Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
It was back in January 2007 when a Greek Cypriot reader had told me about the possible burial site of two Turkish Cypriots who had `disappeared` in 1964. Eight years ago, this Greek Cypriot reader had told me the following:
`Two Turkish Cypriots, both from Lefka, one of them middle aged and the other one a young guy are buried under the bridge in the village Koutrafas. Some villagers from Koutrafas told me that the houses of these `missing` Turkish Cypriots were in Lefka.
These two Turkish Cypriots were arrested in Morphou and had been taken to the police station there. And then they were taken from there and were moved to Koutrafas. There had been a very big and strong guy who was an `EOKA` man and he had taken them. According to the villagers, he had taken them under the bridge in Koutrafas, shot them and buried them under the bridge…`
Eight years ago, I had informed the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee of this information about Koutrafas and I had tried to find out who might have been taken and possibly buried there as my reader had claimed.
We had gone to Koutrafas on the 22nd of January 2007 together with Tony Angastiniotis – the film and documentary maker – and had looked at the bridge… It was a huge bridge…
I had felt very strange that day because I did not know anything about Koutrafas… Tony would tell me the stories from Koutrafas…
It had been a mixed village until 1963 though the Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots lived in separate parts of the village. When violence broke out in December 1963, at some point following those days, the Turkish Cypriots of Koutrafas not feeling safe there had fled to a neighbouring Turkish Cypriot village.
They had actually been very poor according to the stories and some Greek Cypriots of Koutrafas would immediately go looting their houses.
After a few days, the Turkish Cypriots would return to Koutrafas and they would be in shock to find out that their houses were gone! In order to make sure that the Turkish Cypriots would NOT return to Koutrafas, some `wise guys` among the Greek Cypriots of Koutrafas would demolish their houses with bulldozers… So when Turkish Cypriots went back they would find nothing to return to!
Tony would take me there and show me the area where Turkish Cypriots used to live before 1963. The only proof was the stones laid out during the building of the houses on the ground. There were no walls, no doors, no windows, no buildings at all! It was simply flat land!
Tony would show me where a house had been and where the kitchen or the toilet might have been…
He would show me where the Turkish Cypriot school used to be but there was nothing to show that a building existed there except the stones on the ground showing the outline of the building that once was…
It was winter so everything was green and pretty and it was open fields and open land but no proof that people lived here except for the stones that Tony would point out to me…
`If you take aerial photos, only from the sky you can see the exact layout of the Turkish Cypriots' houses in Koutrafas` he would tell me…
Eight years later, I would find out that the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee had begun excavations under the bridge in Koutrafas looking for the two Turkish Cypriot `missing` from 1964 and it would all bring back these memories of that day we had spent in Koutrafas…
We had been following together with Tony the lead to this information – we needed to find a certain priest from a village from this area and we would go to different villages asking about him but finally in the village Kannavia we would give up since Tony's car was almost on fire – the engine had become very hot… We had stopped at different villages and people would tell us to go to the next village because the priest had gone to do this or that and we would move and try to find him without success. According to the villagers he might have some idea about what might have happened in 1964… In the end as it was visible that we might actually burn the car in our futile attempt to catch the priest we had stopped and gone back to Nicosia.
From the fields where once used to be the houses of Turkish Cypriots in Koutrafas, I would pick up some stones to bring home as a memory from this day… The Turkish Cypriot part of Koutrafas had become a `ghost village` and it would leave a mark on my heart…
Now I am happy that after eight years from the time we had given the information that two Turkish Cypriots might be buried under the bridge in Koutrafas, excavations have been started by the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee under the bridge… After some time I find out that they had found nothing during digging under the bridge. I hope that the remains of the two Turkish Cypriots `missing` from 1964 will be found to be returned to their families for a proper burial, if any of you can provide more information if you know what had happened here…
At that time I had made an investigation about who they might have been and had found out details and had informed the CMP. One of them had been a baker but also was carrying oranges and potatoes to different parts of the island… The young guy he had taken with him to help him carry oranges to Famagusta. The baker used to bring potatoes to Koutrafas, bread to Dikomo and oranges to Famagusta… So he was well known in the area, as well as Koutrafas. He had loaded oranges and had taken them to Famagusta and on his way back had stopped in Nicosia. He and the young boy accompanying him had disappeared on their way back from Nicosia to Lefka.
I had also found the relatives of the two `missing` Turkish Cypriots and had interviewed them… The relatives were their brothers… The brother of one Turkish Cypriot `missing` has died a few years ago, the one I had interviewed… The brother of the other Turkish Cypriot `missing` emigrated to Australia some years ago… Although for the ones who are `missing` time does stop at the age when they `disappeared`, for their relatives time does not stop and flows into the future without waiting for us to move! So if the remains are in fact found under the bridge in Koutrafas and later identified through DNA and if it is the two Turkish Cypriot `missing` persons that we think they are, some of the relatives to take back their remains is no longer there… Sure they might have other relatives but the time has been working against those relatives who remain behind waiting for concrete results. In the case of the two Turkish Cypriots `missing` 51 years have
gone by as in the case of many Greek Cypriot `missing` 41 years have passed… Time does not wait for us, time just goes on and on while some of the relatives die still waiting for results and some of them emigrate or have emigrated to other far off places like Australia…
But let us end this article on a good note: There is good news from behind the prison in Nicosia in the northern part of the city where remains of some `missing persons` have been found… This was the 12th time that they had been digging in the area and finally they have found the burial site… My readers over the years had insisted that there were mass burials here and had given details about where the bodies were collected from and put in trucks… One reader of mine was responsible after the war of collecting bodies killed in the war from the Kaymakli (Omorphita) area and he had described me in detail about what he had seen and I had written about his recollections. Another reader had insisted that behind the prison – the prison did not exist in 1974, it was built after – some Greek Cypriots had been shot and buried. He had insisted that it was not just a mass grave but also a place for some executions.
The other good news comes from Lapithos where back in June this year we had shown the possible burial site of two `missing` Greek Cypriots with the help of one of my readers. The Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee had begun excavations there last week and started finding the remains of at least one `missing` person just as my reader had described, inside the yard of the lyceum in Lapithos… To think that all these years, children have been playing around and attending school while two `missing` Greek Cypriots were laying down under the soil next to the wall is a bit eerie. The whole country is strange when you think of it, Koutrafas is strange, Tochni is strange, Karpasia is strange, Lapithos is strange, Chatoz is strange – wherever there are killings and blood, it attaches its memory to the land and even if the majority of our communities pretend not to see except their own and not the other's pain and suffering, it still continues to exist when
human remains come out of the yards of schools or out of the industrial area or in the avli of a house… No matter how hard they try to hide, truth would always find a way to come out to stare at us stark in the face to remind us of the violence that existed on this land 40 or 50 years ago… It is up to us to make sense of all this as time goes on and does not stop for us to wait for us to `comprehend` the actual meaning of this eeriness…
3.9.2015
Photo: View from Koutrafas where there used to be the Turkish Cypriot part of the village...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 20th of September 2015 Sunday.
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