Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
Gonce Goksun, the beloved daughter of "missing" Vasit Mustafa who had gone "missing" in 1963 and whose remains were found in the Gardens of the Tekke Cemetery and buried on the 14th of November 2017 Tuesday morning in Chatoz by his family spoke to me and told me about her father, her mother, her brothers and sisters and their lives...
They once had a very good life when their father was alive: Vasit Mustafa was a very active working-class person - he was a sandwich maker but not just that... He was making ice cream, he and his beloved wife used to make home cooked potato chips and package them and sell them at the buffets of the cinemas, he used to also run the canteens/buffets of some schools... In their house even on those days they had a gas stove with oven, they had a refrigerator and TV set which was a big deal in those times…
And Gonce remembers her mother being very busy, cooking chicken for the sandwiches or making potato chips and packing them...
They used to live in a beautiful garden called "Shakir'in Bahcha" (Shakir's Garden) which was in fact the reason why the Chaghlayan Mahalla (Neighbourhood) exists... Shakir's Garden was founded by Shakir and he used to grow vegetables and sell them to the public - he also rented houses and had a summer cinema run by his son in law... Chaghlayan was the entertainment area of the Nicosians in those times - I was also born in the Chaghlayan neighbourhood - it is very close to Agios Kasianos and Famagusta Gate and Kaymakli - and I still live there...
People used to come to the couple of summer cinemas or visit the Children's Garden of Chaghlayan that my father had built when he was in the Nicosia Municipality, enjoy sweets from the London Confectionery and the old men would sit and have their narghiles at the famous coffeeshop of Enver or have kebaps at Anibal's or the Chaghlayan Restaurant...
Gonce Goksun and her brothers and sisters and their mother Suheyla Zehra first moved in with their aunts when Vasit Mustafa went "missing" in December 1963, later they would go for a year to live in Chatoz but came back to their own house... Gonce's mother worked hard to raise her five kids - she would go to work as an orange collector in Morphou very early in the morning or in Kyrenia at constructions, carrying cement in buckets... She had a very modest wage since her husband was "missing" and every month when she would get paid, she would buy "doner" ("gyros") for her kids since the restaurant Anibal was just across their house and all summer, kids would be smelling the "gyros", being able only to eat that once a month and half a portion each…
"There was no problem with shish kebap since when we would go to the village, my grandfather would cook that for us. But that is lamb meat… Doner (gyros) is different and its smell is different – it is made from beef so that smell, we would smell all summer when the restaurant was open" she would explain to me… Although his father had "disappeared" when he was together with this particular restaurant owner, Saffet Anibal – there was some sort of ambush and fighting and Vasit Mustafa would be killed and some others would be injured in Nicosia near the Aspava Restaurant, next to the Traffic Police of the time – Anibal would know who these kids were but he would still charge them for the "gyros" she remembers… "Looking straight into our eyes, knowing who we were, that we were the kids of "missing" Vasit Mustafa, his friend, he would still take the money from us…"
Gonce remembers days of rationing food when she would go with a baby carriage and stand in line to get whatever they were distributing...
Despite all this, she has had a good childhood since her aunties and uncles and grandparents were kind hearted people who embraced the kids and tried to take care of them...
She was very happy when summer holidays would come and she would go to her mother's and father's village Chatoz... There she would help her grandfather to roll sheftalies since he was selling kebaps in a sort of a periptero and she would also learn to make baskets with reed and they would cook village bread, bulla and all sorts of delicacies in the village...
She was five and a half years when her father went "missing" - she remembers crying in the house...
Vasit Mustafa was left wounded in front of the Aspava Restaurant – did he die there or was he heavily wounded? Did he die due to loss of blood?
We don't know that… What we know is a report stating that two Turkish Cypriot policemen had taken his body to the Nicosia General Hospital and had delivered his body to a Turkish Cypriot nurse working there…
There were other Turkish Cypriots' dead bodies in the morgue – killed at different points of Nicosia and gathered there. The Greek Cypriot officials would try to compile a list of those killed Turkish Cypriots and they would send a list of 21 or 22 Turkish Cypriots in the morgue to the Turkish Cypriot authorities through the Red Cross asking the Turkish Cypriot authorities to go and pick up those dead bodies.
