Facing our bitter past for a better future…

Facing our bitter past for a better future…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Τel: 99 966518

We get our garlic and onions, our potatoes, our tomatoes and cucumbers, our melon, our milk and honey, our books and our candle to go and stay at the Journalists' Village in Pervolia, Larnaka… No, it is not `holidays` for me but as most of the times in my life, work… We have been getting together with Greek Cypriot youth with the organisation of EDON Youth at PEO Pervolia premises and this is the third camp where we will participate to speak to youth about `missing persons`…
And the next day there is a funeral of a `missing person` from Vatyli and I will attend this to lay some flowers and say goodbye to him, his remains have been found with the help of my Turkish Cypriot readers… The funeral is in Kalo Chorio, not far from Pervolia…
That's why it is very convenient to stay in Pervolia and do my work as well as get a chance to stay here, in this lovely and natural place, away from crowds, away from the city, watching the swallows early evening and cooking fish or chicken and eating by the moonlight, next to the sea… It is a fresh breath of air, away from Nicosia, away from conspiracies and corruption, away from the gossip and envy and hatred… We will wait for the cats to come to feed them in the evening and sometimes, if we are lucky, the hedgehogs will come as well… We will sit and read our books, my husband and I and light our candle and look at the moon coming out of the sea and the stars, so bright and so many in the night sky…
We will smell the jasmine and there will always be a small breeze carrying the smell of the sea nearby… We will relax and collect figs from the tree and eat them after breakfast or lunch – we will call friends in the area to see if we can meet or at night we will go to Kiti or Pervolia village to sit outside and eat and simply enjoy life for a few days…
On Saturday I go to PEO's premises in Pervolia – Andreas Sizinos comes, the son of the `turkoboullo` (`rural constable`) of Gypsou who had been `missing` and whose remains were found in Chatoz village. Andreas Sizinos lost both his father and one brother in 1974 – he knows the value of life – he had a difficult and tough life and he has 8 stents in his veins going to his heart. But if you meet him, you think he has absolutely no worries – life is too precious to let yourself go, life is too precious to immerse yourself only in sadness, life is too precious so that's why Andreas Sizinos tries to enjoy life, as well as working hard…
Next comes Christina Pavlou Solomi Patsia from Komi Kepir who has lost her father and her brother in Galatia in 1974… She has a huge heart full of love and she comes on this day all the way from Dora village to speak to youngsters about her life, about her loss, about her feelings… She has three kids, her mother Panayiota lives in a small refugee house in Agios Athanasios and she lives in Limassol… She built a house together with her husband – he is from Kontea – in Dora and all the time when she was doing this, she was thinking of Komi Kepir. It is very painful for her to go back and see her village although she does that and she is very active in the Komi Kepir group, organizing events at the church in the village which has been renovated recently. They will have a big activity on the 26th of September and everyone, including the Komi Kepir people living in London are looking forward to that. Christina is like a bee, she is not afraid of
work, she cooks, she cleans, she organizes, she takes photos, she tends her fantastic flowers, she has a way with nature that is very rare in people – she talks to her flowers and her plants and they bloom and they smile back at her… Her children installed a programme for her so she can look at the stars and know which star she is looking at because the skies in Dora is even more full of stars – the darkness and the height helps her to embrace the stars even more while in Dora…
But on this hot day in August, despite her sorrow she has come all the way from Dora to Pervolia because she knows it's important to share our learnings, our feelings, our truths with the youth… August is always a painful month for her since this is the time that things happened – her father and brother went `missing` while they were being kept as prisoners of war at Galatia, a Turkish Cypriot village not far from Komi Kepir. We have been searching for information about the burial site of her father and her brother and although all information points to the lake outside Galatia, despite repeated excavations and finding of remains, her father's and her brother's remains have not been found yet. Recently at a place where one other relative of a `missing person` had shown us, there had been digging and the remains of three `missing` persons have been found. We hope that they continue at the lake Galatia to perhaps find more remains…
