Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
I had interviewed Takis Hadjidemetriou many times… But in those interviews he had never told me that he had saved the lives of some Turkish Cypriots… I found that out quite by a coincidence…
Takis Hadjidemetriou: We know him as the leader of the Bi-communal Technical Committee for the Preservation of Cultural Monuments… We know him from the peace movement of our island for many years… We know him as the close relative of Giannis Ellinas who had been killed and is "missing" since 1963 together with his wife Kakoullou… But he is also someone I find out who had saved the lives of some Turkish Cypriots from Klepini who had been kidnapped by some Greek Cypriot soldiers and were being tortured back in 1964…
One of my readers told me that this information had come out about a year ago when Takis Hadjidemetriou was on RIK at the programme of Elita… So I would call Takis and we would arrange to meet in order to interview him about this…
Just like the stories of crime and inhumanity, the stories of saving each other's lives and humanity is also still a "taboo" in Cyprus.
No one comes out and says "Hey! You know what? This Turkish Cypriot (or Greek Cypriot) had saved my life!" People keep silent and keep the good stories locked up inside themselves. So no one hears about them…
Finally I would find out the story when I sat down and interviewed Takis Hadjidemetriou…
In April-May 1964, he had been serving as a soldier in Dikomo… He says:
"I was about 29-30 years old in those days… Since there was the danger of invasion in those days, I was seeing serving my country as a duty… But when I was there in Dikomo, I found out what was going on… And it was a lesson for me: That if you want to understand what is going on, you need to participate in it… And this was one of the things that affected me most… As I said I was a soldier in Dikomo and it was around April-May 1964. One day, one of my friends who is an actor, Dimitris Savvas approached me and said "Look something very sad is happening here… Some soldiers went to Klepini last night, caught some Turkish Cypriots, they tortured them and asking them questions about TMT and other secrets!"
When I investigated, I found out that the Turkish Cypriots who were kidnapped by the National Guard were only shepherds!
There was a Turkish Cypriot shepherd kidnapped together with his son… This had worried me a lot… I ran to find them and I saw them…
They were keeping them in a small room, locked up near the church in Synchari… I saw the two Turkish Cypriots, the shepherd and his son… I think they were father and son because one was an elderly man together with a young boy…
I went there and saw them. This was a house next to the church. I don't know to whom it belonged. It was a small room, locked from outside. When I went to see them, their faces were in bruises. It was true that they were mistreated. I asked them if they needed any help. But they were very afraid and were reserved. They were not speaking. They did not ask anything from me. My friend Dimitris Savvas, the actor said to me, "They had threatened to kill them, they told them that they would bury them alive…"
That's why I left immediately and came to Nicosia. Of course I had no intention to go to the Ministry of Interior who had control of all of these… I went immediately to the Greek Embassy. At that time, the Minister of Interior was Yiorgadjis…
There were reasons why I went to the Greek Embassy. Because on those days my uncle Loukis Akritas was a minister in the George Papandreou government. My Cypriot uncle from Morphou – brother of my mother – Loukis Akritas was the Minister of Education in the Papandreou government in Greece. And they knew this very well at the Embassy and this gave me an opportunity to approach the Embassy and the Ambassador.
At the Greek Embassy I said to them, "Look, such and such things are happening and other Embassies also have this information. You must act quickly because at any moment, anything can happen the results of which would be quite serious… Because this is well known now…"
Afterwards I was informed that the Greek Embassy would intervene and would ensure that those who were kept in Dikomo would be transferred to the central prison and that this would lead the way for them to be set free… This was what I lived through… So all of them were set free…"
I had learned from Turkish Cypriots from Klepini after I started investigating this story that a total of seven Turkish Cypriot shepherds had been kidnapped by the Greek Cypriot National Guard soldiers… And that some of them were still alive… One of them would tell me that he remembers a woman called Eleni who had helped him and as he knows, it was Eleni who set him free… I tell this story to Takis Hadjidemetriou as well…
"I remember two persons, I still remember their faces" he says…
Probably they were kept in different spots, these seven Turkish Cypriots…
"They might have another story but I am telling you what I experienced… Maybe others took care of them as well…" he says.
How did this story come out last year?
"Elita was making an interview with me on RIK about various things and asking me questions about different things. Apart from other stuff, I had told this story in that programme. This was last year… What is interesting is that while the live transmission of the programme continued, someone called Loizos Stylianou called by phone and spoke on the live programme. He said "Yes I know this story, what Takis is saying is true… I also have information about this…" Loizos Stylianou was from Kannavia and he too was a soldier at Dikomo. This was quite a surprise for me since someone was calling the live programme and saying "Yes, what Takis is telling you is the truth…"
Did anyone discover that it was Takis who had gone to the Greek Embassy and had them intervene?
"No, no one said anything to me after that day" he says… "I kept this story inside me for many years… I spoke about this for the first time last year in Elita's programme… These are our sad stories, poor people suffered a lot because of this. And yes, this is the story I have told… But it is important that people remember this story…
Maybe the Turkish Cypriots from Klepini who were set free were not aware of what had happened… A Greek Cypriot soldier – that is me – goes there and ask them if they need help… They don't know where I went and what I did and what was the result… Because I never went back to them to say "Look, I did this and this in order to save you…" So they don't know…"
So they will learn what happened through my interview with Takis Hadjidemetriou now…
"Yes" he says, "They will learn of all the details of the story in this way… They will get the missing part of the puzzle through this interview and they will understand the whole story and what exactly happened…"
I thank Takis Hadjidemetriou for his humanity, for saving the lives of the seven Turkish Cypriot shepherds who had been kidnapped and were tortured by some soldiers in the Greek Cypriot National Guard stationed at Dikomo… I thank him further for having the courage to share this touching, humanitarian story with us…
These are the stories that need to be told in our schools, not the "glorious" lies of "nationalism"…
These are the people we should honour, not those who have killed others…
These are the people whose names we should give to squares, whose pictures we should hang on our walls, whose stories we should make into documentaries to be shown in Cyprus and all over the world… Not the ones who gave orders to massacre other human beings, but the ones risking their own lives to save the lives of others under torture…
This is humanity and nature is showing us that there is secret, hidden humanity all over the place… If only we can uncover it for everyone to see and not be afraid of humanity because humanity does not hurt you and me, it is the evil in people that hurts you and me…
27.5.2017
Photo: Takis Hadjidemetriou at Apostolos Andreas... Photo by UNDP - Kerim Belet.
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 2nd of July 2017, Sunday.
A similar article of mine was published in Turkish in the YENİDÜZEN newspaper on the 24th of May, 2017 and its' link is here:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kibrisliturklerin-hayatini-kurtaran-insan-10719yy.htm
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