Özet:

During the events known as the 1934 Thrace Pogroms, which started on June 21, 1934 and came to an end on July 4, Jewish houses and shops were looted and consequently thousands of Jewish people were left no choice but to immigrate to Turkey leaving their homes behind. The violence and vandalism acts,  during which there was no incident resulting in death except for that of a gendarme who was trying to intervene in the events, started with the boycott of the goods of Jewish tradesman and spread to other Thrace cities in a short time. After the events died down, although the majority of the Jewish people who had immigrated to Istanbul returned to Thrace, the very fear of going through the same attacks resulted in the Jews’ immigrating initially abroad after a while and to Israel after the state was founded. It has been claimed that the outbreak of these events against the Jews in Thrace, resulted from misunderstanding the June 14, 1934 dated and 2510 numbered Resettlement Law enacted so as to create nation-state awareness. Besides, the anti-Semitic articles published in the Turkish press, especially those written by Cevat Rıfat Atilhan in Millî İnkılâp (National Revolution) and Nihal Atsız in Orhun magazines have been asserted to have had an influence on the outbreak.Despite the fact that there are many available studies on the immigration of the Jews in Thrace and its consequences, there is not one conducted on the subject concerning the attitude and influence of the Turkish press. Thus, the purpose of this study is to determine whether the Turkish press played a role in the Thrace Pogroms by analysing the articles published since June 1934 in Millî Inkılâp, which is propounded to have had a part in the start of the Thrace Pogroms, as well as the articles in other newspapers and magazines of the period. In addition, in order to designate the role of the press, the reactions shown during and after the events will be tried to introduce.

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