Cooking with love…

Cooking with love…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

The house is nice and warm, I boil chicken to make stock, to make soup, to make macaroni, to make rice… In the refrigerator, different jams are ready and waiting to be used… The cats sleep curled up like a ball around us, close to the fire… All, except the little blond cat who sleeps with all his claws up in the air… Candles burn, candles that sooth us, that show us that there is light somewhere, that it is not all dark, it is not all gloomy, that there is still hope for the future as long as we are alive and can dream on…
My friends make Christmas cakes for me, kourabiye for my son – soon he will be here for the New Year and all my friends will rush to cook for him… Ferah will wrap vine leaves to make dolma, Okan will cook a yogurt soup with tiny meat balls in it, all the restaurant owners who have been asking about when he will get back will start cooking liver on the charcoal for him or fish soup or wild mushrooms and agrelli with eggs… Everyone is expecting him home so they can cook for him…
Recently one of my dear friends, an archaeologist who has been `digging` for the `missing persons` have had an operation… I visited her and a few days later called her to see what she can eat so I could cook for her…
`Nooo!` she said, `The refrigerator is sooo full of food, you cannot believe… My mother, my sisters all brought something so I don't need any food… You know what? I think in Cyprus, we express ourselves through food… When we feel sad, we eat… When we feel happy, we eat… When someone is sick, we believe that if we cook for that person, he or she will heal immediately…So food is so central in our lives…`
She too has cooked for me, soups when I get sick and indeed when I drink her soup, I believe I heal more quickly: She puts some chicken, some fresh ginger cut in chunks, a carrot and a potato and some rice and some pepper… It's like a mother's soup to heal the soul, comfort food cooked with love…
Perhaps our obsession with cooking is based on the island we live in: For at least those of us who are alive on this earth, the past half century has been full of trouble, conflict and war, full of uncertainty, full of memories of becoming a refugee, seeing our island being divided, cut into two parts forcefully… Even as a child, my first memories are the shrieking sound of a horn when we had to run into shelters at our neighbourhood and wait there for some hours, sitting stifled in the basement of a restaurant or a basement close the restaurant… Then we had to leave home one night when some soldiers knocked at our door and told us to just go! Go, go, go! Don't look back! Don't try to take anything! So off we went, in the middle of the night, end of December 1963, passing through the children's garden of our neighbourhood in Nicosia with my brother, my mother, my grandmother and grandfather who could not walk fast – I was in my mother's
arms, a five year old kid, sleepy, cold, not knowing and understanding what was happening, my grandfather blind so he could not see and my brother had to help him to walk, my grandmother almost deaf so she could not hear what was being said, confused and frightened… Our street was divided and we had seen how they had put sandbags to divide the street, barrels and a military post to guard it… My brother, young as he was, a student in the lyceum one night while on `guard` there, had been punished: He could not bring himself to stop someone who did not know the `parola`, the `password` for that night…
We had gone to inside the walled city to seek refuge in a relative's house where we slept 25 in a room and there was no food, absolutely no food: You had to fight for food… No toys, no going out, no getting back home… We spent about a month like that and managed to go home, to our own house, to our own garden, to our own kitchen and to our own food…
We experienced 1974 at home – my mother refused to leave the house since we had the bad experience of 1964 becoming refugees even for a short time so she decided to stay… `At least we can cook our own food` she would say… She would dig the garden to find potatoes she had planted and had forgotten about and would be happy: She would cook potatoes, she would cook macaroni – there was no bread, this was war – our house was being shelled and we could not go out. So she would cook pitta for us from flour and we would eat pitta bread…
All her life, my mother made stock of food: We would always have at least three-four packages of rice, lots of macaroni, flour, sugar, canned milk, anything you can think of that she could stock, she would stock… `You never know in Cyprus what might happen` she would say…
`But mom, all the markets are full of food! Why do you buy two okkas of halloumi? We can always buy them…`
`No, no` she would say, `you never know what might happen in Cyprus…`
This uncertainty determined our lives and still determines our lives: We are NOT in control of our own lives in Cyprus as a whole – you never know what might come up next: One day the checkpoints are opened but who knows when some big shot might decide to close them? Who knows when they decide to kick off for tension? Or even `peace`… Nothing is certain except one thing for sure: Cypriots on both sides of the dividing line are in FULL CONTROL of their kitchen and perhaps that is why we are so much obsessed with food and we express our love and care with food… Nothing can stop us from eating and cooking and serving – at least we can control this small but very vital area of our lives: We cook for the ones we love…
For the New Year dinner I will cook a recipe I have created with love for my son and for the whole family: I will cook chicken with sweet oranges and clementine tangerines adding olive oil from Karpaz… The sweetness of the oranges and the tangerines will caramelize the skin of the chicken and we will serve it with love and hope that one day the Cypriots will finally be able to get the wheel of their lives and live in a country not with the uncertainty of partition but with the certainty of peace…

19.12.2014

(*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 28th of December 2014, Sunday.

`Pain looks like an earthquake…`

`Pain looks like an earthquake…`

Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

Young peace activist Orestis Agisilaou sends me a note:
`Since 2001, United Nations have decided to celebrate the peace on 21/9 every year. At the moment many wars take place in the world. Children are killed every day in Palestine, innocent people are killed in Iraq and Ukraine every day. At all over the world the violence and the terror take place. Cyprus is a country which suffered and is still suffering from a war also. Forty years ago, the county was divided into two parts and Cypriots were told that the borders of their country aren't Kyrenia or Limassol but a buffer zone in the middle of the island. Every Cypriot's dream became half. Our multi coloured island became black and grey. A lot of people were killed. Many of them are still missing. Hundreds of Cypriots became refugees by violence and 40 years later they still hoping to live at least one day at their village before they die. The younger ones are growing up in a divided country and they feel the other community as a stranger. Now, due to
the international peace day, a lot of events take place in order to celebrate peace. And after what? Will we go after home to sleep and to continue our everyday life? The International Day of Peace isn't a reason to go out to see an event, to have fun and after to return home. We should put this day in our everyday life and to celebrate it 365 days a year. If we love honestly our common island we have to take into account the messages of this day and to start working for a better Cyprus. People say that the pain looks like an earthquake. Both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots felt the pain. When an earthquake finishes, people fix the damages of their houses. In the case of Cyprus the materials aren't cement and bricks but love, trust and comprehension. We wait this reconstruction of our home 40 years now…`
Yes the pain that all communities have felt in Cyprus in the last half century is like an earthquake as Orestis points out and each and every step to fix the damage that the pain has done to our people must be encouraged…
Sometimes I encounter people who ask me `Do you think that we will have a solution soon?`
I feel very awkward when I encounter this question and answer them with another question:
`Are you a student at elementary school?`
Problem in Cyprus is that there is absolutely no encouragement from either side for cooperation, for mending our damaged house, for building afresh something that would stand to earthquakes… Problem in Cyprus is that people are far ahead of political structures in both communities – our culture is one that quickly adapts: Cyprus for thousands of years have experienced many civilizations coming and going and Cypriots always found a way to survive by quickly adapting to new conditions… But politicians want to keep things the way it is: Not all politicians of course but exceptions are not the rule – there are always exceptions and good examples but the mainstream politics and policies in this country on either side does not encourage cooperation, not even curiosity about each other… The worst pieces of `news` is selected, when something `good` happens, it is completely ignored by the mainstream politics…
For many years teachers from the two main communities of the island, Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot have been coming together to create new teaching materials for schools and they have produced wonderful books for teachers about for instance how to teach the humanitarian issue of `missing persons` in their classrooms… Neither the Turkish Cypriot, nor the Greek Cypriot authorities have ever allowed these teaching materials officially into the schools. With the efforts of some progressive teachers' trade unions and progressive teachers, some books have been distributed in some schools but this does not make a great impact on the mainstream politics and policies… Our leaders in both sides of the partition line, prefer to hold on to their own rhetoric, their own status quo and organizing events at schools with students have come across great obstacles in some cases… One very good Greek Cypriot friend whose father is `missing` from Karpasia and
whose family suffered quite a lot in 1974 has a heart of gold: He tried desperately for two years to organize a meeting where we would visit the high school he was teaching in Nicosia – he was assistant headmaster – and a Turkish Cypriot and a Greek Cypriot relative of a `missing person` would speak to the students… It proved impossible to organize this event despite his insistence – even the progressive teachers reacted to our proposition saying that `They did not want any trouble in their schools from the known fascist circles`, therefore avoiding efforts of reconciliation and keeping their own `status quo`, their own positions, their own `safe` places… In the end, our dear Greek Cypriot friend was sent to a village to teach: I do not know whether this was due to his very insistent efforts at trying to do an activity of reconciliation at his school or whether it was just a technical and professional decision by the authorities. I did not ask
him because I was a bit scared of what the answer might be… I did not want to find out whether my prediction had come true…
Another dear friend, a young woman teacher who organized events with us at the schools she had been teaching had horrible experiences of being cast out by other Greek Cypriot teachers from her school, gossip spread about her, being alienated and outcast in her school. Not that she was afraid of such things but still it set out an example to others who might have wanted to join her for such peaceful events… It reminded me of Denktash times when we were being alienated, gossip spread about us in order to make sure that people would not support our peaceful activities, that they would fear what might happen to them (not to us!!!)…
But we have in both sides of the partition line, young, courageous people like Orestis who go out of their way in order to try to mend their house damaged by the earthquakes of the past… And they need our support, our encouragement, our good hearted will to be able to carry on… If we don't mend our house together, we will continue to suffer and invite more suffering and more earthquakes… Our whole region is on fire and we still need to figure out how to stay alive together on this land called Cyprus…

3.12.2014

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 21st of December 2014, Sunday.