In a little while Elias Demetriou from EDON and Erbay Akansoy arrive… The grandfather of Elias is still `missing` since 1974 and he knows, understands and feels what it means to have a `missing person` in your family. It is through his help and work that we have managed to organise a series of meetings, six so far with EDON Youth. This is the sixth meeting and Erbay whose whole family was killed at Maratha during the Maratha-Sandallaris-Aloa massacre of EOKA-B in 1974 will be speaking to the youth. Erbay is young and he talks about how half of his family had been `absent`, `missing` and how he realized that from his father's side he had no uncles or aunts or grandmother or any other relatives since around 30 of them had been killed and buried in mass graves…
They all give messages of peace and reconciliation to the youth: Erbay says `I have never hated anyone in my entire life…` This is because he grew up with a father and a mother who never taught him to hate… This is incredible and it is like a miracle in Cyprus: Huseyin Rustem Akansoy, Erbay's father, who lost his mother, his brothers, his sisters and around 30 members of his family never hated Greek Cypriots since he learned that it was not the work of `the Greek Cypriots` but the work of a group of fascists, the EOKA-B gangs of Peristerona Pigi and the area and he learned to differentiate and not to generalize and not to hate… While others in his position who had lost family members – both Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots - `hated` the other community, he refused to take up a gun and kill someone… He took a stand for peace and he helped create understanding about this most horrible situation we find ourselves in. He is the leader of our
group `Together We Can`, the only bi-communal association of relatives of `missing persons` and victims of war who work together for the truth, for peace and for understanding and for these things never ever to happen again… Him, together with Petros Souppouris who also lost almost all his family in the massacre of Palekythro in 1974 – a massacre done by some Turkish Cypriots from Epikho and another village – have been awarded the European Citizen's Prize two years ago for being who they are and for taking a stand and speaking up for peace and reconciliation. Even the European Parliament have recognized the value of their voluntary, humanitarian work but in Cyprus, they are `kept out of` anything `important`. No one would ask for their opinion while lots of `maskaras` would go on TV or write in newspapers and try to `control` public opinion… Our two main communities of the island and the people they have chosen have not been able to say a
`Bravo!` to Huseyin, to Petros, to Andreas, to Christina… These are the people with the real pain who have faced the worst nightmare and no one ever came forward – except Takis Hadjigeorgiou, the European Parliament MEP from AKEL who proposed Huseyin and Petros for the European Parliament Citizen's Prize – to say `Thank you` and a `Bravo` to them… Not that they do this to get a `Bravo` - they do it because they believe in it and think it is necessary to educate youth about the truth, the truth that is not taught in our schools on either side since each side wants to show itself as the `sole victim` of the conflict.
We speak to youth and answer their questions… We plan to do our seventh activity in Paphos in October with the organisation of EDON Youth… So far, EDON Youth has proven to have the most progressive attitude towards facing history and facing the truth… Apart from YKP Youth (the New Cyprus Party Youth) no other progressive youth organisation have started such a programme – we had done various workshops with YKP Youth with the help of IKME and BILBAN some years ago, bringing together Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot youth around these humanitarian issues but now, it is only EDON Youth leading the way…
On Sunday we say goodbye to Pervolia to go to Kalo Chorio for the funeral of Michalis Pekri, who had been killed by his own Turkish Cypriot friends back in 1974. When Pekri had left the village Vatyli they had shared his animals and when he came back, they did not want to give back his animals! So they would create stories about him and kill him and bury him in a well… My Turkish Cypriot readers from Vatyli helped me to find out the details of what had happened to him after he went `missing` and showed me his burial site… I would share this information with my readers, I would visit his wife and meet his children, I would share everything I knew, voluntarily with the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee… After some years, they would dig the well and at a depth of 33 meters, they would find his remains… Today on the 9th of August 2015, his remains are being returned to his family for a proper burial… The church in Kalo Chorio is so packed, it is
difficult to move… My friend Angela, brings a bunch of white flowers that I have asked from her so I can lay them near the coffin of Michalis Pekri… Today is the day to say goodbye to him and not just `hope` but to work hard every single day so no one will ever have a fate like him or like the father and brother of Christina or the father of Andreas Sizinos or like the family of Huseyin and Petros… If we don't work to face our bitter past, we cannot ensure a better future…