Turkish Cypriots would not or could not go…
Then the Greek Cypriot authorities would decide to bury those Turkish Cypriots in the morgue of the hospital outside the Agios Vasilios Turkish Cypriot cemetery… They would open big holes and would bury them in three mass graves…
This would be around the first week of January 1964…
On the 13th of January 1964, the Turkish Cypriot authorities would send a team to the mass graves of Agios Vasilios accompanied by British soldiers to start digging there… Dentist Husrev Daghseven would lead the exhumations in the mass graves and what he would see while opening those mass graves would have an impact on him for the rest of his life…
"The terrible sight was more than even a doctor can bear" he would write in his report…
I would find him ten years ago and interview him…
He had taken out 22 bodies from the mass graves, one of them a child, Ayshe from Agios Vasilios who was ten years old…
"She was shot dead… They were all shot dead… Mostly from behind them… Hands and feet of some of them were tied… We had taken some youngsters to help out in the exhumation but they all felt horrified when they saw the bodies and got sick… I sent them back to Nicosia with the bus and so I went into the mass graves and took each body out with my own hands from the grave… After that I was in depression for one and a half years… Since I was a dentist working for the government, I would go to schools to treat the teeth of students… About a month ago, I had fixed the teeth of Ayshe… Now seeing her like that in a mass grave was a huge shock… I recognized her…"
He would also recognize at least two or three persons from the list of the Turkish Cypriots who had been in the Nicosia General Hospital morgue – the list of 21 or 22, sent by the Greek Cypriot officials to the Turkish Cypriot officials… One of those on that list was a nurse working at the Nicosia General Hospital and he had been killed there…
According to the information I gathered ten years ago, one night before the exhumation by the Turkish Cypriots, some Greek Cypriot "authorities" would send a team to the mass graves and they would take out nine bodies from the mass graves and take them elsewhere to rebury them… To relocate their burial site… Why? The reason was the list of 21-22 that they had sent to the Turkish Cypriots… Meanwhile there had been killings by some Greek Cypriots in Agios Vasilios and they had buried them in the same place Agios Vasilios… Those Greek Cypriots– whoever they were – thought that if more than 21-22 bodies come out of the mass graves outside the cemetery, that is 30 or 31, then the killings at Agios Vasilios would also come out so they wanted to "cover up"… That is why they relocated nine – of course we don't know if it is really nine or more or less – elsewhere. They are still "missing"…
As though this was not enough, now a new "cover up" by the Turkish Cypriot authorities would take place: Knowing that there were killings by some Greek Cypriots at Agios Vasilios, including the little Ayshe and her grandmother, they would say to the public that these 21 or 22 bodies they found in mass graves in Agios Vasilios were all those Turkish Cypriots killed in Agios Vasilios… They would not identify them and compare them according to the list they had from the Nicosia General Hospital and would bury them, without giving any notification to the relatives, not saying anything to them, at the Tekke Gardens Cemetery…
They would write on their graves "Ayvasil 1", "Ayvasil 2" or "Unknown" and some of the graves, they would write the names of those who had been killed at Agios Vasilios…
In this way, the "missing" would become "missing" a second time since they would not say anything to their families…
That is why when the remains of "missing" Vasit Mustafa would come out of the Tekke Gardens Cemetery, the family would be shocked.
Gonce Goksun would tell me, "This Tekke Cemetery thing messed us up… I remember as a young girl in elementary school, every 21st of December, commemorating the black days of 1963, the school would take us to the Tekke Gardens Cemetery and we would look at the graves there… Without knowing, I was visiting the grave of my father… It is a shame that for 54 years, they did not tell anything to his family and even though they knew he was buried there, they made us wait… My mother waited for him to return…"
This big scandal would come out during the funeral of "missing" Vasit Mustafa in Chatoz. Both Gonce Goksun and his son Gonal Goksun would express their anger and sadness for this cover-up…
It would take us ten years of struggle for the actual digging to start in the Tekke Cemetery… Relatives would write letters to CMP, relatives would form a committee and make visits to push for the digging of the Tekke… When Mustafa Akinci would come to power, he would also push together with Halil Sadrazam and those in the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee would push as well… From the very beginning Xenophon Kallis would insist that Tekke should be dug to find some Turkish Cypriot "missing persons" there… So in the end, the obstacles created by some civilian and military authorities would give way – in a period of ten years!!! – so that some graves at the Tekke would be dug – only those marked as "Agios Vasilios" or "unknown"… But there should be more digging in and around the Tekke since we know that there should be more "missing persons" buried there… Many of my readers and witnesses gave information that some Greek Cypriot "missing persons" were also buried around the Tekke… Around the Tekke the scene has changed dramatically since there was building of shops in this area… But still we must try and push so that all this "cover-up" would end and those "missing persons" buried here finally can go back to their relatives to be buried properly…
We must also push for more digging at Agios Vassilios cemetery – there was some digging there by the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, but they could not find anything… That place too has changed – it is a military village now and we cannot enter to investigate… But as I was told, a monument was erected in the area where the mass graves had been… There had been information that there were burials there at least 3 or 4 times so we must push to make sure that there are no more "missing persons" buried there…
So far, there has been seven funerals of Turkish Cypriots whose remains have been found in the Tekke Gardens Cemetery… Next month there will be more… May they all rest in peace and I share the pain of the relatives and thank all my readers who helped out in the struggle for the past decade, helping us to uncover the "cover-ups" by officials from both sides…
16.11.2017
Photo: Gönal Göksun the grandson of Vasit Mustafa and Gonce Göksun, his daughter speaking at the funeral...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 3rd of December 2017, Sunday. An extended version of series of articles has been published in Turkish in the YENİDÜZEN newspaper in November 2017 and here are the links of some of them:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kayip-vasit-mustafa-14-kasimda-catozda-defnedilecek1-11492yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kayip-vasit-mustafa-14-kasimda-catozda-defnedilecek-2-11499yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/bu-tekke-bahcesi-olayi-bizi-mahvetti-1-11523yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/sehitlik-mertebesine-ulasan-bir-insani-yillardir-mechul-adi-altinda-yatirtmak-ve-onu-11529yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kaymaklili-kayiplar-icin-yarin-tekke-bahcesinde-defin-toreni-11535yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/bu-tekke-bahcesi-olayi-bizi-mahvetti-3-11541yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/21-kayip-sehit-neden-ailelerden-saklandi-neden-1-11411yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/nasil-olur-da-rumlar-tarafindan-oldurulen-dedem-bizim-tarafimizda-sehitlikte-bulunur-11415yy.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment