Incoming mayor wants to draw Jewish and Turkish visitors
The incoming mayor of Thessaloniki said in an interview published yesterday that he plans to build a monument in the northern port city to the movement headed by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish state, chiefly as a way of attracting Turkish visitors. Yiannis Boutaris, an idiosyncratic vintner and the city’s first Socialist-backed mayor in 24 years, said he also intended to build a monument commemorating thousands of Thessaloniki Jews who were killed by occupying German forces. «Our aim is for 300,000 Jews and 300,000 Turks to come and pay homage to their family heritage in the same way that we go to Istanbul,» Boutaris told Eleftherotypia newspaper.