10.8.2015

Photo: Andreas Sizinos talking to youth...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 6th of September 2015, Sunday.

Stories from Trikomo and Vasilia…

Stories from Trikomo and Vasilia…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 99 966518

We go to Larnaka to speak to some youngsters about `missing` - myself and relatives of `missing` persons and victims of war, members of `Together We Can`, The Bi-Communal Initiative of Relatives of Missing Persons and Victims of War.
Among them is Sevilay Berk from Pervolia of Trikomo whose mother and father were `missing` from May 1964… The remains of the `missing` parents of Sevilay were found in a well we had shown to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee not once but twice and when exhumations took place, they found them at the bottom of the well – a Turkish Cypriot reader had helped us to show this well by introducing us to an old Greek Cypriot who had been living in the vicinity of this well and we had gone with him to visit his house… He had willingly come and had shown us the well – another witness had shown me this well and we had shown it to the committee but the well was not exhumed. Now with the old man who had heard a noise and had got out and had witnessed that something strange was going on around that well and next morning seeing a woman's shoe and some blood around the well, his testimony would perhaps ensure the digging of that well…
In order to cover the smell from the two persons killed and thrown in the well (Sevilay's mother Shefika and father Huseyin Ahmet Kamber), they would fill the well with sand, the killers. They had been kept in the police station at Trikomo, we would find out from another kind hearted Greek Cypriot reader and they would even joke about these two innocent persons kept there… But only for one night… Next day or next night they would be killed. And the person serving there who is supposedly their murderer would come and boast about his newly acquired sweater, showing everyone and bragging how clever he had been since he made the Turkish Cypriot take off his sweater before killing him… `Otherwise the sweater would have had a hole in it but now, see how good it looks on me` he would say to those at the police station back in 1964…
Sevilay has become a symbol of peace and friendship in Cyprus – despite her huge suffering, she knows how to differentiate between the good and the bad people of Cyprus and she knows and says that all communities have good people and evil people. She knows that the person involved in the killing of her parents is an evil person. And those around that evil person were evil as well, catching innocent people and executing them point blank without ever giving a thought that they had families, wives, children waiting for them to get back… They were evil to the core and would be active not only in 1964 but also in 1974 continuing to kill innocent people…
One of them was on his death bed when I had asked for help from a friend, a relative of a `missing person` from Greece to try to speak to him through his son… He had certainly been involved in the burial and cover up of these murders of 1963 and 1964… But my friend from Greece was not successful in getting any sort of information from him – there had been a flat denial and he would not give any information about where he had buried other `missing` Turkish Cypriots or about their fate… Some had been `missing` from Agios Andronikoudes (Topchukoy) – they had gone to Trikomo to get petrol from the Petrolina Petrol Station on the 2nd of January 1964. Ismail Mustafa Balci who had eight children was in the lorry of Ahmet Ali Osman who had five children back at home and accompanying them was the young Fuat Hasan Gulali who had been single, a 23 year old young man… According to the information sources they had been arrested at the petrol station by
the same `evil` people, the same Greek Cypriot `gang` who had taken Sevilay's parents. According to the mother of Fuat Hasan Gulali, a Greek Cypriot policeman was involved in their arrest at the petrol station. And since that ominous date that is 2nd of January 1964 there has been no news from them… The person whom was said to have been involved in their burial has passed away, refusing to give any sort of information either to us, through our Greek friend or to anyone else… The person who is said to be their murderer has refused to speak until now, denying ever being involved although many know and pronounce his name spitefully…
Among our group of relatives of `missing` is a very kind hearted person, Panayiotis Eleftheriou who had been only a 10 year old kid in 1974… His mother Elpiniki, his father Lefteris Eleftheriou and his small brother Christakis who had been only seven years old have been `missing` since 1974. Elpiniki had just given birth to her third child, a baby girl in July 1974 and leaving her and Panayiotis with the grandmother and grandfather, she had gone with her husband and her younger son Christakis back to the `northern part` when they got stuck in the village Masari. They had been trying to go back to Vasilia, their village, in order to get some stuff from their house. A Turkish Cypriot co-villager would offer to take them there and although the other Greek Cypriots who had got stuck in Masari had told them not to go they had stayed in Masari with this Turkish Cypriot. The rest of the Greek Cypriots had gone to the southern part of our island when some
Turkish soldiers had opened a `safe corridor` for them to go… Since then Elpiniki and her husband and son are `missing`…
Recently Panayiotis has appealed to the Turkish Cypriots of Vasilia in order to find out the fate of his parents and his brother. With the help of another relative of a `missing` person, Michalis Yiangou Savva, he created a small brochure with the photographs of his `missing` relatives and Michalis had his cousin translate it to Turkish. They visited Vasilia and distributed this brochure to the Turkish Cypriot villagers… In the brochure Panayiotis said:
`Lefteris Eleftheriou, the son of Efstathios from Vasilia was 30 years old.
Elpiniki Eleftheriou the daughter of Christakis from Vasilia was 32 years old.
Christakis Eleftheriou from Vasilia was 7 years old.
All of them have been `missing` since 17th of August 1974 when they had been arrested in Massari close to Morphou.
My dear brothers and sisters,
My name is Panagiotis Eleftheriou, I am the elder son of Lefteri and Elpiniki. I am asking for help from you in order to find my family and bury them in a way that is fit for every human being.
I have learned that last June there was a burial ceremony for our villagers Hasan Rahmi and Ayshe Rahmi and their five children Mustafa, Sherife, Zahide, Hasan and Ahmet who had been killed in Livera in 1963 by some Greek Cypriots. I want to express my deep sadness for these murders.
I am begging you and the only thing I want from you is to share information if you know of the burial site of my parents and my brother to enable us to find their remains.`
Michalis Yiangou Savva had given me this brochure and I would publish it in YENIDUZEN on the 30th of July 2015 Thursday.
On the 2nd of August 2015 Sunday, as I sat down in front of the computer to write my article for POLITIS, I call a Turkish Cypriot friend for something else and one of my readers who is his brother in law is with him. He wants to speak to me.
`I have seen your article about the couple and the child from Vasilia in YENIDUZEN` he says… `And I remember something that perhaps might help you…`
`What is it?` I ask him.
`Well, right after 1974, I clearly remember hearing that a couple and their child had been buried in Vasilia` he says. He describes a place and I take note of this…
I don't know how to thank this reader – he has provided us an important clue to continue our search for the possible burial site of the `missing` relatives of Panayiotis… I will share this information with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and ask to go together to the possible burial site that my reader has told me about.
In Larnaka Panayiotis, Sevilay, Andreas Sizinos, Huseyin Rustem Akansoy and Dervish Ozer, all from our group `Together We Can` talk to youngsters about `missing persons` and all of them give the message of peace to the kids…
We will continue to inform the youth and we will continue our investigations – our path is clear since our hearts are clear: We don't want ever any of these youngsters asking our questions to go on the same path as us, searching for information for `missing persons` in our common future. If we sit down together, if we talk together, if we think together, if we share all our sadness and our happiness, all our worries and all our concerns, perhaps we can ensure a future for our youth where people will not simply `disappear` and no news from them for 40 or 50 years…

2.8.2015

Photo: Panayiotis Efsthatiou talking to youth…

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 30th of August 2015, Sunday.

Stories from Neachorio Kythrea and Kyrenia…

Stories from Neachorio Kythrea and Kyrenia…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 99 966518

