January 17, 1956
VANDALISM: New York, 16 – An outrageous announcement by Turkey has been widely circulated around politicians, Congress, foreign delegations at the United Nations and the press here, in which the government in Ankara has accused Greece of interfering in Turkey’s domestic affairs because it has demanded the payment of compensation to the victims (Greeks and others) of the vandalism perpetrated in Istanbul and Izmir in September 1955. An announcement from the Turkish Foreign Ministry claims that there was no longer any problem regarding the question of compensation for the damages incurred on September 6, 1955, since the Turkish government has given repeated assurances that the compensation payments will be extended so as not to be restricted to Greeks but to cover all the victims. Such issues, it said, are considered to be of a purely internal nature and therefore the statements by the Greek prime minister, Mr Constantine Karamanlis, on December 17 1955 «arise from his own desire to create a political issue between the two countries.»