Understanding the struggle for `missing persons` in Mexico…

Understanding the struggle for `missing persons` in Mexico…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

We have connections with Mexico through the humanitarian issue of `missing persons` - through Mexican Cordelia Rizzo, an activist who works with the relatives of `missing persons` we have learned a lot about what has been happening in Mexico, connecting Cyprus and Mexico on this dramatic and sad issue, exhibiting the scarves that Mexican relatives of `missing persons` embroider in Cyprus… Every Sunday relatives gather in the town squares and embroider and exhibit these scarves – on the scarves they actually embroider the stories of their own `missing persons` and we have managed with the help of dear Cordelia Rizzo to exhibit them in Cyprus last year… One of the active members of `Together We Can`, the Bi-Communal Initiative of Relatives of Missing Persons and Victims of War in Cyprus, Christina Pavlou Solomi Patsia embroidered a scarf in solidarity with the relatives of Mexican `missing persons` and we had sent this – now in these days of
demonstration in Mexico, Christina's scarf is currently exhibited at the University Monterrey…
Recently through the disappearance of 43 students in Mexico, since September there has been mass demonstrations about `missing persons` not only in Mexico but also internationally… Mexico has thousands of `missing persons` and our dear friend Cordelia Rizzo a few days ago on the 20th of November 2014 wrote an article about what is happening now in Mexico concerning the `missing` students and why it became part of the agenda of the people now… I want to share her article with you… Under the heading `Understanding Ayotzinapa`, Cordelia Rizzo says:
`On September 26th, 43 students, most of whom were just beginning their first year of college at the Teacher's College of Ayotzinapa, were kidnapped from Iguala. This attack, which also resulted in the deaths of several students, was allegedly ordered by Jose Luis Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, the mayor and first lady of Iguala. News of the disappearances broke out through a photo taken of student Julio Cesar Mondragon's cadaver; his skull was exposed and bleeding, his eyes gouged out. After the picture went viral – as is often organized crime's intention in capturing these images – the nation slowly realized the extent of September 26th's tragedy. Mondragon's face was wiped out while he was still alive.
Attacks on Mexico's youth have been taking place for years, but this time is different. This time, society's outcry has been coherent, clear, and unified in a way that many say is unprecedented.
Why now?
What is happening with the Ayotzinapa case has, in a way, taken place before. In 1974, Lucio Cabañas, leader of the Party of the Poor and an alumnus of the Teacher's College of Ayotzinapa, was also killed – in an ambush by the Mexican Army. Footage of his autopsy was recorded; it was meant to be televised. Like Mondragon's corpse, Cabañas' body was a message to and a metaphor for Mexican society. What followed was more systematic harassment and disappearances of student leaders who sympathized with Cabañas' ideals during the '70s and '80s. This dark period is the infamous Dirty War, which kicked off in '68 – and the state of Guerrero, where the Teacher's College of Ayotzinapa is located, suffered the most.
Thirty years later, Guerrero and other northern states found themselves at the epicentre of violence once again, this time with Mexico's war on drugs – a war that has led to more than 100,00 deaths, not including the 27,000 missing.
The collusion between local authorities and organized crime can no longer be ignored.
In 2010 alone, Ciudad Juarez endured the Villas de Salvarcar massacre, in which sixteen persons (mostly high school students from CBTIS) were killed and twelve wounded in a house after twenty sicarios opened fire on them. Their parents had to endure the fact that the deaths were not the result of settling a rift among rival cartel members, as then-President Calderon assured, but a mistake. Meanwhile in Monterrey, Jorge Mercado and Javier Arredondo, graduate students from the engineering schools at Monterrey's Technological Institute, were killed in a cross fire between the army and alleged sicarios inside the campus. Their bodies were manipulated – student IDs removed from their wallets – to make it seem like they were criminals.
In San Fernando, in the perennial PRI stronghold of Tamaulipas, 72 migrants were found dead. Coverage of this event simmered down within weeks even though hundreds of bodies were found. More than 300 were disappeared and killed in Allende, Coahuila (another PRI stronghold) in 2011, but when the Mexican public learned about this in 2013 no protests followed. In Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, 6 young men were disappeared in 2013. After roughly a month, police found their alleged remains, which were supposedly dissolved in acid. Urns with ashes and a sticker from the local government (as if branding the deaths) were handed to the families.
The disappearances from the Dirty War happened 40 years ago, and amount to a few hundred missing compared to the tens of thousands of disappearances of the past 8 years. But those of us who have been observing closely see a continuum that can no longer be ignored: the collusion between local authorities and organized crime.
Mexico's crisis of disappearances is unlike any others that have happened in Latin America. Some have been enacted by the State, while others have been committed by cartels and organized crime. But this latter type is rarely investigated thoroughly, and very few of victims have been identified. Former President Vicente Fox rose to power promising to bring the Dirty War cases to justice, but the tribunal set up for such a task was conveniently dismantled and no responsible parties were tried. Today, in the era of NSA surveillance, authorities in Mexico routinely claim to have no information on the whereabouts of the disappeared. They construe outlandish theories to discourage relatives in their search.
And yet, it has been very difficult to raise awareness until now. Guerrero has long seemed like a foreign land to many Mexicans. Identified with Marxist and Socialist ideals, which are not popular in the North and several other conservative parts of Mexico, the region is considered indomitable – an image that authorities perpetuated by casting victims of violence as deserving agitators. But Guerrero is also a time capsule, it holds the memory of what it meant to be young and committed. And this is what has come to the fore after the events of September 26th.
Finally, the portrait that emerged of the 43 missing — rural first-year teaching students from one of the poorest states in Mexico — made it clear that they were not, as former president Felipe Calderon once intimated of the tens of thousands of victims during the early years of the drug war he initiated, corrupt and somehow deserving of their fate. They were simply innocent victims. Today, a multitude of Mexicans are looking beyond the stigma that the students of its highlands have endured for decades. We finally see in the faces of these men, who barely touched adulthood our hopes shattered. Ayotzinapa symbolizes the peasantry, the origins of the Mexican peoples. Perhaps we might also unknowingly begin to come to peace with our indigenous roots, an aspect of our heritage we are never at ease with.
The events in the seemingly remote mountains of Guerrero have galvanized a stream of frustrations that no soccer game or finely tailored telenovela can distract us from. It has dragged the grand multitude of Mexicans who wouldn't show empathy towards the war's victims into the protests, and made them admit, for the first time, that they too are vulnerable.
Today, Nov. 20, Mexico celebrates the 104th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution with a national day of marches and work stoppages. Today, and every day until there is justice, we show the world that #TodossomosAyotzinapa.`
http://remezcla.com/features/understanding-ayotzinapa/


Photo: `Mother if I disappeared where did I go?` says the scarf embroidered by the relative of a `missing` person from Mexico...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 14th of December 2014, Sunday.