Good news comes from Minarelikeuy (Neachorio Kythrea): Remains have been found where we had shown a possible burial site…
We had gone together with a reader of mine and the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee on the 10th of June 2014 to show various possible burial sites in Mia Milia, Neachorio Kythrea and Kythrea…
Now I learn that they have started digging in an old mandra across the mosque in Neachorio Kythrea and at the first scoop of the bulldozer, the excavation team of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee has found remains as my reader had told them and where he had shown them… I feel happy that the remains of one more `missing person` from this area will finally return to his family.
Last year in June 2014 we had come here where my reader's family had this house and the mandra of his family until 1963. Neachorio Kythrea had been a mixed village where Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots lived together. In 1963, the Turkish Cypriots left the village with the orders of the Turkish Cypriot leadership - `orders` had gone from Turkish Cypriot leadership to `leave the village due to security reasons` and the villagers would become refugees: Some would go to Epiho, some to Mora, some to Knodhara and Chatoz… Until 1963, the relationship of Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots in the village had been good, there were no dramatic events or no bloodshed amongst them. Same `orders` would go to Turkish Cypriots in Palekythre `to leave` and they too would become refugees in different Turkish Cypriot villages, not being able to return to their village until 1974…
People from Neachorio Kythrea too would not be able to return to their village until 1974. Only one family would return and later they would be killed by some Greek Cypriots in 1974 although they had provided some sort of protection to some of the Greek Cypriots of Neachorio Kythrea… There were rumours that some Greek Cypriots coming from another village had been asking whether there were any Turkish Cypriots in the village in order to kill them and some Greek Cypriots from Neachorio Kythrea would `volunteer` to show the house of this Turkish Cypriot family… Nazife Hasan and Mehmet Tahir would be killed and their bodies would be discovered after 14th of August 1974, when Tahir's son would visit the village… He would find his aunt Nazife and his father Mehmet killed in their house, with a deck of cards scattered around them – according to the son, his father Tahir was playing with cards, looking at his `fate` through cards to pass the time…
Mehmet Tahir actually did not live in Neachorio Kythrea, it was his sister Nazife Hasan whose house was repaired by the Republic of Cyprus and she had moved back in 1968… Some years later her husband had died so she was living alone – the only Turkish Cypriot living in Neachorio Kythrea in the village – and Mehmet Tahir had gone with his bicycle on the 19th of July 1974, to check whether her sister was okay… His son knows that they had been alive until August and then killed in their house… On that hot August day, after the second invasion, with the help of some Turkish Cypriots, he would bury them…
Last year when we came to Neachorio Kythrea my reader had told me and the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, Xenophon Kallis and Murat Soysal that while cleaning the rubble after 1974, when they returned to their village, his father had found a leg bone… His father had told him that someone from the village, a Greek Cypriot called A… had been buried here… There had been a shallow wall of the mandra and that he had been buried inside the mandra, next to that wall… `I was not in the village the day they were cleaning the rubble` he would explain to us, `but my father was here and he saw the remains and he explained to me that A…. from this village had been buried here…`
Now I am happy that remains have been found here… I thank my reader with all my heart for his humanitarian help in finding out the fate of the `missing persons` of Cyprus.
Good news also comes from Galatia – just as my readers had described starting from 2006, remains have been found on the bend under a road near the lake Galatia – so far the remains of three `missing persons` have been found but since this is a grave, more might be found here…
With Christina and Olia from Komikebir, we go to Vokolida and there we meet someone from Galatia – he is not from Galatia but is married there and he knows the stories…
He believes that more remains might be under the main road and as there is asphalt works there, soon enough they might locate the possible burial site as they break the old asphalt for getting ready to put new asphalt there…
`In those days` he says, `the Greek Cypriot prisoners of war were kept in the sports club and they were taken to `questioning` at the cooperative building. After the discovery of the massacre of Turkish Cypriot women and children in Maratha-Sandallaris-Aloa, people would come at random looking for `revenge` and they would be told `go and take a few from the sports club and kill them if you like as your revenge…` So everyone killed was killed like that – innocent people died like that… I know that for a few times, they also changed the place of the burial sites but I am sure there is more buried in the lake Galatia…`
Another reader from Kyrenia who has been helping me a lot calls:
`I found new information about the Botanical Gardens in Kyrenia` he says… `Botanical Gardens` was the area where executions took place in 1974 and a mass grave was found with 32 Greek Cypriots but there should be more as my reader, whose house is close by, remembers as a child how human remains would come out as it rained heavily… There has been more digging in this area and his late mother also tried to help us: She remembered distinctly how some bulldozers had emptied the area…
Now my reader tells me that a bulldozer company had taken 48 truckloads of rubble from this area, in the rubble were also human remains… That at the time this was the `orders` from some military circles… `That's why the bulldozer company denies everything` he tells me. I had spoken with the owner of the company and he had denied that they had ever encountered any human remains in this area. But it seems that my reader has found a good source of information who had been in a position to know in those days: That according to `orders` this company had cleansed the huge area and if his source is right, human remains went with the rubble to a destination only the bulldozer company knows. They were supposed to build a cultural centre here and this had been the pretext for cleaning it up… Another reader had told me similar information – that this area had been `cleansed` of human remains… I check the dates concerning when this might have happened
and it seems that it was the end of the 1990s…
There is more information from my reader about rapes:
`There is a house across a barber shop in Kyrenia` he says, `in 1974, I found out that this house was used as a place for taking Greek Cypriot women for rape… There were four or five Turkish Cypriots who were doing that… They were taking young girls and women from Kyrenia – whoever they found – and taking them there for rape… I also learned that a few of these women, they had killed… I will learn more details and get back to you…`
I thank this reader with all my heart… Wherever he goes, he is searching about the past and sharing what he learns with me…

13.7.2015

Photo: Digging at Neachorio Kythrea in July 2015…

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 23rd of August, 2015 Sunday.

Stories from Lapithos and Agios Georgios, Kyrenia…

Stories from Lapithos and Agios Georgios, Kyrenia…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 99 966518

