Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
My reader comes from London and we go to Larnaca in search of possible burial sites of two `missing` Turkish Cypriots, allegedly killed by TMT during the 60s…
This reader had written to me from London, giving details about how he knew them, how one of those `missing`, Suleyman Aspiri, had been his father's friend, how his father had tried to save him and how they had been a sort of a `witness` to his murder…
I had written about both Suleyman Aspiri and Behri Lambiro, both of them from Larnaca but until now, we had had no clue at all about their possible burial sites.
Now this reader is going to show us two possible burial sites and if not anything, it is a head start for further investigations about the `missing` of Larnaca.
So on the 23rd of March, 2016 Wednesday, we go to Larnaca together with officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee – Xenophon Kallis, Okan Oktay and Andri Palla…
Our first stop is the Larnaca Castle…
According to what my reader had heard, Behri Lambiro might have been buried in the castle, next to what used to be the `Hamam` of the Turkish Cypriot soldiers during the 60s…
We go in the Castle in search of the `Hamam`…
Years rolled by and the Castle has changed…
At the entrance, we go to the first room on our right and I get a shock: This had been a place where the British used to hang people and there is a photo showing how it had been and some writing on the wall explaining that until 1945 they would hang people here… From the Ottoman times and during the British times, this place was used as a prison… We learn from my reader that during the Turkish Cypriot rule of the castle as well, some of the rooms were used as `cells` and later we would go look at those `cells` with small windows close to the ceiling – bare walls with a few beds, those Turkish Cypriot soldiers who had been punished for this or that reason, would be locked up in these rooms and they would stay here…
Feeling eerie, we get out and try to find the `Hamam`… The `Hamam` is in fact what is used as a kitchen now…
What had been in front of the `Hamam`?
According to my reader, there had been a spot in front of the `Hamam` where people in the castle had told him that had been a burial site…
Those who work in the Castle come to help us and they make calls… No, these tiles had not been there… Yes, that tree had been there…
Perhaps an aerial photo from the 60s would help… If Kallis can find such a photo, my reader will check and try to locate where exactly that spot had been in front of the `Hamam` inside the Larnaca Castle…
The castle has been restored and very well kept… It is even visible from the flowers and the rosemary and the trees in the Castle… We thank those who work there for their help and leave to go to the Turkish Cypriot cemetery…
Here too, according to my reader, outside the cemetery was buried another Turkish Cypriot, Suleyman Aspiri, also allegedly killed by some members of TMT…
We go to explore and my reader leads us…
We find the place he wants to show us and take photographs…
According to my reader, Suleyman Aspiri had been killed here and buried here…
After a few years, they would build makeshift army barracks on the possible burial site…
There are no barracks now, they have all been demolished…
But we trace pieces of cement that might have been the remains of those barracks…
Outside the cemetery, the mimosas are in full bloom with golden flowers…
It is very pretty where we are…
Killed because of a rift, if Suleyman Aspiri is buried here, in fact it is a good place to be buried, full of flowers and there is a big tree of eucalyptus giving its shade…
This is a quiet area and it is nice to stand and just be part of nature here…
We take photos and coordinates and start to leave when my reader points out a spot where previously three Turkish Cypriots had been buried.
They had in fact attacked a Greek Cypriot village and killed some Greek Cypriots and the British had hung them.
The Imam would not allow them to be buried inside the cemetery so they had been buried outside the cemetery…
One of them, my reader remembers, might have been called Uzun Huseyin…
`There had been three graves here` he points out but they too have been demolished so you cannot see any trace of those graves…
`Actually` my reader says, `such graves should be kept where they are together with their stories… Even the mass graves… After the identification of the missing persons, they should be buried where they had been found and their story should be written there and such graves should be kept historically… The future generations should read the history of Cyprus, from where they are…`
Once, together with our dear friend Sevina and Christos Efthymiou, we had met at her house and she had briefed us about what is done internationally with such mass graves…
She had downloaded the blueprint of UNESCO concerning such graves…
What happens in Palekythro where a group of Greek Cypriot women and children had been buried in a mass grave?
What happens to the Maratha mass grave?
What about Gerasa and Pareklisha?
And what about the mass grave in Neochorko Kythrea?
What about the mass grave in the lake Galatia in Karpasia?
What happens to all of these places?
What about the mass grave in the yard of the Athalassa Hospital for the Mentally Disabled where both Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots had been killed and buried?
We were trying to find a way to preserve that mass grave and build a monument as `Together We Can`, the Bi-Communal Initiative of Relatives of Missing Persons and Victims of War and that is why we had met Sevina Floridou from Limassol.
She had had an idea to build a monument around Agios Sozomenos to remind people of what had happened in this country…
Another friend, an artist, the daughter of Hadjipapas, Sophia, had built a moving monument and had carried that to different mass burial sites and took photos there and made them into posters and postcards… We had exhibited those during our exhibition on `missing persons` called `The Colour of Truth`…
In Germany, in different towns, as you walk on the sidewalk, you encounter plaques on the floor where the story of the people from the house nearby had been taken… They are simple plaques which do not disturb anyone and yet it is a symbol of memorizing what had happened there. On the plaque are written the names of people who had been living in that house and how they had been taken to Dachau or Auschwitz and how they died there. Very simple but very meaningful…
How about trying that out in Cyprus?
We need to mark the places of mass burials and mass killings and remember what had happened in this country in order to be able to move forward…
As a reminder of the terrible past we had so that we refrain from repeating it in the future…
31.3.2016
Photo: View from inside the Castle in Larnaca…
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 17th of April 2016, Sunday.
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