The scars of my land…

The scars of my land…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

One of my readers, while speaking, blurts out something that strikes me as important: Some years ago, together with a friend of his, while travelling in Famagusta, his friend had pointed out a place and told him that there had been a mass grave where some Greek Cypriots were buried there… This was what Turkish Cypriots call `Varosha`, part of the town that has been settled by Turkish Cypriot refugees from Paphos…
I ask him if he could show this place to us or even better, if his friend can show it to us… He is not sure of his friend since he says, `he is an ultra-nationalist` and wouldn't come out to meet with us… He would call him anyway and ask… But he volunteers to come with me and with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to try to locate at least the area and tell us the story…
So off we go, on the 10th of November 2014 Monday morning to Famagusta…
We try to find the area he is talking about in Varosha… We drive around to see whether we can see the place he is describing…
`It was a garden with some olive trees and around it was a high wall with yellow stone…` he describes.
His friend whose mother lives in this avenue had told him that they had tried to `empty` this mass grave in the past, `they` being `the authorities` in charge in the northern part of our island.
We find the avenue they had travelled – he remembers that at some point they had turned to go to Nicosia – so the possible burial site he is talking about must be around this avenue…
I have some assumptions about the place he is describing: Some years ago, another reader had shown us a garden with a stone wall around it and she had said that there had been a burial there… Next to the garden, in the road where she was living there had also been suspicion about a burial site: When they had come from the southern part of the island to be settled in these houses of Greek Cypriots from Varosha, they had found a big hole in the middle of their road and for many years, the hole stayed as it is like a scar until sometime later the municipality had put asphalt over it…
A few years ago the municipality had gone there to do some work concerning pipes and my reader had called me to try to suggest that since they are digging the asphalt, why doesn't the CMP start excavations here – I had told what she had suggested to the officials of the CMP but nothing happened. Probably CMP officials warned the workers to contact them if they found any remains during digging… The municipality did its work on pipes and closed the hole and left… The place remains as a possible burial site that we had shown with my reader to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee – there needs to be investigation about both this hole, as well as the adjacent garden with the wall surrounding it – years ago there had been information about this garden, that there might be a possible burial site in the garden…
We thank my reader for trying to locate the suspicious garden with us and he promises to try to contact his friend and try to get more information – since we now know on which avenue this possible burial site was located, the Turkish Cypriot investigators can go and make investigation about it. Our reader has given us a good clue and a good description: What remains is for the Turkish Cypriot officials to start investigating this area…
Our next stop is on the road from Kalopsida to Kuklia where the relative of a Turkish Cypriot `missing` person wants to show us another possible burial site… His father has been `missing` since 1974 on the road between Kalopsida and Kuklia and he has been trying very hard to find his burial site, going around the villages where Greek Cypriots from Kalopsida live, talking to them, trying to find any information about his father's burial site. There has been some digging for this `missing person` in the area without any concrete result… Now he shows us a big havuza (water pond) where once upon a time, water used to come from different wells for irrigation – he says that he had found some information about the possible burial site of his father, that he is buried in a water well in this field… Further up, we see a water well, closed now… We thank him and say goodbye to continue to Epicho (Abohor) to the possible burial site of some `missing`
Greek Cypriots – this had been a big hole where the British had taken `havara` soil while building the road from Epicho to Beykeuy – the big hole was around 20 meters to 30 meters in diameter and 3.5-4 meters deep… In 1974, one of my readers had seen that they had buried some `missing` Greek Cypriots in that `havara hole` - seven or eight of them, they had been killed in the war and after the war the bodies were collected and buried in that `havara hole`… Sometime later this area had become a rubbish dump and the whole village as well as those from surrounding villages would dump their rubbish here... Not only the hole but the whole area would be full of garbage as well as remnants from constructions…
We have been working on this area for many years and when finally the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee began digging, they stopped since they found `asbestos` in the rubbish dump…
Archaeologists were sent for training about how to handle asbestos and experts came to see the rubbish dump… The mukhtar of Epicho wanted to make a park here so he had the area fenced off so no one would be able to throw any more garbage here – but the damage is already done…
We walk around and see broken pieces of asbestos in the area… These came from renovations or constructions – old water pipes or old asbestos lamarina was thrown here, now making it difficult to dig since it might harm the health of archaeologists… They got some special clothing and special gear but still they are not so willing to dig and they say this to us when we visit the area… The Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee will decide how to carry on excavations here with proper health measures, if possible…
We walk towards the second big hole that the mukhtar himself had shown us, saying there might have been two or three `missing persons` buried there. In and around this hole too, there is asbestos…
The mukhtar is waiting for the work of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to be finalized here so that he can continue with his park project – they had already planted a lot of trees but they have now wilted – the old rubbish dump looks like a sinister place – I hope that one day it will really become a nice park with trees where children can play and people can have nice picnics…
Cyprus is scarred: Wherever we go, we see the signs of these scars… When you know the stories, these scars become scars in your heart and you carry them around forever in your soul…
Cyprus needs to heal from these scars but as things stand today, we are so far away from healing…

21.11.2014

Photo: From the rubbish damp at Epikho...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 7th of December, 2014 Sunday.

`The diary of a child…`

`The diary of a child…`

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

Dr. Dervish Ozer, whose stories we have published in these pages has written `The diary of a child from Epicho (Abohor)…` It's the story of 18 villagers who had fled the village in 1974 during the war and stayed outside the village in a place called `Boghazi with Olives`. Dr. Dervish spoke with many people in order to create the diary of a child from the group. In summary, here is what he has written:
`20 July
It was Saturday. We heard the voice of Denktash on the radio and watched the planes passing. As always we played war games in the yard of our house. My grandma collected and wrapped some things in bundles. And my mother filled up a bag to the full with loaves of bread she had just cooked and put the bag near the door. We laughed because who would eat so many loaves of bread!
A little while later the war began and how it began! It was as though the sky was falling and wouldn't stop.
My uncle came running to the house – my uncle is only four years older than me. I was 11 and he was 15. He was carrying water to soldiers. He came in rage to the house: `The Greek Cypriots came near the Two Olives, the whole village has evacuated, why are you still here!` he said.
Me, my mother and my sisters and brother got out of the house and ran into the dry stream. When an elderly neighbour saw us running, he stopped us: `It's raining bullets, where will you go?` he said. We slowed down a bit but we did not return home.
We had taken with us the bread and bundles of clothes that my mom and grandma had prepared but we had forgotten to take the money at home. I returned with my mother to the house, took the money and went back to run following the dry stream but could not find neither my siblings, nor my grandmother. My mother was carrying the loaves of bread in the bag and a pot for cooking macaroni.
Even today she does not remember how she got hold of that pot.
We went all the way to Petra tou Digheni but couldn't enter the village. The Greek Cypriots had taken the village and we saw some civilians running towards us. The Greek Cypriots could see us and were calling us saying `Ela`. We slept on an olive tree near Petra tou Digheni when night fell.
21 July
In the morning there was no sound of guns or humans. We climbed down from the tree and around eight persons started towards Kalavach (Kalyvakia) but we encountered villagers coming from Kalyvakia on the way. It too had fallen to the Greek Cypriots and the only place left for us to go was the mountains. We walked towards the mountains and when we saw some more of our villagers we decided to stay at the `Boghazi with Olives` (`Zeytinli Boghaz`). I was still carrying the macaroni pot.
We had become 16 persons at the `Boghazi with Olives`. We punched a little hole in the water pipe to get some water. But there was no food. There was a guy who had come as a refugee to our village and he came to join us with his sheep. We thought we will not go hungry.
On the first day we shared the bread we had. And the bread finished. The old people said there was some wheat bundles down and hiding and crawling, they went and brought those bundles and put the wheat in the macaroni pot to cook. It was good to eat the wheat but there was no salt.
22 July
We put a red blanket one of the old women had taken with her in order to protect herself from bullets (!) up on the hill and on it made a crescent and a star with white stones. This would protect us from the bombing of the planes. Plus they would see us and save us! A soldier who had got away from the village with his wife and kids buried his gun so the Greek Cypriots would not find it. The sheep we milked. We drank this from the macaroni pot and from its lid.
23 July
Our breakfast was again milk from the sheep – the macaroni pot and its lid proved to be very useful. We would drink the milk from the lid. It was too hot and we were trying to get a place under the six olive trees in the shade. We would move with the shade during the day. We were weak from hunger and could not go far anyway.
24 July
We changed our route in order to get some bundles of wheat and found a tractor and a car that belonged to those from Beykeuy. We could now listen to news from the radio of the car. According to the Bayrak Radio, we had won the war! According to the Greek Cypriot radio, Turkish soldiers were about to be pushed to the sea. Now we had to listen to the radio as a daily task. It was the elderly soldier who listened to the radio most and from time to time he would shout at us to be silent.
25 July
Today must have been Thursday. Two sheep came and joined the other sheep. We were happy that we would at least have some meat. The group sat down and spoke whether to slaughter some sheep. The sheep did not belong to us, therefore it was not `helali` to slaughter or eat them. That was the decision of the `committee`. Again we ate boiled wheat without salt. We could hear the planes passing by but there was no sounds of bombing. We were too weak even to try to hide.
26 July
We found out that the shepherd who said that `it is not helali to cut the sheep` had in fact salt but would not share it with us. He would secretly lick the salt he kept in his bag. We asked for salt but he would not give it to us. He turned a deaf ear to my mom who begged him to give just a little bit of salt to us kids.
27 July
Arguments started in the group.
28 July
Two more persons joined us. They had been prisoners of Greek Cypriots and had escaped. We learned from them how bad things were. We would never see our village again…
29 July
We woke up to the wailing of the shepherd who had hidden the salt. He not only had salt but also dry katimeri in his bag and would wet and eat it – he was remembering his wife who had baked this katimeri and missing her and crying out her name… Still he would not give us his salt or katimeri.
30 July
Again we woke up to the crying of the shepherd and two elderly men tried to push him away from us. His wailing could be heard from afar and women were afraid that he would compromise our position. They threw some stones at him and pushed him away from the group but he continued crying. The elderly later on went looking for him but when his crying stopped they came back.
31 July
Nothing significant happened.
1 August
Today's menu was again milk from the lid and for lunch, cold golifa without salt. This golifa cooked above a wood fire, Abohor (Epicho) style was something the elderly could eat but they still complained. There was comments like, it could have been done better, it should have been cooked less…
2 August
Some of us went to the well of a villager to bring back a bucket.
3 August
We all started thinking of winter. We could not live like this and we needed to search for a place to stay.
4 August
The old soldier who was listening to the radio once a day and the crying shepherd had an argument. The old soldier threw a stone that hit the head of the chobani who had been hiding the salt. They were swearing at each other. The elderly intervened and blamed the loud noise of the crickets for driving them crazy. The news was not commented on, they were not worth it. As always it said Ecevit, Sisco, Junta, Sampson, Makarios but no one could see our situation. The head of the shepherd was wrapped with a cloth, the blood stopped. Some of us liked that since our revenge was taken. How strange that we were 18 persons hiding among the hills from the enemy, trying to survive, and we were bursting each other's heads!
5 August
Groupings began in our commune and some were coming together secretly and whispering to each other. Under fire, on the edge of death, people could not stand each other!
6 August
We had lost a lot of weight and could not even go to toilet anymore.
7 August
We had learned to use our hands quickly in order to get the golifa from the macaroni pot – if not, we would go hungry.
We were arguing about our place in our houses built of straw. The elders were trying to provoke the younger to go back to the village but nobody cared about that.
8 August
A sheep was chosen from the flock and said that each person had to pay ten shillings. They would cut and cook the old sheep but each had to pay so it would not be `harami`. Those who had money paid, those who did not borrowed it or promised to pay. The sheep was cut and we waited like hungry wolves next to the fire for the sheep to cook. After many hours we ate it. It was not cooked. The elders and those without teeth could not eat. They used the stock to put some wheat and eat.
9 August
It was the worst day. We all had diarrhoea. It was the sheep we ate…
10 August
The elders could not move because of diarrhoea. The younger ones started talking about who knew how to pray and what to do if someone dies, how to bury them.
11 August
We were losing hope. This war would never end. First the elders and then we will die here. No-one was talking now. Only the elderly soldier was listening to the radio and not commenting anymore. All his comments had proven to be wrong.
12 August
Two persons were chosen to go and check what was going on in the village. At night time they set out to go.
13 August
They came back and brought potatoes and dry bread from the village. They told us that animals died in the streets and a lot of houses were burned down. They did not see anything else. In the evening we ate potatoes. They had brought salt from the village and we licked that salt. The elders' eyes started shining with the salt. Their creases started going away. We were happy, we had eaten something with salt.
14 August
We woke up to the sound of bombs and planes. We opened the radio. The second war had begun. The elders were like owls, they all said bad things. `Whether we win or lose, we will all lose` one of them was saying. Five or six Greek Cypriot soldiers came and found us. They asked for water and we gave them water and they climbed towards Halevga. An hour later other Greek Cypriot soldiers came and asked for water.
We learned from the radio that we were free. Denktash was speaking nonstop. We took our macaroni pot and returned to the village. The elders who could not walk stayed one more day to be picked up by a car later. We paid for the sheep that was cut so it could be `helali`. We also paid for the wheat we had eaten.
We came to our houses even if they were burned or destroyed. No place to sleep at night, everything was a mess. Still it was big happiness to sleep under a roof and to be able to eat salt.
Nowadays we joke about these 26 days we spent… It looks like a game… A game was being played and the whole island was in this game. The deaths and the hunger, the wounded and the missing, the mothers waiting for their sons and the refugees, all a big game… Even today, all of these seem like a big game to me…`
(Dr. Dervish OZER – November 2014).


