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.
The mayor-elect of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, on Friday announced plans to build a monument to the movement headed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Yiannis Boutaris, the city’s first Socialist-backed mayor in 24 years, said he intended to build the monument on a square associated with the Young Turks, the movement that created the Turkish Republic in the early 20th century.
“Freedom Square took its name from Kemal Atatürk; this is where the Young Turk revolution began,” Boutaris told daily Eleftherotypia.
Atatürk was born in Thessaloniki, which until 1912 was part of the Ottoman Empire. The city had a large Jewish and Turkish population at the time but vestiges of their presence have all but disappeared since.
“You can’t deny history, these people lived here,” Boutaris said, adding that he also intended to build a memorial to the city’s Jewish martyrs on the square. Most of Thessaloniki’s Jewish residents, some 50,000 people, were removed to concentration camps and perished when Greece was conquered by Nazi Germany in World War II.
“We would like Turks and Jews to come to the city in a pilgrimage to their family heritage, in the same way as we go to Constantinople,” (sic.) said Boutaris, using the Greek name for Istanbul, the former capital of the Byzantine Empire.
A 68-year-old wine producer and ecologist, Boutaris will formally assume his duties Jan. 1 after his election this month. Greece and Turkey have been rivals for centuries, fighting several wars and nearly coming to blows in 1996. Relations have since improved but remain strained over territorial and airspace disputes in the Aegean Sea.
ATHENS, Greece — Unidentified assailants threw firebombs at the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki on Saturday (September 18th). No one was injured in the attack. The bombs were hurled by a group of 15 people who targeted a guard post outside the consulate. “We consider this an attack against Greek police rather than against the consulate,” the police said. A similar incident happened on August 12th. (AFP, DPA, Hurriyet – 18/09/10)
