Sevgul Uludag
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Tel: 99 966518
Ismail Bekir had been "missing" from the St. Hilarion area of Pentadaktylos since the war in 1974.
His wife Fatma, having heard that he had been wounded had run to Boghazi-Kyrenia to find out where her husband was.
They had first told her that he had been taken to Turkey for treatment, but she would soon realize that might not be true.
Whoever they had buried in Aghirdagh-Boghazi during the war, she would have them open the graves after six months from the end of the war, checking all the dead bodies but would not find her husband.
She had small children: Ayhan, Aysan and Ulfet…
She would be waiting for her husband to return for 43 years…
I would interview her and her daughter Ulfet Cansech years ago and would try to help to find where "missing" Ismail Bekir had been buried.
Apparently when he had been wounded, he would be taken to the hospital in Nicosia and probably died there because of mass bleeding due to his wounds…
Then he had been taken to the Gardens of Tekke cemetery and buried there…
On top of him, they would bury four more persons and a mass grave of five would be created.
On the gravestone of Ismail Bekir and the four others it was written "Onder Ibrahim" – but such a grave existed in the Boghazi military cemetery and we would find the relatives of Onder Ibrahim and they would tell us that the actual grave is in Boghazi, the grave where his name was written in the Tekke cemetery was not his grave…
We would struggle for the digging of the Tekke cemetery – the unmarked graves where Turkish Cypriot "missing persons" had been buried – for ten years… The military circles would not allow digging there… In 2009, the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee would start digging one grave and they would be stopped before the end of the day…
It would take exactly ten years for the digging to start and last year, they would finally start exhumations in the unmarked graves or graves marked as "Ayvasili" and in the grave written "Onder Ibrahim" since we and the family of Ismail Bekir had proven that Onder Ibrahim was buried in a different cemetery in Boghazi…
And finally the remains of "missing" Ismail Bekir, with the struggle of his children and wife, with the struggle of many others and with our struggle would be found and returned to his family…
Ismail Bekir was working as an ironsmith during the day at the waterworks department and during the night he would work in a restaurant, helping his friends…
I would publish on my pages in YENIDUZEN what his son Aysan Ismailoghlou wrote about his "missing" father and today I want to share with you what he wrote after the funeral of his father…
The son of "missing" Ismail Bekir, Aysan Ismailoghlou, in his article entitled "A real life story – The Child – The Parsley Tree…" says:
"When we were looking for my "missing" father, a lot of authorities told us a lot of things…
A lot of things are wiped out of my memory of when I had been around 10-15 years old but I will never forget what I had heard when I was 4-5 years old, what I had lived through at those ages:
"A bomb fell next to your father during the war, they were all torn apart and no one was saved…"
"They had shot and killed them with heavy machine guns… Then they threw them en masse down the abyss… It is impossible to go down the abyss and find them…"
Words like that…
When I would hear things like that, I would go to my room, lay on my bed and cry, thinking of these…
That abyss would get stuck on my mind…
When I grow up, we would bring him out of that abyss I was thinking.
At that time I was 5-6 years old.
In those days, the Pentadaktylo range of mountains would seem unreachable to me…
But when I grew up I realized that the Pentadaktylos mountains were not so big, small even… People were climbing up the Himalayas…
In front of our house my father had set up a greenhouse and he would plant vegetables there, throwing old pitta bread… The pitta bread would dry out from the sun… My most favourite habit was to go to that greenhouse and eat that pitta bread. My father would get really angry with me and would be upset.
He would tell me, "If you continue doing that, I will hang you on the tree of parsley!"
When I would hear that I would get really frightened. I would think that the tree of parsley would be a huge and splendid tree… Just like the abysses under the Pentadaktylo mountains… My father was drying and giving those pitta bread to the chicken and did not want me to eat them. Because he was afraid of me getting sick. And that "Parsley tree" was made up to deter me from eating the old, dry pitta bread meant for the chicken… Just like the stories and scenarios made up by the authorities and were told to us…
When I began the first class in the elementary school, our teachers would ask "What does your mother and father do?"
A lot of my class mates would list a lot of professions.
I would say "My father is missing" and only myself and the teacher would understand that.
During the break, my class mates would insistently ask me the question "What does your father do?", since they would not understand what it meant to be "missing".
And I would answer them as "He does ironworks…"
One day one of our acquaintances said to us, "I saw your father, he was being taken with a car from Boghazi to Nicosia since he had been wounded…"
But my mother had asked the hospital and they had told her that no such person which was wounded had been taken there… There were no records, nobody seeing anything, nobody knowing anything…
Today they tell us that he had been taken to the hospital since he had been wounded, that he had died there and that he had been taken to the Gardens of the Tekke in Nicosia to be buried since that was the closest place to the hospital for burial.
And they threw four more persons on top of him and had created a mass grave…
When I took the coffin of my father from the offices of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, I took him first, to our first house where he had created the greenhouse. Other people were living there, there was no more greenhouse.
Then I took him to our current house. The house where my mother waited for him for the past 43 years… I took the coffin in my arms and took him there. I put him on the veranda where my mother waited for my father for the past 43 years.
I said to my mother, "Don't wait for him mother, my father is here now…"
We found my father after long struggles. We buried him where he deserved to be buried. I have peace inside me but I am not comfortable. There are things on my mind.
Why did they put four more persons on top of my father?
Why does that mass grave has a name on the gravestone that exists in another cemetery on another gravestone, the exact same name?
Who were these people?
Sure, in the war anything can happen and I can understand that, such things happening is normal. And when my father went to war, he knew all the risks and he was ready to face those risks.
But I am sure that it had not even crossed his mind that he would be laying in a mass grave of five persons, together with four others…
When we went to the viewing in the buffer zone at the laboratory of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and when the team who carried out the exhumation was telling us about it they said:
"We had reached the first remains at the depth of one meter and 27 centimetres. We took out the remains of four persons. Then when we checked the soil, we saw that the soft soil continued and we continued the exhumation and reached the remains of one more person…"
That one person was my father. First they buried him and then four more persons… Maybe they did not have much time and that's why they did that. I can also understand that. But war was over, so much time passed… Those who saw this and those who knew this could have come and told us… In this way we would not be searching for him for 43 years… We would take him out of there, would bury him where he deserved to be buried and would find peace at last.
Didn't anyone see any of this, hear of this? My father gave his life for this country. He did not deserve to be buried in a mass grave.
I only have one sentence for those who saw all this and who knew all this and did not say anything… As in the words of the song of the famous singer Ahmet Kaya: Shame on those who knew but did not say anything father…"
Photo: İsmail Bekir in his house in a small coffin with his wife Fatma and his son Aysan...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 26th of November 2017, Sunday. This article was published in Turkish in the YENİDÜZEN newspaper on the 21st of October 2017 and here is the link to the Turkish version of the article in YENİDÜZEN:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/gercek-bir-hayat-hikayesi-cocuk-maydanoz-agaci-11402yy.htm
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