The 1934 Thrace pogroms (Turkish: Trakya Olayları, "Thrace incidents" or "Thrace events", Ladino: Furtuna/La Furtuna, "Storm")^[1][2] were a series of violent attacks against Jewish citizens of Turkey in June and July 1934 in the Thrace region of Turkey. One of the main crucial factors behind the events was the Resettlement Law passed by the Turkish Assembly on 14 June 1934.^[3][4][5]

Some have argued that the acts were initiated by the articles written by Pan-Turkist ideologists like Cevat Rıfat Atilhan and Faik Kurdoğlu in Millî İnkılâp ^{[dubious – discuss][6]} (National Revolution) magazine and Nihal Atsız^[6][7] in Orhun magazine. One researcher accepted Atilhan's role, but he argued that Atsız did not participate in such an act, because Orhun only contained two articles about Jews, and both of them were published after Atsız resettled in İstanbul.^[8] Then the Resettlement Law was meant to enable demographic engineering in favor of a potentially Turkish speaking majority and the campaign Citizens speak Turkish!, which meant to force the people to speak Turkish, was supported by the Turkish Halkevleri.^[9] On the 5 July after having become aware of the potential repercussions, the chairman of the Halkevleri in Izmir denied the campaign was directed at Jews and claimed it was only against foreign languages, including Greek, Spanish and Albanian.^[9]

The incidents that preceded the pogrom started in Çanakkale in the second half of June 1934.^[10][11] The pogroms occurred in Tekirdağ, Edirne, Kırklareli, and Çanakkale, and they were motivated by antisemitism.^[12][13][14]

The government of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk failed to stop the pogrom.^[15] In the context of the 1934 Turkish Resettlement Law, foreign diplomats^[who?] who were then based in Turkey believed that the Turkish government implicitly supported the Thrace pogrom to facilitate the relocation of Turkey's Jewish population.^[16][4] After the foreign press reported about the pogroms, Prime Minister İsmet İnönü acknowledged their existence, condemned them and blamed them on antisemitism.^[5] Haaretz reports that according to the historian Corry Guttstadt, "the Turkish authorities had apparently opted for the strategy of putting the Jews under such pressure with boycott activities and anonymous threats 'from the population' that they would leave the area 'voluntarily.'"

However, others disagree. Although the Law on Settlement may well have actually provoked the outbreak of the incidents, the national authorities did not side with the attackers but immediately intervened in the incidents. After order was restored, the governors and mayors of the provinces involved were removed from office.^[17] Further, according to historian Rifat Bali, incitement of violence against Jews was then common in the press and contributed to the violence.^[18]

Over 15,000 Jewish citizens of Turkey had to flee from the region.^[4]

• Razgrad Incident
• Antisemitism in Turkey
• Racism in Turkey

• Baer, Marc D. (2020). Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks: Writing Ottoman Jewish History, Denying the Armenian Genocide. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-04542-3.
• Bali, Rıfat (2008). "The 1934 Thrace events: continuity and change within Turkish state policies regarding non-Muslim minorities. An interview with Rıfat Bali". European Journal of Turkish Studies (7). doi:10.4000/ejts.2903.
• Bali, Rıfat N. (2008). 1934 Trakya olayları (in Turkish). Kitabevi. ISBN 978-975-9173-64-7.
• Bayraktar, Hatiice (2006). "The anti-Jewish pogrom in Eastern Thrace in 1934: New evidence for the responsibility of the Turkish government". Patterns of Prejudice. 40 (2): 95–111. doi:10.1080/00313220600634238. S2CID 144078355.
• Daniels, Jacob (2017). "Prelude to a Turkish Anomaly: Eastern Thrace Before the 1934 Attacks on Jews". Antisemitism Studies. 1 (2): 364. doi:10.2979/antistud.1.2.06. S2CID 134187035.
• Eligür, Banu (2017). "The 1934 anti-Jewish Thrace riots: the Jewish exodus of Thrace through the lens of nationalism and collective violence". British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 44 (1): 88–109. doi:10.1080/13530194.2016.1182422. S2CID 147807971.
• Green, D. B. (5 June 2014), "1934: A Rare Kind of Pogrom Begins, in Turkey", Haaretz, retrieved 17 January 2023
• Güven, Erdem; Yılmazata, Mehmet (2014). "MİLLİ İNKILAP AND THE THRACE INCIDENTS OF 1934". Journal of Modern Jewish Studies. 13 (2): 190–211. doi:10.1080/14725886.2014.918738. S2CID 144955905.
• Koldas, Umut (2014). "Playing in the Discursive Backyard of the State: Turkish National Press Discourse towards the Anti-Jewish Incidents of 1934". Kwartalnik Historii Żydów. 250 (2): 297–320. ISSN 1899-3044.
• Pekesen, B. (2019). "The Anti-Jewish Pogrom in 1934. Problems of Historiography, Terms and Methodology". The Heritage of Edirne in Ottoman and Turkish Times. De Gruyter. pp. 412–432. doi:10.1515/9783110639087-013. ISBN 978-3-11-063908-7. S2CID 212934694.