descent at 3,000–4,000; while according to the Human Rights Watch (2006) their number was estimated to be 2,500. The attacks have been described as a continuation of a process of Turkification that started with the decline of the Ottoman Empire, as roughly 40% of the properties attacked belonged to other minorities. The pogrom has been compared in some media to the Kristallnacht, the 1938 pogrom against Jews throughout Nazi Germany. In 2009, Turkish then-Prime Minister Erdogan said that Turkey has committed mistakes, and that: "Those minorities with different ethnic identities were expelled from our country in the past. It was result of fascist policy." Background Greeks of Istanbul Constantinople (modern Istanbul) was the capital of the Byzantine Empire until 1453, when the city was conquered by Ottoman forces. A large indigenous Greek community continued to live in the multi-ethnic Ottoman capital city and enjoyed a relatively protected status under the Ottoman Millet system. The city's Greek population, particularly the Phanariotes, came to play a significant role in the social and economic life of the city and in the political and diplomatic life of the Islamic but multi-ethnic, multi-religious Ottoman Empire in general. This continued even after rebellions against Ottoman rule in Greece and the establishment of an independent Greek state in 1829, although during the Greek War of Independence massacres against local Greek communities occurred. A number of ethnic Armenians and Greeks, who served in the Ottoman Imperial diplomatic service and were even leading politicians in the 19th and early 20th century, were targeted. Into the 19th century, the Christians of Istanbul tended to be either Greek Orthodox, members of the Armenian Apostolic Church or Catholic Levantines. Greeks and Armenians form the largest Christian population in the city. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, the population exchange agreement signed between Greece and Turkey resulted in the uprooting of all Greeks in modern Turkey (and Muslims in Greece) from where many of them had lived for centuries. But due to the Greeks' strong emotional attachment to their first capital as well as the importance of the Ecumenical Patriarchate for Greek and worldwide Orthodoxy, the Greek population of Istanbul was specifically exempted and allowed to stay in place. Nevertheless, this population began to decline, as evinced by demographic statistics. Punitive Turkish nationalist exclusivist measures, such as a 1932 parliamentary