Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
Good news comes from Minarelikeuy (Neachorio Kythrea): Remains have been found where we had shown a possible burial site…
We had gone together with a reader of mine and the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee on the 10th of June 2014 to show various possible burial sites in Mia Milia, Neachorio Kythrea and Kythrea…
Now I learn that they have started digging in an old mandra across the mosque in Neachorio Kythrea and at the first scoop of the bulldozer, the excavation team of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee has found remains as my reader had told them and where he had shown them… I feel happy that the remains of one more `missing person` from this area will finally return to his family.
Last year in June 2014 we had come here where my reader's family had this house and the mandra of his family until 1963. Neachorio Kythrea had been a mixed village where Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots lived together. In 1963, the Turkish Cypriots left the village with the orders of the Turkish Cypriot leadership - `orders` had gone from Turkish Cypriot leadership to `leave the village due to security reasons` and the villagers would become refugees: Some would go to Epiho, some to Mora, some to Knodhara and Chatoz… Until 1963, the relationship of Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots in the village had been good, there were no dramatic events or no bloodshed amongst them. Same `orders` would go to Turkish Cypriots in Palekythre `to leave` and they too would become refugees in different Turkish Cypriot villages, not being able to return to their village until 1974…
People from Neachorio Kythrea too would not be able to return to their village until 1974. Only one family would return and later they would be killed by some Greek Cypriots in 1974 although they had provided some sort of protection to some of the Greek Cypriots of Neachorio Kythrea… There were rumours that some Greek Cypriots coming from another village had been asking whether there were any Turkish Cypriots in the village in order to kill them and some Greek Cypriots from Neachorio Kythrea would `volunteer` to show the house of this Turkish Cypriot family… Nazife Hasan and Mehmet Tahir would be killed and their bodies would be discovered after 14th of August 1974, when Tahir's son would visit the village… He would find his aunt Nazife and his father Mehmet killed in their house, with a deck of cards scattered around them – according to the son, his father Tahir was playing with cards, looking at his `fate` through cards to pass the time…
Mehmet Tahir actually did not live in Neachorio Kythrea, it was his sister Nazife Hasan whose house was repaired by the Republic of Cyprus and she had moved back in 1968… Some years later her husband had died so she was living alone – the only Turkish Cypriot living in Neachorio Kythrea in the village – and Mehmet Tahir had gone with his bicycle on the 19th of July 1974, to check whether her sister was okay… His son knows that they had been alive until August and then killed in their house… On that hot August day, after the second invasion, with the help of some Turkish Cypriots, he would bury them…
Last year when we came to Neachorio Kythrea my reader had told me and the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, Xenophon Kallis and Murat Soysal that while cleaning the rubble after 1974, when they returned to their village, his father had found a leg bone… His father had told him that someone from the village, a Greek Cypriot called A… had been buried here… There had been a shallow wall of the mandra and that he had been buried inside the mandra, next to that wall… `I was not in the village the day they were cleaning the rubble` he would explain to us, `but my father was here and he saw the remains and he explained to me that A…. from this village had been buried here…`
Now I am happy that remains have been found here… I thank my reader with all my heart for his humanitarian help in finding out the fate of the `missing persons` of Cyprus.
Good news also comes from Galatia – just as my readers had described starting from 2006, remains have been found on the bend under a road near the lake Galatia – so far the remains of three `missing persons` have been found but since this is a grave, more might be found here…
With Christina and Olia from Komikebir, we go to Vokolida and there we meet someone from Galatia – he is not from Galatia but is married there and he knows the stories…
He believes that more remains might be under the main road and as there is asphalt works there, soon enough they might locate the possible burial site as they break the old asphalt for getting ready to put new asphalt there…
`In those days` he says, `the Greek Cypriot prisoners of war were kept in the sports club and they were taken to `questioning` at the cooperative building. After the discovery of the massacre of Turkish Cypriot women and children in Maratha-Sandallaris-Aloa, people would come at random looking for `revenge` and they would be told `go and take a few from the sports club and kill them if you like as your revenge…` So everyone killed was killed like that – innocent people died like that… I know that for a few times, they also changed the place of the burial sites but I am sure there is more buried in the lake Galatia…`
Another reader from Kyrenia who has been helping me a lot calls:
`I found new information about the Botanical Gardens in Kyrenia` he says… `Botanical Gardens` was the area where executions took place in 1974 and a mass grave was found with 32 Greek Cypriots but there should be more as my reader, whose house is close by, remembers as a child how human remains would come out as it rained heavily… There has been more digging in this area and his late mother also tried to help us: She remembered distinctly how some bulldozers had emptied the area…
Now my reader tells me that a bulldozer company had taken 48 truckloads of rubble from this area, in the rubble were also human remains… That at the time this was the `orders` from some military circles… `That's why the bulldozer company denies everything` he tells me. I had spoken with the owner of the company and he had denied that they had ever encountered any human remains in this area. But it seems that my reader has found a good source of information who had been in a position to know in those days: That according to `orders` this company had cleansed the huge area and if his source is right, human remains went with the rubble to a destination only the bulldozer company knows. They were supposed to build a cultural centre here and this had been the pretext for cleaning it up… Another reader had told me similar information – that this area had been `cleansed` of human remains… I check the dates concerning when this might have happened
and it seems that it was the end of the 1990s…
There is more information from my reader about rapes:
`There is a house across a barber shop in Kyrenia` he says, `in 1974, I found out that this house was used as a place for taking Greek Cypriot women for rape… There were four or five Turkish Cypriots who were doing that… They were taking young girls and women from Kyrenia – whoever they found – and taking them there for rape… I also learned that a few of these women, they had killed… I will learn more details and get back to you…`
I thank this reader with all my heart… Wherever he goes, he is searching about the past and sharing what he learns with me…
13.7.2015
Photo: Digging at Neachorio Kythrea in July 2015…
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 23rd of August, 2015 Sunday.
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