Photo: Dr. Dervish Ozer at the `Boghazi with Olives`, investigating the area...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 30th of November 2014, Sunday.

Wonderful readers finding courage to speak…

Wonderful readers finding courage to speak…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Τel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

My wonderful readers continue to call and write to me, giving hope for a better terrain for the future… One of my readers who had shown us a possible burial site near the old Grammar School where five `missing persons` had been buried near a small church calls me:
`I have spoken again with the guy who witnessed it all` he says, `and I found out that they had covered the bodies first with lamarina and then put soil over it…`
This is very good information since if and when `permission` is given for excavations in this military area, it would make things easier for the excavation team of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee… Because metal would show on a mine search, it would be easier to identify the exact location of the possible burial site…
Back in November last year, this reader had shown us from a high building the exact location of the little church… This had been the area where ELDYK and TURDYK had confronted each other back in 1974… We could not enter the area since it was a Turkish military zone but we could see the little church from a tall building from the southern part of Nicosia… According to my reader, the entrance of the little church was facing the north…
`If you face the north standing at the entrance of the church, fifteen steps to the north, you would find the burial site of four or five soldiers who had been killed in the war.`
Now he is giving new information that at the burial site, those who had buried these five `missing` Greek Cypriots and/or Greeks had used lamarina to cover them first, and then had put soil on top of them… The possible burial site is just outside the church, a few meters from the entrance… I thank him for this information and pass it onto the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee so that they know if and when they get `permission` to dig here…
Another burial site that my readers had been telling me about in another military area on the shores of Lapithos has finally got `permission` to be dug… Starting from mid-2000s my readers had been calling and giving information about a possible burial site in a fenced military area on the shore… I had informed the officials of the CMP about this possible burial site and also had written about this area starting from 2008, finding witnesses who had seen human remains while the area was being fenced off… I had found witnesses who had worked during the fencing of the area who had seen human remains… Finally after so many years, the CMP gets `permission` from the Turkish military to dig in this area and even during the time spent for searching for mines before excavations, human remains are found on the surface… I feel relief because one more place where my readers have insisted that people had been buried is being excavated… There had been
various stories about this fenced area on the shores of Lapithos: That here was buried a lot of Greek Cypriots who had been killed during fighting in 1974… Some of my readers had claimed that the bodies buried here were brought from Vasilia and Lapithos, those killed in fighting in 1974… I hold my breath: I hope that this area has not been `emptied` and hopefully they will find the remains here…
Another reader comes to speak to me – it took her many years to tell me what she knows and I appreciate her courage to decide finally to speak to me…
`In 1974, in Agios Georgios Kyrenia, in the garden of a two storey house, a mass burial site had been uncovered… A family who had been refugees had been given this house and when they tried to plant something in the garden, they saw human remains all over the garden. Wherever they dug to plant something, human remains were coming out… If you are going from Kyrenia towards Lapithos, it's on the shore, as soon as you pass the open air military museum, it's just next to it, a two storey house. In those days, the ones who lived in this house had notified authorities about this mass burial site and immediately they were evacuated from this house and placed in another house. They were telling me that afterwards, they put pebble stones and cement in the area where they had seen remains and on top tanks and other war memorabilia were placed. Please investigate what happened to the remains…`
I call a Turkish Cypriot official of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and find out that in 2002 before the open air military museum was built close to this house, there had been exhumations in the area by the Turkish Cypriot antiquities department… The military had called them and told them that they would build a museum there so they should come and remove the remains. Remains of 6 or 7 people were found and later on when the CMP started working in 2006 these remains were given to CMP, they were identified with DNA and returned to the relatives for burial. But there is no information whether the excavations done here back in 2002 were extensive enough to cover the garden of the two storey house that my reader is talking about. We don't know if the remains of all those buried here were uncovered… Since it is the area where the war began in 1974, perhaps the committee would investigate again the garden of the house my reader is talking
about… I notify the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee about this reader's information… They can decide whether they want to investigate or not… Our humanitarian mission is to pass all information that our readers find the courage to tell us, so that proper investigation can be done by the CMP…
I thank all my readers for sharing valuable information to help pave the way for a less painful future…

LETTER FROM A READER
I receive a very touching letter from Victoria Koutalistra Stavrou, the youngest daughter of `missing` Christos Antoni Koutalistra whose story we had published here in POLITIS as well as YENIDUZEN… She says:
`Dear Mrs Uludag,
I have read in Politis newspaper the article you wrote about my father, Christos Antoni Koutalistra, and I would like to thank you and to express my gratitude for all your efforts and caring. I would also like to thank your readers for their precious help and for all the information they gave us about my father, who has been missing since August 1974.
I am Christos' youngest daughter and the pain that my family and I had suffered for 40 years cannot be described. Down deep inside I was hoping that my father was alive... I needed to believe that he was somewhere, out there alive. Your research findings put an end to all our hopes but at the same time my heart flooded with joy because I realized that kindness and compassion still exists in people's hearts.
I make a plea to the people who know where the remains of my father are to help us find the place in order to make an excavation and give our father a proper burial. This will close a 40-year-circle of pain and suffering. If you are reading this and you have any information, please do drop us a line - anonymously - or send a picture of the burial place if possible. It would be much appreciated. We really wish to bury him somewhere close, to take care of his grave, to light him a candle... We do not seek vengeance or hold a grudge against the person who shot my father or his descendants. It was a very difficult period for both communities and we all had suffered a lot. Let's put an end to this drama.
Thanking you in advance,
Victoria Koutalistra Stavrou`


4.11.2014

Photo: The little church in the military area near the Grammar School...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 23rd of November 2014, Sunday.