On the 24th of June 2015 Wednesday morning we go to pick up a witness from Agios Georgios to go to Lapithos so he can show us a possible burial site of two `missing` Greek Cypriots… We go together with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, Okan Oktay who is responsible for exhumations in CMP and Xenophon Kallis who is the Assistant to the Greek Cypriot Member of CMP.
In Agios Georgios my reader – the witness – offers us coffee so we sit down so he can tell his story… I had written his story earlier and had informed the officials of the CMP…
It had been a few years after 1974 and he saw some remains close to where he lived… This was the corner of a school and close by, before 1974 there had been a Greek Cypriot military post around there…
There had been torrential rains and so the remains buried where they were had started coming out… Together with a neighbour he had taken the big bones and thrown them in a stream… But the hand bones and the ribs they had left where they were…
This reader had called me one night telling me the story…
`At that time there was no sensitivity about such things… But now I want to help… If they dig where I will show and if they sieve the soil, they will most probably find the remains of two `missing` persons…`
That is why we are here so he can take us to the spot…
We go to Lapithos and next to the school, just on the corner, he shows us where he had seen the remains of two `missing persons`…
`There were no skulls though` he says…
Close by is a stream, perhaps they had thrown the big bones there?
He does not remember he says `But the rest of the remains must be here… This is exactly where we saw them…`
We thank him for doing this and while Okan takes him back to Agios Georgios and until he comes back to Lapithos I try to find the mother of my friend who lives in London who will show us another burial site in Lapithos…
My friend in London had told me this:
`When we moved to Lapithos after 1974, my father saw a Greek Cypriot soldier lying dead under one of the trees. He buried him where he had found him… But after some time the garden was given to someone to do some sort of work there so my father got worried that this shallow grave might be disturbed. He opened the grave and took the remains out and buried him further up in a well…`
Her father is no longer alive so now I try to find her mother to tell us the story and perhaps show us the possible burial site.
I find her and she tells me that the one `missing` person had been buried in the back garden under some lemon trees but the dogs had dug out and the remains had come out… The `missing` Greek Cypriot had a hand grenade on him so they had taken that as well and had buried him in a well behind an old house.
We get in the car and we travel so she can show us this old house…
It is a big, beautiful house of stone and I find out that since 1974 no one ever used it… It just remains there, in Lapithos, crumbling, trying to withstand time, alone, desolate… Okan and Kallis try to go inside the house but 40 years of neglect has turned the garden into a thick bush… Inside the house they discover that there are many balls of children: According to Okan Oktay, when the ball went into this house, the children must have been afraid to go and get their balls so the balls remain there! `It is like a haunted house!` Okan says…
We take photos and coordinates and Kallis will try to find aerial photos of this house from the past so they can locate the well…
We thank her and take her back to her house…
We stop to say hello to Zihni whose grandfather Zihni Tahir is `missing` from Polis… He has a tiny periptero on the beach front where they have recently built a pedestrian walkway parallel to the beach… It stretches from Vasilia to Lapithos…
Zihni's grandfather is `missing` - he believes that some TMT people had taken him off the bus in Polis and had beaten him up and he died and is still `missing` since 1964… Zihni Tahir had been born in a farm in Akamas, had moved to Fasli village and was working in the Yiolou farm…He had been `warned` by some TMT guys `not to deal with Greek Cypriots` - Tahir barely spoke Turkish, was very fluent in Greek. He had animals…
Zihni talks about his grandfather's possible burial site in Polis: `They told us that it is under the secondary school…`
`In those days in 1963-64, there was no prison so they would take people to caves in order to beat up and frighten people… There were caves there` he says…
`But we had gone there to show a possible burial site` I tell Zihni. `It had been perhaps back in 2005 or 2006… A Turkish Cypriot from Polis wanted to show us a possible burial site next to the secondary school and we had gone together with Ilias Georgiades and Ahmet Erdengiz, officials of the CMP at the time… But as far as I know, this place has never been exhumed` I tell Zihni. `The person who showed us this place had information that some Turkish Cypriots `missing` from 1964 had been buried there… But he was thinking it was Cengiz Ratip and Turgut Sitki…`
Perhaps I need to find that witness again and take him to Polis again and also do some investigation about the `missing` Zihni Tahir… It is the first time I am hearing this story…
We say goodbye to Zihni and go back to Nicosia…
The following week this time we go to Agios Georgios, Kyrenia to meet another reader about two other possible burial sites… On the 1st of July 2015 Wednesday, we go to find my reader who has called me and told me that he knew of three possible burial sites in Agios Georgios. Again I am together with Okan Oktay and Xenophon Kallis from the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee.
But before we go to Agios Georgios first we stop at St. Hilarion in order to meet two Greek Cypriot readers of mine. One of them is the relative of a "missing" person – the remains of his "missing" brother had been found some years ago and returned to his family for burial. For him the issue of "missing persons" did not end there – since then he is trying to find possible burial sites of both Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot "missing persons".
We had been wanting to meet at the St. Hilarion area for a long time and only now we could manage to meet here. He has some coordinates that I had given to the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee before… He says that these coordinates show the possible burial site of a "missing" Turkish Cypriot from 1963. Once again we give the map and the coordinates to the officials of the CMP. This reader knows an old man who had done his military service in 1966 in this area and the old man remembers someone bringing some bones to the military headquarters back then. They had found some remains back then and my reader says that these coordinates and the map show where these remains were found. We thank my readers for their humanitarian help and leave to go to my reader in Agios Georgios.
We find him and his wife offers us lemonade that she made with tangerines, lemons and oranges… A Turkish Cypriot family had moved to a house after 1974 in Agios Georgios and in the house they had found four `missing` Greek Cypriots killed and wrapped in moushamma… They had buried them behind the house under some babutsa…
The woman who had moved to this house, having seen the four dead bodies realized that she could not live there… She would feel eerie, she would see them in her dreams so soon after they moved out of this house and went to live abroad…
Another Turkish Cypriot family had moved to this house afterwards but there was a big stench from the garden, under an olive tree… When they asked about why there was this stench, they were told in the local coffee shop that some Greek Cypriots had been buried between the olive and orange tree… The Turkish Cypriot guy who had started living there would constantly put lime over the spot where the stench was coming from… So this was a very suspicious place and my reader wanted to show us both spots…
We go with him to find the babutsa and he tells us that `All this area had been a killing ground… This was a place where the most violent fight took place in July 1974…`
Later I go with his wife to find the olive tree We take photos and coordinates.
Then we go to close to the seaside in Agios Georgios so he can show us a house…
He says that the family who had moved to this house had found seven "missing" Greek Cypriots in the basement of the house, killed and wrapped in some sort of nylon…
Actually the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee had done some exhumations in this area but Okan Oktay says that they never knew about this house…
My reader says that "Probably they had informed the police back then…"
Kallis does not recall any case where remains of a group of seven "missing" Greek Cypriots being returned by the police to the CMP.
This means that we need to investigate the fate of these seven "missing"…
My reader tells Okan Oktay the name of the owner of the house – he is not alive but his wife is alive he explains.
We thank him for his humanitarian help…
`They too have relatives who are waiting for them…` he says, `I must share what I know to help them… This is what humanity necessitates…`

4.7.2015

Photo: The house in Lapithos where no one lives for the last 41 years…

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 9th of August 2015, Sunday.

