Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
`In January 1964, that is exactly 52 years ago, the Turkish Cypriots of Lefkara abandoned the village in a hurry. In a matter of few hours they decided to leave their birthplace, a village at which they and their ancestors had lived for centuries. A rumour transpired that the gunmen of Sampson and Lyssarides would slaughter them on that very night and so they found refuge at Kofinou. Unfortunately- and I feel ashamed as a native of Lefkara to confess it- 48 hours later all houses (about 100) had been looted. A total of 450 inhabitants left and I understand 12 of them are "missing" persons.
We often see Greek Cypriot women in the mass media with photographs of their loved ones that are missing and pleading for any information so that they can trace them. But we have NEVER seen Turkish Cypriot women in the Greek Cypriot mass media pleading for information about their loved ones that are most probably dead…`
These were the words I came across on FACEBOOK of George Koumoullis…
I had done a vast amount of research about Lefkara and Kofinou back in 2008 and had an interview with the late Turgut Sami Sunalp, one of the leaders of the Lefkara village at that time and had published this in April 2008 in the YENIDUZEN newspaper…
Mr. Turgut Sami Sunalp had told me how they had left Lefkara on the 2nd of January 1964 and had gone to live in Kofinou…
While answering my questions, he had told me that before the Turkish Cypriots of Lefkara had left the village, a team from Kofinou had gone to a small church close to Kofinou and had tried to kill some priests there… That these people from Kofinou had killed some Greek Cypriots and among them was someone from Lefkara but he did not live in Lefkara. He had been married in Kofinou…
According to Mr. Turgut, this would be a pretext for some Greek Cypriots from Lefkara to try to collect the guns of the Turkish Cypriots of Lefkara…
In our interview in 2008, Mr. Turgut Sami Sunalp said:
QUESTION: There is also something like this: That some Turkish Cypriots make a raid at a monastery outside the village and they cut off the heads of the priests… There is a story of the priests told in Kofinou… What was this?
TURGUT SAMI SUNALP: Now that was the price we paid by going away from the village… This actually took place in 1963 and no one approved it… And there were no orders to do that…
QUESTION: What had happened? Did they go there from Kofinou?
TURGUT SAMI SUNALP: Yes…
QUESTION: What did they do?
TURGUT SAMI SUNALP: They had gone to kill the priests but they couldn't. They had wounded a child, another person died… The priests got away from there… Actually their aim was to push them away so they would leave, to buy it and to add it to their land…
QUESTION: You say that there were no orders, so they did this with their own decision...
TURGUT SAMI SUNALP: No, there was no such order, of course they did it on their own…
QUESTION: So that created tension in Lefkara…
TURGUT SAMI SUNALP: Yes… One of our villagers was involved when they had gone to the priests. But he was not staying in our village, he was married in Kofinou – but that would be on us, some of the Greek Cypriots of Lefkara would say `Your villager went there… The Lefkariti went there… So that's why you need to give us your guns, your hunting guns and also the guns given to you by your underground organisation… And we would give you back what we want…` So making this a pretext, that's how they did it… So we had no choice but to leave and go to Kofinou…
Hasan Kahvecioghlou who is from Lefkara also remembers how they had left the village on the 2nd of January 1964… That it would take them about eight hours to reach Kofinou since they did not use the normal road which would take them 15-20 minutes but they would go through the mountains…
Kahvecioghlou also remembers that 3-4 Turkish Cypriot shepherds from Kofinou had tried to kill some priests in a small church between Lefkara and Skarinou and that they had killed some Greek Cypriots there…
He also remembers that Greek Cypriots of Lefkara would not sell anymore anything to Turkish Cypriots after the intercommunal fighting began in December 1963…
`They would not sell bread to us or cigarettes…` he says…
Was Kofinou `chosen` as a centre for provoking the Greek Cypriots to react?
Kofinou was in a place to command the Nicosia-Limassol-Larnaka road at that time and we know from witness accounts that some Turkish Cypriots were cutting off the road and trying to create `provocations` to the passing cars…
Kofinou was also the very first village where a Turkish commander from Turkey was sent and this was quite a thing at that time – perhaps it was the first attempt to turn the `mudjahits` (Turkish Cypriot irregular voluntary soldiers) into a more "proper army"…
But provocations would continue and the Turkish Cypriots of Kofinou would have a rift with the Turkish commander and they would go so far as to kill him in a cinema on the 15th of November 1965… A whole family would be punished and there are some Turkish Cypriot "missing persons" from that time that we are still searching for their remains…
They would send a new commander who would close the Nicosia-Limassol road randomly and would continue to create tensions in the area…
And on 15th of November 1967, Grivas would attack the village with the army killing around 24 Turkish Cypriots, some of them very old men and very young boys… Among those killed would be six from Lefkara… And this would lead to the withdrawal of the Greek army based in Cyprus…
Back in 2005 I would make a series of interviews with some Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots about Kofinou, Agios Theodoros and the area and about what had happened throughout the years starting from 1963 and leading to 1967…
After so many years, the events surrounding Lefkara, Kofinou, Agios Theodoros still needs to be analysed to see how small or big `provocations` can lead to bloodshed and how events have been used by `big powers` in order to shape up a country in the way they wanted…
We need to see how relationships were in these villages and how the `provocation` would lead to the uprooting of a whole village and how `looting` had been very much a `culture` on our conflict torn island…
We need to see how the events around Kofinou were escalated and used bringing only misery and separation to our communities – nothing good comes out of conflict… No one wins in the end… All of us lose except those who plot and plan to get something out of such bloody conflicts…
I thank Mr. George Koumoullis for sharing his memoirs from Lefkara – he helped to refresh our memory about how things were and how things developed…
The separation of our island, the `taksim` did not come out of the blue in 1974… The separation of our communities did not happen in 1974… It started way back from the 50s and we need to understand and analyse and teach our children in schools the root causes of our tragic past… Otherwise we will never make any progress and if there is no progress, always there would be regression into worse and worse… Only the truth about our bitter past can save our future…
23.1.2016
Photo: View from the Lefkara village...
(*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 6th of March 2016, Sunday.
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