`My sweet orange tree…`

`My sweet orange tree…`

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

Today I want to share with you the touching story of a young refugee boy from Paphos, moving from Paphos to Nicosia and then to Kyrenia back in 1975 and finding a sweet orange tree in the yard of the house they settled in Kyrenia. Metin Erduran wrote this story in our newspaper YENIDUZEN's weekly magazine ADRES and I am sharing his story with you… Here's what Metin Erduran wrote:
`It was the year 1975. It was the year after the war. I had just become fifteen years old. Our family was one of those families who were thrown here and there due to the population exchange. All of a sudden we had found ourselves in a very old Armenian house in Trachona area in Nicosia. Ktima, Paphos where I had been born and grew up was so far away. Now we had become `Sheherli` (`from the city`). I was just about to get used to the atmosphere and the people of Nicosia and my new school that my father was giving us news of becoming refugees a second time: We were moving to Kyrenia.
I remember the day we moved to Kyrenia with merely a small truckload of belongings. It was a stifling day left over from the summer. When we reached the house there awaited a very big disappointment. We had left a newly built, modern house but in the house we were moving into had the date 1925 on it. Somehow our luck in the northern part of the island was always for the old… But at least this house was the choice of my father – the Armenian house was chosen for us by the temporary authority of that time. All the members of my family had a feeling of being heartbroken except my father. Because my father always wanted to live in Kyrenia…
The house had a wide garden. We threw ourselves to the garden, as though looking for some solace. There were a few tangerine trees and lemon, five or six pomegranates, an apricot and an orange tree. The orange tree attracted me immediately, perhaps because I love oranges.
It looked a bit desolate but it was clearly a young tree. Its branches were thin but full of yellow oranges. Probably the former owners did not take care of it much…
Immediately I picked an orange and peeled it and ate it quickly. The taste was so good… Apparently this was a sweet orange tree, a taste quite different from the oranges we had been eating. I had never eaten a sweet orange in my whole life. It was like lokoumi! I picked one more and then another one and ate and then another one without realizing that my stomach was becoming davouli! I remember sitting there for a while, under the sweet orange tree. On the earth I had drawn ships, plans and houses… When I got up, I felt better, it was as though my morale had improved. I liked both its taste and its branches, its stalk, its leaves, its earth where its shadow fell… After that day the sweet orange tree became a friend with which I shared my worries. Time for fruit, time for watering, time for trimming and as the time flew by, this orange tree became more valuable for me. Whenever I got some bad news and felt sad, I would come under this sweet orange
tree and cry under it secretly. When I had lost my grandfather I loved so much or when I could not win the entrance exams to the university or when I missed my friends from Paphos, I would always come and sit under this sweet orange tree and look for consolation.
I said `grandfather`, I remember the cosy winter nights… In front of the fireplace I would listen to his stories of the past with big attention… I would learn so much about life from what he told me. Unfortunately he had lost his sight a few years after he crossed over to the northern part. It was not easy to uproot an old tree and try to re-root it elsewhere… He was feeling so sad from being uprooted from the land of his ancestors… When it was time for oranges, he would always ask for sweet oranges and then he would continue his stories. Whether rain or mud, I would take our old style fanari, go out in the garden, collect the oranges, peel them and give them to my grandfather…
I spent almost ten years in Ankara studying… In those times we could only come twice a year, once in February and once in the summer. There was no cell phones or internet in those times. I was writing letters to my family. It was a real pleasure writing letters. Especially receiving a letter from Cyprus. After asking about the family, I would then ask about the garden and our newly bought Lancer car. Because these were the two things I loved most. As soon as I would come for holidays, I would run to the garden to my sweet orange tree. I would climb on it and each time exaggerate, eating so many oranges…
After graduation, I found myself doing my military service for two years. Because I was an officer, I could come often to my house in Kyrenia. Time for pomegranates, time for figs, time for apricots, I could always find something to eat in the garden. But even if it was not the time for oranges, I would still go and look at my sweet orange tree. My father would trim it, take care of it and water it. Each time my shoes would get muddy and I would bring this mud in the house but my mother would never get angry with me… She was happy that her son had come home…
After I finished my military service, it was time to make a living. I would have a big disappointment when I applied to get a job in the civil service and I was turned down – I went to a bank and would ask for credit. We had no money. I needed credit… I got the credit and finally I opened my laboratory with a simple ceremony. My mother had made borek, pilavouna and other delicacies and I had squeezed sweet oranges… Our guests would eat and drink these and I would begin my working life. Later my son Erdoghan was born – we were still staying with my parents… My son was breastfed with his mother's milk and vegetable soup. As his doctor the late Alpay Shah suggested some fruit juice, the address was clear: My dear old sweet orange tree. We would collect a lot of oranges, squeeze and have my son drink it. Then my small son Erdi was born: His menu was also mother's milk, soup and sweet orange juice… Then cousins and neighbours so there was
almost no one who had not drank this sweet orange juice.
I had a big dream since I had started working and that was to build a big and modern laboratory that our community would appreciate. I lived with that dream for many years. After working for 20 years, now was the time to realize that dream. I had the plans drawn up by my talented architect. I had described my dream to him and he had drawn up my dream. But we had a big problem. We were going to build in the garden of our house and we had to cut many of our fruit trees. It was extremely difficult to take that decision. But I had one condition to the constructor: That they would not touch my sweet orange tree, that it would be protected. My father had a similar condition, that they would not touch his date tree… It took years to finish this project and finally as the calendars showed the date 15th of May 2010, our first patients started coming to our new building. We were all very happy, especially me…
I had ordered a wooden sitting area for my visitors… I took care of my sweet orange tree – I must help it to live as long as possible…
It is the year 2014. Again it is autumn… It is the 28th of September, my birthday and I am sitting next to my sweet orange tree. I have whites among my hair now and my tree has grown old… Its body has become think, it has become shorter and there is gum coming out of its body. Still it continues to give me peace and harmony. Every morning before I start work, I drink my coffee under my tree, I go ever the sweet and bitter memories we lived through with it. Although my tree does not talk, see or hear, it is better than many people who have these feelings – my tree is much more understanding, patient and peaceful than most… As I sip my coffee I look at my building and at my tree… One of them was my dream and my future, the other is my memories and my past. I can't give up either of the two and both are my joy of life…`

26.10.2014

Photo: Metin Erduran having his coffee under his sweet orange tree...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 16th of November 2014, Sunday.

Under the mimosa tree…

Under the mimosa tree…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

One of my readers, a woman over 70 years old calls… I remember her from my childhood days… She too, has a close relative `missing`…
`I wonder if he is buried at the Tekke Gardens in Nicosia` she says…
`I don't think so… I think he might be buried somewhere around Yeri…`
Her relative had gone `missing` back in July 1964…
`Actually I have to tell you something about Lapithos` she says:
`One of my relatives was given a house in Lapithos after 1974… When we went there, there had been a military post in her yard which was very wide… Inside the military post were five dead bodies – four men and a woman. I remember the woman was wearing an orange skirt with a wide belt… I can't really remember what the men were wearing, whether it was military or civilian clothes…
When they were taking them out of the military post, I was there… A bulldozer came and dug a big hole because they were going to bury not only one but five Greek Cypriots. The hole had been more than one meter deep… Then they buried them there, the four men and the young woman with the orange skirt… Later on they would also close the military post…
Where they had buried them was a mimosa tree… I remember thinking that `Ok, they have a good spot, with the mimosa tree nearby…`
I had put a big stone over the burial site…
They must have been killed in the house because I remember our relative's kitchen: There was blood all over the place… No matter how hard she tried to clean, the stains would always remain there… There was no cleaning liquid she did not try… It was like a reminder that some people had been killed there, in the kitchen…
Years passed and someone removed the stone… Some villagers cut the tree or the tree grew old and branches fell but the tree is no longer there…
When kids were small and they were playing around the burial site, I would shout at them to go away… `Don't play there kids, there are some dead bodies there, go away, go further!` I would say and the children would go away…
There was a huge yard and there was a neighbour of my relative living in this house in Lapithos… When the time came to put some wire to separate the yard so they could each have their own, I made sure that the burial site would stay in the neighbour's yard, not my relative's yard… So they put the wire and the grave remained in the neighbour's yard… But still, it was impossible to remove the blood stains in the kitchen, a constant reminder…
Some years ago, I heard that the Missing Persons' Committee came and dug but did not find anything… I was shocked and could not believe that they could not find them… They went away and later came back and dug some more, someone showing them another place but still they did not find anything… I know all five are there so how come they could not find them? I had put a big stone on top of the burial site but someone removed it… The mimosa had been there, very near where they were buried but the mimosa is gone… I still think about those five bodies, one of them the woman with the orange skirt and the big belt and can't believe that they were not found… Surely they did not evaporate into thin air…`
`Can you show us this place?` I ask her…
`No, no, no! I can't be involved… I don't want to be involved, I am just telling you…`
`At least can you tell me the name of your relative's neighbour? So that we can go and investigate in his yard?` I ask her.
Reluctantly she gives me the name of the neighbour and I note it down…
`What if I come and take you and we go there alone, just the two of us, you show me and later on I can show to the Committee?`
`No, no, no! I don't want to be involved!` she says.
It looks impossible to convince her but even this information is very valuable so I would try to find another way to try to locate the burial site…
I thank her for calling me and promise to visit her one day…
Imagine her relative's and her feelings: Having to live together with blood stains in your kitchen where you suspect they had been killed and no matter how hard you try, you cannot remove the stains! Imagine how horrifying it is to try to get used to this, waking up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet and have a sip of water and you would walk into the kitchen, only to encounter the blood stains… Imagine looking out at your garden and always knowing that four men and a woman, five Greek Cypriots have been buried in your own yard and having to live with this information for forty years… Imagine not being able to do anything, not being able to open your mouth until now, having to live with this trauma even if you had nothing to do with it! Imagine the shock and horror of having to live with five dead bodies in your own yard, chasing away kids, in case they fell in the mass grave! Imagine thinking of the mimosa tree and feeling grateful
that at least these five persons have a good spot with the mimosa tree, next to the mass grave where they have been buried… Imagine locking up this information inside you and not being able to speak to anyone about it until one day, you would find the courage to pick up the phone and make a call and blurt it out…
I call Okan Oktay, the Coordinator of the Exhumations of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, as well as Xenophon Kallis, the Assistant to the Greek Cypriot member of the Committee to tell them what I found out from this old woman reader of mine…
Okan promises to find the photos of the excavations in the place she has mentioned…
`Perhaps I can take her these photos and maybe over the photos she can show us the location, since she refuses to come with us to the site…` I tell Okan… `And later we can go and check this site to see if anyone remembers the mimosa tree that has been cut…`
Next week we plan to go and see… Meanwhile I must get the photos from Okan when they had done the excavations there back in 2007 and show them to my reader to see if she can show me the burial site…
I feel sorry that both she and her relative were traumatized in this way and had to live almost half a century with this trauma…
And I feel proud of her because she managed to get herself out of the `paralysis` created by this trauma and pick up the phone and call me… Even this is a step forward in curing her traumas…

19.10.2014

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 9th of November 2014, Sunday.

