Memorializing the Conquest of Constantinople and Strengthening the Turkish-Greek Alliance in the Context of the Early Cold War

Abstract

Despite the significance assigned to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople by official and popular narratives of Turkish history, the Turkish government in 1953 chose to minimize the scope of the event's 500th anniversary celebrations. This choice reflected the country's main foreign policy objective at the time: maintaining close ties with Greece and the West in the context of the Cold War. Drawing on press reports, memoirs, and parliamentary records, this article shows how Turkey's proWestern orientation shaped the remembering of this world-historical event.