A story from Polis…

A story from Polis…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 99 966518

On the 22nd of July 2015, Wednesday, I go to the Nicosia Cemetery to attend the funeral of the `missing` Mehmet Abdurrahman Chatallo and to meet his relatives… He had gone `missing` on the 22nd of July 1974 from Polis and this is the 41st anniversary as his remains are being returned to his family for burial and the last goodbyes… I am happy that with the help of my readers, we managed to find his burial site – he had been buried together with two other `missing` Turkish Cypriots from Polis from 1974, behind a monument at the entrance of Polis. With the help of one of my readers, I had found the person who had buried them and he came with us to show the exact location because previously the exhumation teams of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee had been digging for over a year with no results… Shevket Rado, an old man whose health is fragile comes with us and shows us not only the burial site of the three `missing` Turkish Cypriots whom he
had helped to bury at the order of some Greek Cypriot officials back in 1974, but also a fourth `missing` Turkish Cypriot buried at the edge of a cemetery in Polis up on a hill…
At the funeral there are military and civilian officials, relatives of the `missing` Mehmet Abdurrahman Chatallo and their friends.
I go to meet his wife Adile whose tears would not stop throughout the funeral. I sit next to her as she tells me the story of her husband…
`My husband was actually from Pelathousa` she says. She is from Arodez and they would get married and settle in Pelathousa. Later on they would build a house in Polis and move there around 1957.
`My husband had been working at the Limni mines but after 1963 this was no longer possible…`
So he would become a `mucahit` (`soldier`) in Polis and serve until 1974.
They would have six kids: Hasan, Kumru, Sevim, Sezgin, Umit and Erten… In 1974 as Chatallo would go `missing`, his youngest son Erten had only been six, Umit was 12, Sezgin was 14, Sevim was 16, Kumru was 19 and Hasan was 20 years old…
As the war broke out Adile Hanim would try to find out where her husband was stationed so she could send him some food… She would go and find the Turkish Cypriot commander of Polis and tell him `Please don't put him to the front line, there are younger people… And he is a bit overweight.` The commander would not tell her where he had been stationed so she would not be able to send him food, nor see him one last time…
They had stationed him up on a hill on the road to Pelathousa but Adile Hanim would not know that…
In 1975, they would emigrate to Morphou where very difficult days awaited her…
`Even our own villagers did not help us, you wouldn't know what we suffered` she says… She would need to find a house to stay in with her kids and she would have to find work in order to feed her kids…
She would go out in the fields to work, to collect oranges and try to survive on this land with six kids and without a husband…
The most tragic thing about today is that her eldest son Hasan, would not be able to see the day his father is being buried today… He would die of a heart attack last year and this would increase the pain of the family…
While there was the first excavations in Polis, he would go there for a few days in a row with the hope that they would find the remains of his father. But on those days, the excavations would produce no results since they had been digging the wrong place.
Although we had shown the possible burial site back in 2013, the very long process of DNA tests and the return process of the remains would take us all the way up to today and the life of Hasan Algin, the son of the `missing` Chatallo, would not be long enough to see this day…
We speak of all these at the funeral with Adile Hanim who is surrounded by her daughters and sons and grandchildren… Throughout the funeral she cries and cries – she is so sad…
She has 12 grandchildren.
`Chatallo would have been so happy about that` I tell her, `This is the best news, to have a dozen angoni…`
She shows me Mehmet, the grandson who carries the same name as her `missing` husband. Her family is packed tight around her, with love and care…
I get up and go to the grave to throw three scoops of soil with the shovel to his grave and share the pain of this family…
Today in this cemetery there is the monstrous face of war, the destruction it leaves behind… No word can ever be a consolation – no one tries to say words of consolation, it would be useless. The only `happy` thing about the whole process is how we managed to find his remains and how he is being buried today in a marked grave where his angoni can come visit him when they want. His children can bring him the best flowers and in spirit be with him here…
I know perfectly well that this is a poor consolation because nothing can fill the vacuum he has left behind – Mehmet Abdurrahman Chatallo loved to eat and drink, loved his kids and his wife and did everything possible to provide a good life to them but war has taken him away from us and no one and nothing can fill his space…
He will always live in the hearts and minds of his wife, his children, his angoni and his friends…
The following day I get a call from a Greek Cypriot who is a neighbour of the daughter of Chatallo who currently resides in Polis. He had been at the funeral but we did not see each other so now he calls… He too tried to help to find the remains but did not manage at the time…
`After the funeral I had gone to the house in Morphou with the family and only then I found out that you were at the funeral…`
`Sorry we missed each other` I tell him…
Adile Hanim invited me to go and visit her in her house in Morphou so I will do that and we will sit and share the pain as well as smiles – our humanity would bring us closer and we will talk about Polis and Arodez and Pelathousa and the Greek Cypriot neighbour of her daughter in Polis… We will talk about the angoni and what future lies in wait for them: Whether we shall ever be to see the days when people would not kill each other for whatever reason, when people will not `disappear` from the earth, whether we shall see the days when our children and our angoni would simply enjoy living on an island with the golden sand, the blue sea, the fantastic sun and the smell of jasmine and orange groves… Where war would only be in textbooks to learn from and where no military uniform would ever have a say in their lives… Where they will be simply only Cypriots no matter which ethnicity they come from and no matter which language they speak…

25.7.2015

Photo: Mehmet Abdurrahman Chatallo

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 2nd of August 2015, Sunday.

Season of funerals for `missing persons`…

Season of funerals for `missing persons`…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 99 966518

