Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
On the 3rd of August 2016 Wednesday morning, we meet two witnesses at the Ledra Palace checkpoint… Together with Xenophon Kallis, the Assistant of the Greek Cypriot Member of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and Okan Oktay, the Coordinator for Exhumations of CMP we go towards St. Hilarion…
Our witnesses want to show us some possible burial sites of some "missing persons" in this area…
When I spoke with one of the witnesses a while ago, I had tried to arrange a day so we could all go together with the officials of the CMP.
Our witness was someone who was doing his military service in 1973-74 in this area. He had not been there for the past 42 years… He had searched through Google and had sent me the coordinates of the place we were to visit. But I did not know whether this was in a military zone or outside a military zone. That is why I would give these coordinates to Okan Oktay and Kallis to check… So that if "permission" is needed to enter the area our witness will show, we wouldn't go for nothing… When Okan Oktay tells us that these coordinates are outside the military zone, we decide to go to the area on Wednesday…
But before we reach the area, on the road to St. Hilarion our car breaks down – the pipe of the radiator has broken and we stop… Okan Oktay calls one of the investigators of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, Yalkin Surech to come and pick us up so we can continue… He also calls the car mechanic to come… We wait a little while and when they come and when we try to leave, the car of Yalkin also heats up! The mechanic tries to fix both cars – in the end Yalkin's car is fixed but not Okan's… So we all go in the car of Yalkin and continue on our way…
We enter the road leading to Larnaka-tis-Lapitiou and after a while turn right on a dirt track… We stop and the witnesses and the CMP officials start searching the area… I stay near the car…
After a while Okan comes back to say they might have gone the wrong way… They can't find one of the witnesses either!
But after some time things are wrapped up and we set on our way to go to the place we are looking for… They have found a dirt track we can use but I suspect no car has passed from here for the past 30 or 40 years… There is growth on the dirt track, as well as stones… Apparently this dirt track is not used by anyone at all! But we go!
At some point we stop because it is no longer possible to progress and we walk…
Our witnesses finally find what they are looking for: Their barracks where they stayed for 15 months back in 1973-74…
The "barracks" is actually a room, demolished, without a roof… The roof was of asbestos anyway and we can see the asbestos on the floor and part of the walls are scattered around… Someone drew graffiti on the walls but bullet holes are still very visible…
On the bricks we can see that the name of the company producing these had been stamped in Greek and this is "confirmation" that we are in the right place.
Because our witnesses were from the left, they had been sent to this point as a sort of a punishment. In 1974 they did not shoot a single shot since they were not given guns because they were from the left! They would survive the war without guns and the most important thing is that they have managed to stay alive…
"I am so glad we had been sent here" says one of the witnesses, "because if we hadn't we would have confrontations every day with those with the junta… At least here we did not see them…"
They were young boys back then, 42 years have gone by and since this is the first time they are coming here, they are very excited… They take photos in front of their barracks… In 1973-74 7-8 Greek Cypriot youngsters had shared these barracks…
And then we start searching the place for the possible burial sites, the reason why we are here…
At a bend on the road leading to the barracks, they had found four dead bodies and they were instructed to bury these four bodies…
There had been fighting here and after the fighting was over, on the 23rd of July 1974, they had taken these four bodies and buried two in a hole near the toilet and the other two in a ditch…
One of our witnesses says, "I had stayed behind but I saw the actual burial…"
The toilet had a lamarina roof and next to the toilet was a big hole…
Kallis calls out to us further up, "Come! I have found it!"
And he has found it! There is a lamarina door where the toilet had been and next to it a big hole…
Our witness says, "Two Turkish Cypriots were buried in the hole and two Turkish Cypriots in the ditch…"
They start searching with Kallis for the ditch that had been five-six meters away from the toilet.
They had buried them here and had put stones over them, the stones they collected from around here…
Then we start searching for a military post close to the barracks where they would show us another place for a "missing" Turkish Cypriot.
And we find the remains of the military post. From here you can see the St. Hilarion Castle. I had never seen St. Hilarion Castle from this angle.
Under this military position, there had been a Turkish Cypriot killed in the war and they would push his body down the cliff…
When they would be on duty here, they would call out to each other with the Turkish Cypriots on duty on the next hill called "Adatepe"…
Where we are as I understand is called "Yanik Sirt" area ("The Burnt Shoulder").
We go back and jump over a wall built of stones, towards the remnants of the barracks… The wall with stones served as a "fence" in those times…
Our witness says, "There was one more dead person here…"
"They took him over this wall but what did they do? Did they bury him there? We only saw him being carried above this fence…"
So our two witnesses today have shown us the possible burial sites of six "missing" Turkish Cypriots.
"Are you sure that they were Turkish Cypriots?" I ask one of our witnesses.
"Maybe… Maybe they were Turkish Cypriots or maybe they were Turkish soldiers. We had thought that they were Turkish Cypriots. I think they had come from below, from the area of Karmi… There had been fighting here…One of our friends had been wounded, we had stayed with him for a while to keep him alive, but he had told us "Go!" and we had gone and when we came back we saw that he had died…"
The date when they had found and buried the six "missing" had been the 23rd of July 1974… Greek Cypriots had left this area on the 26th of July 1974…
"Here, our donkey had died as well… If we search, we could even see his remains in front of our barracks…"
And he tells me the story of the donkey.
When they were doing their military service in this remote and isolated area, as "punishment" because they were leftists, it had been very difficult for food to be served to them.
One day in 1973, they had visited one day the Mukhtar of Karmi. He had a photo on his wall of a donkey together with the famous movie star Raquel Welch.
Raquel Welch had come to Karmi for the movie they made there in 1970 called "Sin" and she had a photo with this donkey since the donkey would also appear in the movie, Raquel Welch riding her…
So the Mukhtar of Karmi would lend this donkey to our witnesses – the donkey that Raquel Welch is seen riding – so that they could use it to carry food… The donkey would be used to carry food for them every day from then on…
But during the fighting there in 1974, the donkey would also be shot and would die…
"The donkey that carried food for us every day was shot and the donkey was dead. The next day it was puffed up and its feet were up in the air…"
We stand to observe the scenery… We are high above the Kyrenia coastal area and the whole coast is clearly visible from here…
The smell of the pine trees, the smell of the natural herbs growing here is stunning…
The whole area has a stunning beauty and when you look down you can see how much cement is being used to destroy the beauty… The only "green" area is this, St. Hilarion area…
We take photos and coordinates and start walking back towards the car… But there is another problem… There is no place to turn back the car!!!
For this, we spend about 15-20 minutes and get the car back on track… Okan Oktay and one of our witnesses walk on foot to lead the car and clear the path from stones and direct Yalkin in difficult spots…
Everybody is sweating and the heat of the car starts rising again. We stop under some pine trees to let the car cool down…
Finally, we are back in Nicosia without any more distractions…
I thank our two witnesses for coming out after a period of 42 years to share what they know… I thank the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, Xenophon Kallis, Okan Oktay and Yalkin Surech for coming with us and enabling our witnesses to show the CMP the possible burial sites…
6.8.2016
Photo: Raquel Welch on the donkey in Karmi during the movie…
(*) Article published in POLITIS on the 28th of August 2016, Sunday. The previous article we posted here has a mistaken date at the bottom – the same date… The previous article about Kronos farm was in fact published on the 4th of September 2016, Sunday in POLITIS.
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