Stories from Exomedochi and Mononero…

Stories from Exomedochi and Mononero…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

Back in May 2011, a Turkish Cypriot reader had called to tell me a story about Exometochi…
`I had been 10-11 years old in 1976` she said… `We had gone to the house of a relative in Exometochi… The house was on the northwest of the village, at the exit of the village. We were playing around in the field near the house that I tripped on something and fell down. Where I fell was actually a burial site… I had found the arms of a woman who looked like a nun… She was dressed like a nun and the bones of her arms were still in the sleeves… As you can imagine, I was so frightened and horrified… I read everything you have been writing about the `missing` so I wanted to share this with you so that you can go and investigate this place…`
I had thanked her with all my heart and sometime later had gone to find the field she had been talking about…
After finding the field I had arranged with the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to go and show them this possible burial site. This had been three years ago, back in October 2011.
Three years later the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee start excavations in the field that my reader had told me about and I had shown to the Committee…
And they start finding the remains of `missing` persons… They find the remains of the woman, just as my reader had told me… But it doesn't stop there: They find the remains of three more `missing persons`, a total of four `missing` persons have been found – one woman, three men and the exhumations continue…
I call the mother of my reader who had told me about this burial site to inform her and to thank her…
`If you dig more, you will find more… The whole village knew about this burial site` she says…
I feel grateful to Sema and her daughter… She too has a brother `missing` from Paphos from 1964 and her husband had been killed in 1974… Although we tried hard, we could not find his remains… She was from the Mononero village near Episkopi but when the village was burnt down in 1958 they had moved to Ktima, Paphos. Sema Kilinch who now lives in Famagusta had told me the story of her brother and her village Mononero back in 2010… She had said:
`Some Greek Cypriot fascists from around Episkopi had threatened to kill the Turkish Cypriots from Mononero and they had felt frightened and left in 1958. After the Turkish Cypriots left, some Greek Cypriots had burnt down and demolished the houses in Mononero which was a Turkish Cypriot village in order to make sure that they would not return… But for instance my grandmother had remained in the village. Some people would go from time to time to look after their trees… My brother Zuhtu had had polio and his hand and leg had been affected… But he was a very strong person… He was a gardener and always missed his village and would always try to go to Mononero to look after our trees. Even when Turkish Cypriots were not allowed to get out of the Turkish Cypriot area in Paphos, he would still find a way to get out… Sometimes he was punished by the Turkish Cypriot authorities for not listening to them and still going to his village… In the summer
of 1964, he left Paphos to go to Mononero and never came back. My mother cried for years, she expected him to return any day – she never believed that he was killed: He was `missing`…
My husband Coshkun Mavrali was arrested in Paphos in August 1974 and was beaten up very hard – they had arrested the Turkish Cypriot men in Ktima and beating them up, had taken them to the football field. After they released him, he died a few days later due to internal bleeding from these beatings. He was only 37… I had three small daughters: they were aged five, six and seven… We lost four persons from our family: My husband's brother Kemal Mavrali was killed in 1964 in Ktima, Paphos. My brother went `missing` in the summer of 1964… My husband's cousin Ihsan Kilinch was also killed – they were relatives of Ihsan Ali… And my husband was killed in 1974…
In August 1975 we came to Famagusta… I was a seamstress and I tried to raise my children the best I could… I have always been in the forefront of the struggle for peace on this island because they create wars for some interests and only the innocent people are killed… I saw that the fire burns where it hits… While our poor kids of 15 years old were given guns to wait in military posts, the rich people were hiding under their beds… I saw that…
When I first went to Paphos with a group of women, I couldn't speak, I couldn't stop crying – I was remembering all those killings, all those memories of war… Then I went again with my daughters to our village Mononero – our house was made of stone, it has been demolished – perhaps the stones were useful for them… Each time I went to Paphos and Episkopi, I asked about my `missing` brother Zuhtu but no one told me anything… They all treated me well, invited me to lunch and so on but never told me anything about my `missing` brother…
Why was this country divided? It was in the interest of America… I know that this war was created in cooperation with Turks and Greeks, they made this war, they took the place they wanted and did not go forward. That was the agreement – there was an agreement on partition. Why? So that there would not be communism… At that time AKEL was strong, there were a lot of socialists who were struggling together… In the end all the innocent people died… They did whatever they could to partition this island…`
A kind hearted Greek Cypriot reader had told us about what he had found out about the `missing` brother of Sema, Zuhtu Mehmet Emirali, we had gone and visited him and he had shown us the place Zuhtu had been killed and possibly buried but during the excavations, nothing was found. Perhaps those who had killed him later had moved his body elsewhere… Although we had not been able to find the remains of her brother, this Turkish Cypriot relative of `missing` and her daughter has helped us to find the remains of four Greek Cypriot `missing persons` and this shows what a big heart they have… It is actually not very often that we meet such humanitarian people on our island – generally relatives who lost someone are so much immersed in their own pain that they have no energy left to try to help others with similar pain… But I thank the earth for having known Sema Kilinch for many years – she is and will always be a corner stone for the struggle for
the reunification of this island… Despite her big losses, she retains her humanitarian heart on this divided island…

18.10.2014


Photo: Sema Kilinch, the woman with a big human heart...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 2nd of November 2014, Sunday.

Chania that does not `deny` its multicultural heritage…

Chania that does not `deny` its multicultural heritage…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

For the Bayram holidays, we fly to Chania, Crete for a wonderful five days with my husband – this is our favourite place in the Mediterranean, an island that knows what it is doing, a city full of colour and warmth, an international destination with good food, lovely scenery and a multicultural historical heritage, well preserved.
We sit in the Venetian Harbour of Chania, the harbour that had been built by the same Italian architect as in Kyrenia…
We try to enjoy walks in the harbour, among the narrow labyrinth streets, lined with pots of flowers, shops, cafes, tavernas… Walking in Chania is like walking in the past and in the future at the same time… Cretans have embraced their multiculturalism in such a refreshing way, without any prejudice that you can see this everywhere: In restaurants, in the hotel we stay we have the photographs of the Yiali Mosque from old times – the mosque stands in the Venetian harbour without the minaret – I am surprised to see its photographs with the minaret in the hotel we stay, in our room, in the tavernas or cafes we go to – we find out that the minaret had fallen in an earthquake and was destroyed but they have preserved the mosque and it is used for exhibitions of handicrafts and art…
Cretans are not ashamed of the Italian heritage they have: Almost all the names of the hotels in and around the Venetian harbour in Chania sound Italian: Bel Mondo, Villa Venezia, Porto del Colombo, Hotel Contessa, Casa Leone, Casa Latina… They do not deny their Ottoman heritage, on the contrary, they put old photos of the Yiali Mosque everywhere, keeping Turkish words like `Tamam` as the name of a restaurant…
Cretans are one of the most relaxed communities in the whole of the Mediterranean and you can see why so many tourists enjoy being here… We sit with my husband at a rock café in the Venetian harbour, Avalon Rock Café and look at the tourists passing by: So many from the Scandinavian countries, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish… I call them the `Vikings` and point out to my husband, `Here goes another Viking!` The waiter at a nearby café who came to work in Chania from Athens with only 40 Euros in his pocket tells us that some British and American tourists are also coming and staying in Chania… Lots from Holland, some from Japan, some from Italy, some from Cyprus and Turkey… Everyone has met here to enjoy the mild weather, the walk in the past and in the future – this is a dream place where cultures meet and enjoy Cretan food, music, dancing or simply sitting by the sea and enjoying the fish caught by the fishermen that day…
We come every year to Chania, sometimes twice a year, once in May and once in October to simply enjoy the harbour, to read, to sleep, to be away from the `Cyprus problem`, to relax and to see how tourism can be done… Cretans are not trying to `prove` that they are `pure Greeks` or `pure` anything… They are simply sharing all their multicultural heritage, well preserved and proud of it…
We have exactly the same harbour in Kyrenia but we cannot enjoy it the way we can here, in Chania: First of all the demographics, as well as the culture that goes with it has changed in Kyrenia. In the Kyrenia harbour, we wouldn't be able to sit so relaxed in a restaurant or in a café just being ourselves – we would hear or see things that would upset us… We wouldn't be able to enjoy a walk like this – the unspoken, unworded kind of `violence` in the air emanating from tension among people of different backgrounds would stop us from doing that…
In Chania, I realize that perhaps Cypriots are the only ones who do not feel proud of their multicultural heritage and are constantly trying to `prove` to everyone about how `Greek` or how `Turk` they are… In Chania, I remember the words of Joseph Solomo Andreou, a Maronite Cypriot whom I had interviewed and started publishing his interview during the Bayram in YENIDUZEN newspaper… Born in Agia Marina, raised in Kormakitis, sent to Lebanon to study to become a priest, he was the cousin of the famous priest of Agia Marina, Andreas Frangou who had saved the Turkish Cypriots from being killed by some Greek Cypriots led by someone from Kokkinotrimitia… Andreas Frangou was his father's brother, his uncle. Joseph Solomo Andreou in the end, did not choose to become a priest but went to London to work and then to Libya and finally back in Cyprus… I had wanted to interview him about his uncle but in the end I ended up with a wonderful interview about
the Catholic heritage of Cyprus that both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots sort of `deny` or try to make it completely `invisible`… According to Joseph Solomo Andreou, when Ottomans came to `conquer` Cyprus, there had been 180 thousand Catholics living on the island, including Maronites, Venetians and others… Surely they did not `evaporate` overnight… In a detailed interview he would tell me details of where they had been settled, the rift between the Orthodox and Catholics throughout the centuries, how an ever-changing geography forced Catholics to `adapt` to `new conditions`…
Well, the Cretans have learned to cash on it: They do not `hide` their multicultural heritage while we let the summer houses of Caterina Cornaro to rot and decay… Chania uses it to attract more and more tourists to share what they have while we argue whether the name of Piyale Pasha Avenue should be changed to something else or not… While in the northern part of the island, names of all villages and streets have been changed and `Turkified` and huge flags have been painted on mountains, huge flagpoles erected everywhere to `prove` how `Turk` this part has `become`, Cretans are offering us the calm confidence of their multicultural heritage, making us go there not only once but twice a year and yearning for more days, more holidays, more human friendly environments…
Bravo to Cretans! Cypriots are the only ones in the Mediterranean who have a lot to learn from them!...