The season of the funerals begins again, this is the season when most of the funerals for the `missing persons` take place – even if remains have been found and families notified, generally relatives wait for the summer season for their relatives abroad to come so they can take part in the funeral… Cypriots are dispersed all over the world, in England, in Australia, in Canada and that is why the funerals of `missing persons` take part more in July and August as relatives come back from abroad for a visit.
I try to go to the funerals of `missing persons` whose remains had been found with the help of my readers – I try to go to the funerals of both Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot `missing` and to be with the relatives in this last journey… For me, this is like putting a full stop and some sort of closure… Working and investigating for years, having found so many things about this or that particular `missing` person from their relatives and friends, they become part of me even though I never knew them… If with the help of my readers we have shown the possible burial site and remains have actually been found, then begins a long wait for the work of the Anthropological Laboratory of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and the results of the DNA analysis.
Sometimes I would call them and ask whether the DNA identification have been done to this or that particular `missing person` who had been found with the help of my readers in this or that particular well. But most of the time, I never learn or rarely learn by coincidence. Most of the relatives of the `missing persons` also never learn about the vital role that my readers have played in the finding of the remains of their beloved `missing person` because this is never told to them. Unless we have been following the whole process together with the family of the `missing person`…
Sometimes we don't know which `missing persons` had been buried in a place we have shown, so naturally we wouldn't have a way of knowing who are their relatives. Therefore only until the DNA analysis is done, the identity of those `missing` would be known but since we are not part of that process with my readers, we wouldn't know and the funerals would take place and we wouldn't find out who those `missing persons` were that we helped to find and the relatives wouldn't know either since they would not be told.
Years ago one of my readers had given me a skull that he had found in Koutsovendis while hunting and had kept it for years. Through my articles he realized that this skull belonged to a `missing person`, that it was human, not a memorabilia to keep. So he called me midnight one day and told me that he wanted to give the skull back. We met the next morning and I took the skull and on the same day gave it to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee. I would also convince him to show us where he took this skull from and we would go with him and he would show the archaeologists the area from which he took the skull from. I wondered for years to whom this skull belonged to. Almost every month I would ask whether DNA identification had been done. But I only found out a month after the funeral that the DNA identification had been done, the skull returned to the family and that the funeral took place. It belonged to a young Greek Cypriot from
Alambra and his wife took the remains and buried… Maybe I will find the opportunity to visit his wife one day…
Sometimes I would read about the funeral of a `missing person` that we helped to find in the newspapers. Sometimes the relatives call me and invite me to the funeral and I try to go to those funerals and put some soil and say my belated condolences to the family, the condolences due for 40 or 50 years… Sometimes even this is not possible like it happened with the Rahmi family who had been killed and buried in a well in Livera. With the help of my Greek Cypriot readers I had shown twice to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee the possible burial site of this Turkish Cypriot family from Vasilia and wrote their story. They had been a family of seven – five of them kids. They had gone to work for a Greek Cypriot in Livera and were killed in December 1963 and buried in a well… Since there had been no news about the funeral, I could not go… But in spirit I was at that funeral…
There are two funerals in the following weeks of two `missing` persons, one Turkish Cypriot and the other a Greek Cypriot that I will attend. It was my readers who helped to find their burial site… Mehmet Abdurrahman Chatallo will be buried on the 22nd of July in Nicosia and Michalis Pekri will be buried on the 9th of August in Kalo Chorio. I will try to go to both funerals.
Mehmet Abdurrahman Chatallo had been killed in 1974 in Polis and one of my readers, the relative of a `missing person` from Polis, Unay Pasha helped me to find the person who had buried him, as well as others. Shevket Rado from Polis, despite his old age and poor health would agree to come with me and the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to Polis to show us the burial sites in October 2013. In one spot where he showed, the remains of three `missing persons` were found and in another spot, another `missing person`, a total of four `missing` Turkish Cypriots from Polis from 1974.
I had worked quite a bit investigating about the disappearance of Michalis Pekri from Vatyli and had gone to interview his wife Christina back in 2009. With the help of my readers, I had shown in those years to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, his possible burial site – it was a well… Many years passed until the exhumations began and at the depth of 33 meters, down in the well, his remains had been found. Now his remains are being returned to his family for burial and there will be the funeral of `missing` Michalis Pekri on the 9th of August Sunday at 10.00 at Kalo Chorio (Vuda) at the St. Raphael Church. I will try to attend this funeral – I called the daughter of `missing` Pekri, Maria and she sounded sad… They had gone to see the remains of her father in the laboratory and what came out of the well: the buttons of his shirt, his pants, his shoes… Pekri had eight kids and a farm… He was killed by his Turkish Cypriot
`friends` since they had `shared` his animals, cows, that they did not want to return to Pekri… 41 years after `missing` from Vatyli, now he will be buried in Kalo Chorio where his family had to become refugees and I will go there to put some soil on his grave, as though putting the last full stop on my investigations about him.
I would like to thank from the heart all my readers, both Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot who have shown their humanity in this whole process… With your help remains of many `missing persons` have been found and are being returned to their relatives for burial – many many thanks from my heart…

17.7.2015

Photo: `Missing' Michalis Pekri will be buried on the 9th of August 2015 Sunday.

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 26th of July 2015, Sunday.

`The handbook of the organisations…`

`The handbook of the organisations…`

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 99 966518

Today I would like to share with you a touching story written by Dr. Dervish Ozer entitled `The handbook of the organisations…` Dr. Dervish Ozer has sent me this story and I published in YENIDUZEN and now we are sharing it with our readers in POLITIS. Here is the story of Dr. Dervish Ozer:

