Tag: Thessaloniki

Greek mayor to build Turkish memorial in Thessaloniki

Yiannis Boutaris. AP photo

ATHENS – Agence France-Presse

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.

, November 19, 2010

November 20, 2010
Turkish consulate in Greece attacked

FIREBOMBED

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)

September 20, 2010
Riots break out in Greece on anniversary of police shooting

Greek police clash with students in Athens as thousands march on anniversary of death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos

Police fired teargas at rioters who threw rocks and firecrackers in central Athens as thousands gathered to mark the first anniversary of the police shooting of a teenager.

Clashes broke out as about 3,000 people, mostly students, anarchists and leftists, began a march to parliament. More protests were expected tomorrow. An evening memorial service was planned in the Exarchia district, where 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot dead.

Violence also broke out in Thessaloniki, Greece‘s second-largest city, where demonstrators threw petrol bombs at police and smashed the front of a Starbucks cafe.

More than 6,000 police were deployed across greater Athens amid fears that the demonstrations under way in the capital and other Greek cities would turn increasingly violent. Concern was heightened by reports that far-left groups and anarchists from other European countries have travelled to Greece for the protests.

Grigoropoulos was shot by a policeman on the evening of 6 December 2008, in Exarchia, a central Athens neighbourhood of bars and cafes popular with anarchist groups. Within a few hours of his death, riots spread from the capital to several cities, taking the government by surprise. An embattled police force took a passive approach as rioters looted and burned shops in violence that lasted two weeks.

The new socialist government, which has faced a spate of attacks by far-left and anarchist groups, since coming to power in October, has vowed not to tolerate any violence during today’s anniversary.

Police yesterday detained about 160 youths and raided what they described as a firebomb-making hideout in the district of Keratsini, near the port of Piraeus. A memorial gathering last night at the spot where Grigoropoulos was killed began peacefully, although clashes broke out in the area later between rock-throwers and riot police. Police arrested 14 people, including five Italians and three Albanians.

Dozens of police, some in riot gear and others on motorbikes, stood guard throughout the district on Saturday night. Apart from the brief clash, the area was quiet, with heavy rain helping keep people off the streets.

Greece’s civil protection minister, Michalis Chrisochoidis, who is also in charge of the police, said earlier this week that people had been right to demonstrate against the teenager’s death, but further riots would not be tolerated.

“Without doubt (Grigoropoulos’s death) was an act of extreme police violence and misconduct that has scarred our collective memory,” Chrisochoidis said. “Young people were right to take to the streets to express their outrage. But we will not tolerate a repeat of the violence and terror in the centre of Athens and other cities. We will not surrender Athens to vandals.”

The Guardian

December 6, 2009
Riots sweep Greece after teen shot

Riots have broken out in several Greek cities after police shot dead a teenage boy in the capital Athens, in the Mediterranean nation’s worst civil disturbances in years.

The rioting began in Athens on Saturday soon after the shooting in the central Exarchia district, where youths threw petrol bombs at police, burned dozens of cars and smashed shop windows.

It quickly spread to Greece’s second largest city of Thessaloniki and other towns in northern Greece.

Cities on the holiday islands of Crete and Corfu also saw protests at the shooting, which prompted Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos to offer his resignation.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, whose fragile government has been rocked by a series of scandals, rejected it, a ministry spokeswoman said.

“On behalf of the government and the prime minister, I express sorrow for the incident and especially the death of the young boy,” Pavlopoulos said.

“An investigation to clarify the incident has already begun. There will be an exemplary punishment and, above all, measures will be taken so that this will never be repeated.”

Two police officers were arrested and being questioned over the incident, according to a police statement.

The officers said their patrol car had been attacked by 30 youths throwing stones and other objects. When they attempted to arrest the youths, they were attacked again and one of the officers fired three shots, killing the boy, the statement said.

It was the first time since 1985 that police have killed a minor in Greece, a police spokesman said. A hospital official said the boy was 15 years old.

ITN

December 7, 2008