Constantinople massacre of 1821

[2][3] The events culminated with the hanging of the Ecumenical Patriarch, Gregory V and the beheading of the Grand Dragoman, Konstantinos Mourouzis.

In addition, on the evening of April 2, the first news of the Greek Revolt in southern Greece reached Constantinople.

[7] Leading personalities of the Greek community, in particular the Ecumenical Patriarch, Gregory V, and the Grand Dragoman, Konstantinos Mourouzis, were accused of having knowledge of the revolt by the Sultan, Mahmud II, but both pleaded innocence.

[22] The same state of affairs also spread to other major cities of the Ottoman Empire with significant Greek populations.

In Adrianople, on May 3, the former Patriarch, Cyril VI,[14] nine priests and twenty merchants were hanged in front of the local cathedral.

[22] In Smyrna, numerous Ottoman troops were staged, waiting orders to march against the rebels in Greece.

[25] Similar massacres against the Greek population during these months occurred also in the Aegean islands of Kos and Rhodes.

[26] The British and Russian ambassadors made strong protests to the Ottoman Empire as reaction of the execution of the Patriarch.

[28] In July 1821, Stroganov proclaimed that if the massacres against the Greeks continued, this would be an act of war by the Porte to all Christian states.

[30] The events in Constantinople were one of the reasons that triggered massacres against Turkish communities in regions where the uprising was in full swing.

[11] The massacres were undertaken by the Ottoman authorities, as a reaction to the outbreak of the Greek Revolution, centered in southern Greece.

The victims of these actions were hardly related to the revolution, while no serious investigations were conducted by the Ottoman side in order to prove that there was any kind of involvement by the people put to death.