`The handbook of the organisations…`

Dr. Dervish Ozer

Actually there is no such book, I made it up…
As I was sitting down and thinking today, I thought of hundreds of shepherds killed on this island. The shepherds killed and thrown in wells (lakkos)… I thought of their sheep that remained behind, their children, their sticks (topouzi), their bags (vourka), their flutes (bityavli) in their bags and their water carriers made of gourd (nerokoloko)… I thought of the trough made up of palm trees and used to water their animals at the edge of the wells and I thought of their `jiboyi` - the long stick with a hook to catch the sheep – that has been used by shepherds tending sheep for thousands of years on this island.
In the old times, they used to evaluate children at a certain age – they would make the kids wrestle in the centre of the village. Those who would prove to be strong would be sent to tend the ox used in tending fields. Those who would be a bit weaker but whose ear would pick up easily the sounds, those who could blow good whistles, those with a strong voice would be sent to tend flocks of sheep. The weaker ones would be sent to become apprentices to seamstresses and boot makers. The worst ones would be went to school since they were no good for anything with the thought that perhaps they would study and become a `katip` (clerk) so they can keep a record of the wheat, barley, goats and sheep in their weak state as clerks…
Those who would be sent to cut wheat and barley would become `djabbar` (powerful) and would be strong enough to handle two mules easily… A little bit more fragile and with a nice voice would be given to take care of the flock. They would put on his back a shepherd's bag made up of the whole skin of the sheep and they would put water in the water bottle of the shepherd made of gourd and shake it behind him and behind the sheep. And the only thing he would be this, that is taking care of his flock. In the beginning hundreds of sheep would be no different from each other but in time the little shepherd would find out that each sheep in fact has a name and a different character. The little shepherd would learn about their diseases, how to treat them, how to milk them and how to help them deliver their baby lambs… The little shepherd would stay for a long time in the fields and would learn to talk with sheep more than with humans. He would understand
from the eyes what a sheep was trying to tell him. On long summer nights to protect himself from the heat and on long winter nights to protect himself from the cold, he would be sleeping between the legs of the sheep...
And of course, he would learn to make `chakari` (bells hung around the necks of sheep)… After many years the growing little shepherds would come to know that each chakari would produce a different sound and each beat of the hammer on the copper would make the sound of the chakari more beautiful… They would learn that the most hammered copper would produce the best sound and during long nights of winter they would beat sheets of copper to make chakari for their sheep. With each beat of the hammer, they would be able to produce a bell through which they could differentiate the sheep and recognize them from this sound. In short each chakari hung around the neck of sheep would have a completely different sound and would sound different as each sheep walked. Imagine how the shepherd would perceive the sound of a whole flock with chakari producing such a sound… And imagine what sort of an ear that shepherd would have. Being a shepherd needed exactly that
sort of ear in those times…
During the long nights of the summer the flock would be staying on the outskirts of the village, the shepherd would start playing his flute (bityavli) made of bamboo and that flock would listen to that music and would accompany the shepherd's music with their own chakari – there has never been better music composed on this island ever… It would be an amazing sound when especially when the zirziro (crickets) and the owls and the bats would participate in this music but only the Shepherd's God and those who lived on this island would know what a beautiful sound this was…
And then sleep would come… The whole village would sleep with this sound on the threshing floor of the wheat, on their roofs, in their gardens. The shepherds would sleep too but with their ears tuned to only one sound, the sound of the chakari… And if they heard the sound of a chakari, they would know which sheep was not sleeping. Five hundred sheep and on the neck of each sheep a chakari, five hundred chakari and each with a different sound and the shepherd would know which chakari he hung around the neck of which sheep and from the sound of the chakari would know which sheep felt uncomfortable, which one was going where and which one was about to give birth… And he would know their troubles. The shepherds would know which sheep were sad and would take special care of them…
And there were the wells (lakkos) where the sheep would be watered. Those who knew where in Mesaoria they could find water, would take a stick of the English tree and go round and where the stick shivered would put stones to mark this place and two or three persons would dig for days in the heat of the summer with short shovels and short picks (`guspo') until they would find water… Then with donkeys they would carry stones to put around the well so it would not tumble down… It was a skill to dig wells and to find water, not only finding water but also protecting that water was a skill… It was a lifestyle to keep the water in its bed on those long summer days and nights, to pull water with chingo buckets, to put this water in troughs made of marble or palm trees, to water the sheep, to fill the water bottle nerokoloko and to put a little bit of salt in your mouth wrapped in a towel and kept in the vourka… This was a lifestyle of those times…
that is why those who live on this island and the gods know that not a single pebble should be thrown in a well. And will not be thrown. This is only known by those who live and who want to live, they know that they don't own that water and whoever wants can use the well to satisfy their thirst. They all knew that water can be used by whoever was coming there and that some salt would be wrapped in a towel and hidden among the stones for those passers-by to find.
This is known by those who live and who want to live, they know how insolent and how unforgivable it is to throw a stone in a well. And for hundreds and thousands of years on this island, not a single pebble was ever thrown in the wells, until the `organisations` (`teşkilatlar') came along…
The `organisations` came to this island. Everything changed, the old order was destroyed, no respect remained. There came men with guns and started going around. When `organisations` surfaced on this island they produced a book with orders. When `organisations` decided that the easiest target to kill for propaganda were the shepherds with their water bottles, their `jiboyi`, their bags made of sheep skin (vourkas), tending their flocks in the fields, everything changed on this island. The shepherds started being shot treacherously by people who came next to them imitating friendship and with whom they had smoked cigarettes. But the shepherds, just as in the old times had thought of them as friends and would roll a cigarette and give it to them, searching for a little friendship and conversation in their loneliness… How would the shepherds know of the organisation or Enosis or Taksim (`partition`)… Their only concern was how many the yellow headed
sheep would give birth to and how many beats of the hammer they would make on the copper sheets to make chakaris for the newborn and what names they would give to the newborns…
In those years of `organisations`, the shepherds learnt other sounds other than the chakari… They learnt that the sound of the pistols pulled out of the waists of those they came around them and smoked rolled cigarettes with them were quite different. And they learnt that those they rolled and offered a cigarette whom they knew as friends were actually not friends. And the shepherds who had learnt and had taught not to throw a single stone in the wells had to learn that there were different sounds other than the chakaris, that the sound of the flutes would no longer be heard on this island, that the gods of love and the gods of the shepherds had left the island and that the wells were filled up with dead shepherds.
And all of these were written in the organisation books on the island.
Who would be killed for propaganda?
How is a shepherd killed?
And how a shepherd would be thrown in a well dug years ago when throwing a single pebble in a well had been a taboo…
And how about now?
First the gods of the shepherds left the island.
Then as shepherds were killed more and more, there was no shepherd left who knew how to make chakari…
There is no shepherd who knows how to play the flute anymore…
There isn't even wells left behind since wells have been filled up with those who had been killed and buried in wells…
Because in the handbook of the organisations, it was written how to kill a human and how to make that human disappear…
(DR. DERVISH OZER – JUNE 2015)

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 19th of July 2015, Sunday.