Photo: View from the Venetian Harbour of Chania...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 26th of October, 2014 Sunday.

Story of `missing` Christos Antoni Koutalistra from Morphou…

Story of `missing` Christos Antoni Koutalistra from Morphou…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

`Dear Ms Uludag,
I have been reading your articles and articles written by others about you, for quite some time, so I am aware of all your efforts, battles and research in finding missing persons of both communities, and also your commitment to peace journalism. Giving to others seems to come naturally to you and you do not hesitate to go the extra mile, take the extra time, give the extra thought because the light within seems to guide your actions. You truly are a wonderful example to us all.
Today, I have made the decision to write to you, seeking assistance in finding the remains of a relative who has gone missing in August 1974. This person was the youngest brother of my deceased grandfather, so I am writing on behalf of his daughter Maroula who is at her early 70's.
The missing person's name is Christos Antoni Koutalistra, born in 1918 (56 years old in 1974), from Morphou. He was a civilian and he did not leave his home with the rest of his family in 15 August 1974 because he decided to stay in order to take care of his cattle. His house was situated outside Morphou, about 5 kilometres away, in a north-western direction. The house was somewhere between the village of Sirianohori and the area called Mnasi or Pnasi, a couple of kilometres away from the chapel of Panagia tou Mnasi.
His children visited the area 3-4 years ago and they said that they saw no evidence that there had been houses in the area in the past. Two of his married daughters (Maroula and Pantelou) had houses in the same area. Near the houses there was a borehole for the irrigation of the orange groves but when they visited they found it filled with dirt. The family suspects that somebody might had tried to steal his cattle and Christo's was killed attempting to stop them and then probably he was buried in the borehole.
So far, there hasn't been a trustworthy testimonial about Christo's whereabouts after August 15.
A Greek Cypriot, who had been enclaved for a short period, told Christo's family that he saw him going to Sirianohori coffee shop, at least a couple of times, riding a bike.
His daughter Maroula told me that the family had many Greek and Turkish Cypriot friends in Ayia Irini (Akdeniz) village. Their father and his mother often visited the village to sell or to buy different products. Christo's mother, a very assertive and energetic widow was known by the nickname "Makria" (the tall one). Her real name was Eleni or Elou. She died in 1972 and she was 92 years old.
These is all the information I managed to gather.
Any information on what really happened to Christos and/or where his remains are would be greatly appreciated.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Respectfully,
Maria Gavriel`
This was the first e-mail I received from Maria Gavriel in August this year… For me Maria Gavriel is a miracle person who is precise in detail and as we began investigating together – without ever meeting face to face even once, communicating only over the e-mail and the phone – she continued to put her energy and her heart to help find more details:
`Yesterday I visited Christos's daughters and wife in Episkopi village. His wife, Elengou, is 98 years old. She lives with one of her daughters who is a widow. Elengou suffered a minor stroke a couple of weeks ago but she recovered. She spends her awake hours sitting on an armchair. She cannot move around but she has a very good memory… Christos and his wife Elengou had 6 daughters and 2 sons. They all have families. One of the daughters died in an accident 25 years ago. The oldest daughter lives in Paralimni. A son and three daughters live in Episkopi. Another son lives in Kantou and there's a daughter living in Greece. I asked Victoria, the youngest daughter, to tell me how many grandchildren and great grandchildren there are in the family but she couldn't give me a number. "I have to think about it first", she said. Victoria was 13 years old in 1974. She said that for ten years she was waiting for her father to show up. She needed to believe that
he was somewhere alive. But the problem was not only emotional, she said. The family suffered a significant financial hardship because there were so many underage children in the family and only one parent to take care of them all. Victoria sent me a message this morning with the number of grandchildren (23), great grandchildren (36) and great-great grandchildren (5)…`
I would call one of my very good readers helping me in investigations about `missing persons` from the area of Morphou and Ayia Irini passing on all the information that Maria Gavriel had sent me and he would start investigating the fate of the `missing` relative of Maria, Christos Antoni Koutalistra… In a few days we would speak – he found people who had remembered Christos and he would tell me the whole story:
`Christos was the victim of looting` he would say, `Although he was innocent and had nothing to do with looting, he himself became a victim of looting and I will tell you how… You know, when the war began in 1974 on the 20th of July, a lot of Turkish Cypriots from Ayia Irini left the village. Some Greek Cypriots from Morphou, Diorios, Livera, Syrianachori came to Ayia Irini and started looting the property and animals of Turkish Cypriots. They stole goats and sheep and whatever they liked to steal… They even shot and killed two Turkish Cypriot shepherds, Mustafa Huseyin Saghir (`Moustafali`) and Huseyin Mustafa Arap (`Taraboulous`) in order to steal their animals. When the Turkish Cypriots of Ayia Irini came back to the village after the `second round` of the war in mid-August 1974, they found out that their animals and property had been looted. So `in retaliation` they went out to `loot` themselves, the stolen animals from them… One Turkish
Cypriot from Ayia Irini went to the house where Christos was – there were orange groves next to this house and from among the bamboos where this Turkish Cypriot was hiding, he saw Christos with a gun standing there. This was a special gun with a single barrel… We call this type of gun `Monari`… This Turkish Cypriot got afraid when he saw the gun and shot at Christos with his handgun and killed him. He got so afraid he ran back to the village, forgetting that he had gone there for looting… As he told his story in the village, next day one of his close relatives went back and took the watch from the arm of Christos, searched his pockets and found 30 Cypriot Pounds on him and took it and went away. The following day, another Turkish Cypriot went to where Christos was laying down, killed… He took his gun, the `Monari` and came back to Ayia Irini… As he showed the gun in the village, the villagers told him, `Vre, you will be in trouble! Go and
give the gun to the police!` so he went to the police in Myrtou and gave the gun to the Turkish Cypriot policemen in Myrtou… The person who gave the gun to the police is no longer alive but the one who killed him and the one who took his watch and money are alive…`
I would write this story in YENIDUZEN newspaper and would also call Maria Gavriel and tell her details… She would get back to me immediately:
`I asked Christo's daughters whether their father had a hunting gun and they verified it. His son-in-law gave me a detailed description of the gun but since I am not familiar with guns, I am not able to reproduce that in English. He did verified though that Christos had a single barrel hunting gun. He also said that it was a very unique gun. It had a longer and bigger barrel than the usual hunting guns. I don't know if my messages gave you the impression that Christos was a chobani. He wasn't. He had 3 cows, 6-7 goats, hens and rabbits. As you said, the house was surrounded by orange groves (pervolia). They had no neighbours (at least not nearby) except for a Turkish Cypriot guy they used to call Feizis who used to work for a Greek Cypriot from Morphou (Aniftos). Feizis lived nearby, in the middle of his boss' pervolia and he often visited Christos. He is probably dead by now.
Christos' daughters have found the gun's registration number and barrel's number.
Reg. Number: Ν448
Barrel number: 68883`
This was such valuable information coming from Maria Gavriel. Surely if the Turkish Cypriot investigators want, they can find out very easily who the policemen were serving in Myrtou police station back in 1974 and they would have records of this gun being given to the police. It was and is a very important lead to the fate of `missing` Christos… Since the police took this gun from someone from Ayia Irini, surely they must have had more details about what had happened. These are very small villages we are talking about and everyone heard everything in such villages.
I call Maria to tell her the things I found out and also speak with the Turkish Cypriot officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee – about a year ago, the daughters of Christos had gone to the area and had shown the borehole for irrigation that had been filled to the Committee, the Committee had excavations in this irrigation borehole but found nothing. We decide to go and explore the area once again and I will continue my investigations with my readers from the area who are helping voluntarily to see if we can find out where Christos has been buried… Meanwhile I thank Maria Gavriel and my reader from the Morphou-Ayia Irini area for their valuable information and investigation…

2.10.2014

Photo: Christos Antoni Koutalistra with his wife Elengou...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 19th of October, 2014 Sunday.

