaries and local converts to Christianity) nor the European countries that do not recognize the Armenian Karabakho government of the Republic of Artsakh.
Unfortunately, NATO is interested in maintaining good relations with the Islamic states and theocracies and those of Armenians, without oil and hated by Atlantic Turkey, it doesn’t interest anything.
Furthermore, Russia, which until yesterday had guaranteed the physical safety of the Christian minorities in the Islamic world and the defense of the Armenians of Karabakh, is engaged in a fratricidal war in Ukraine and can no longer guarantee that defense which until yesterday had allowed for survival. Italy has not only forgotten that it is the spiritual heir of Rome, but has renounced, in the name of Atlantic subjection, not only to have a diplomatic line of peacemaker between the parties but also to defend the persecuted and discriminated against Christian minorities of the world.
* Archbishop of the Italian Orthodox Church.