It was not easy to break the taboos…

It was not easy to break the taboos…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436

`I witnessed the stories of `missing persons` very closely…
This `closeness` was not due to family ties but observations as a journalist…
It was the first week where I had begun working in the YENIDUZEN newspaper as chief editor and we needed restructuring and new projects concerning the content…
And there was a wise journalist who was `hungry` and `stubborn` for research amongst ourselves, she needed to `get off her desk`, get rid of `routine`, run after real stories, produce much more…
She came to me with the project of `Missing Persons`…
As I said, the stories of `missing persons` were still a very important `taboo` - this was the beginning of 2000…
She started with the series of articles called `Oysters with the missing pearls` and after a while I realized that I should never touch Sevgul Uludag, I should just leave her alone – she would go on her journey, travel and come back to us full of stories. All we had to do was just to stand straight and firm…
Some of the relatives of `missing` were saying `I just want back the remains of my father, I want to have a grave for him`, others were bursting out with the `anger against the killers` and all of these voices were raising up, exploding against the silence of the official history…
But it did not stay there…
As soon as the checkpoints were opened, there started a massive flow of information, this flow would not stop and now Sevgul Uludag was following these `leads` and new burial sites of `missing persons` were being uncovered, the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee would be reactivated and the community was becoming aware of the truth it had been living in for so many years…
And there started pressure coming and what sort of pressures…
Maybe I am writing this for the first time – one day with the `facilitation` of a few politicians I was taken to a village, they put me in some sort of a `garage` like place and closed the doors… It was a place in the Messaoria…
Tens of men… Their eyes were full of anger and not relenting, they were almost `questioning` me… They said, `This series of articles will stop!`
I could read the `fear` in the faces of all of them!...
Because each file Sevgul would open, there would be tens of `potential criminals` in each new village she was writing about having to face the truth…
`The suffering` had opened its eyes in the consciousness, had woken up again and it had been too heavy facing the truth…
What was more, as the checkpoints opened and mutual crossings began, suspicions and fear started eating up the bodies of those who had been living for so many years in `denial`…
They knew the burial sites of many `missing persons`, they knew who had shot, who had dug, how they were buried; who knows maybe they could not forget their `cries`… They had not forgotten…
Maybe they had never spoken about these again, maybe they were just looking at each other's `faces` and making as though no such things were ever lived…
The stories that Sevgul Uludag is following `in trace of the missing` is approaching to three thousand today…
The pressures, the threats, the swearing we got from a lot of circles have come down, even disappeared now…
Taboos have been broken…`
These are the words of my chief editor Cenk Mutluyakali who wrote an article in the weekend magazine of our newspaper YENIDUZEN called ADRES KIBRIS last week: http://www.yeniduzen.com/Ekler/adres-kibris/177/kayip-la-hamlet-arasinda-kurtulamiyorsun-sonucta/1800
Cenk Mutluyakali gave me his full support, standing by me not just in words but deeds and if it was not for his firm stand, the series of articles reaching 3 thousand nowadays, we would not be able to publish in YENIDUZEN newspaper. I knew he was getting a lot of pressure to stop my articles but he never gave in…
In fact he had never told me that he was taken to a village in Messaoria and `locked` in a garage, having to face the threats from the villagers… It was the first time I was hearing this from him but I was not surprised. I guessed the village could be Chatoz or Agia Kepir in Messaoria and when I asked him he confirmed that it had been Agia Kepir… I got quite a few death threats from Agia, including from the leadership of the village in those times when I had written about a well where some Turkish Cypriots from the village had killed and buried some Greek Cypriots. They were in complete `denial` and demanded to know who had told me this. They would go all the way up to the Turkish Cypriot leader of the time and he would even call me and my chief editor about it but we would stand firm. They would hold meetings in the village and I would be intimidated on the phone… But the committee would dig and find the remains of Greek Cypriots killed and buried
in the well in Agia… In the end `truth` would find its way out of the well…
His article reminded us that it had not been easy to break the taboos, to publish the information that my readers were giving me – both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots – about what had happened in their villages, how people were harassed or killed or raped and where the possible burial sites were… I was getting a lot of death threats from the killers, calling me and shouting at me that they would hunt me from behind me and would shoot and kill me or swearing at me or harass me or come all the way to my office in the newspaper threatening me… It was not easy to face the truth for many of them, for those who had been involved but also their relatives were upset and were calling me and asking me, `What is your aim in publishing such stories?!...`
Even mayors published statements denouncing me – mayor of Chatoz at the time would openly denounce me because I had written that some Turkish Cypriots from this village had executed and buried some Greek Cypriots in the well of the mosque in the village… I was writing about other burial sites in Chatoz and the mayor was so upset and was in complete denial… He tried to get off his anger on me… I was already receiving death threats from this village – I would never travel there alone but always go with someone I trusted… One day the late Sheih Nazim Kibrisi, a Nakshibendi religious leader of Turkish Cypriots was taking around some foreign delegation who had come to visit him… While going to Famagusta, he had told the delegation `See, this is Chatoz, let's go there to the mosque and make our namaz…` and they had gone to the mosque at the spur of the moment. Seeing the cars near the mosque some of the `killers` in Chatoz thought it was me
going to investigate some wells in the yard of the mosque and they mobilized calling other `friends` of theirs to go to the mosque to beat me up! They were shouting in the village calling me names you don't want to hear and when they gathered and went to the mosque, they were shocked to see it was Sheih Nazim, not me at the mosque! Some of my readers would call me and tell me what had happened and we would laugh about it imagining the shock they got finding Sheih Nazim, instead of me…
During the exhumation of the well in Chatoz, they would issue death threats under the pseudonym `Turkish Revenge Brigade` and distribute everywhere saying in essence that whoever was helping to find the `missing` would be `punished`. Stuff like that…
But the mayor of Galatia village in those years would go one step further – I had been trying to locate the burial site of Takis Hadjinikolaou, the `missing` judge from Yialousa and we had worked on this for five years together with his son Spyros… We had people helping us and we had learned that they were killed and buried in the lake of Galatia, some from Yialousa together with some others from Karpasia. Some of my readers would show this burial site in the lake to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and soon exhumations would begin… The mayor got so upset he invited the head of the Turkish Cypriot Army to the village and asked to help him `to silence these traitors!`
The head of the Turkish Cypriot Army did not do or say anything to him and left – in the following days, the head of the Turkish Army stationed in Cyprus went to the village with a helicopter! The mayor asked him as well to `help him to silence these traitors!` The commander would not do or say anything and would leave… The exhumation would begin under big pressure and the mass grave would be uncovered…
I got threats from some of the Greek Cypriot `killers` as well and had to be creative enough in learning how to deal with them… I am thankful to a handful of Greek Cypriot friends who helped me out using their influence in trying to stop the threats, particularly I am thankful to a Greek Cypriot woman, a long-time friend whose name I will not mention here…
It was not easy to reach the point where we are now, breaking down the taboos, facing death threats, facing abuse and slander and psychological terror… I know quite well that long before I started investigating the fate of the `missing persons`, Xenophon Kallis who had done extensive work on `missing persons` were getting similar threats… Our friend journalist Andreas Paraschos was threatened severely when he began his investigations about `missing` Greek Cypriots back in 1995-1998. I am sure there were others who got intimidated by the `killers` in both `sides` of our island since we were all doing a very dangerous job: When you hide the grave, you hide the crime, when you hide the crime, you hide the criminal… We were trying to uncover the graves, therefore uncovering the crimes and the criminals although nobody has ever touched them, they still felt very upset and angry…
Now that the taboos are broken, a lot of `sharks` roam our seas, trying to bite off a piece and they keep calling me for `help` since they too want to `write about missing persons` or create `projects` about `missing persons` and they want me to give them names and help them meet people and to give them this or that information. They are not really interested in the pain of the relatives or how to cure this pain, they just want a quick, nice article, something `sensational` perhaps for their newspapers or news agencies or their TV stations and radios… I tried helping some of them only if I see that they understand how much suffering there is and if they are really serious journalists… Otherwise I try to avoid these `sharks` who are out hunting and trying to smell the `blood` for their own causes, not necessarily for the good of our communities…

28.9.2014

Photo: Cenk Mutuyakali, our brave chief editor in the Yeniduzen newspaper...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 12th of October, 2014 Sunday.