Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
Sultan was only five years old when her father, Osman Talat Hanifi went "missing" on the 22nd of November 1963, just a month before the intercommunal fighting would begin in Cyprus in December 1963…
Her father who had been trained as a pilot in the British army and had worked at the Akrotiri British Bases had resigned a year before in 1962 and had opened a shop on the road from Limassol to Paphos…
He was from Anadiou village and had got married in Limassol…
Back in the 1950s, he had borrowed the big motorcycle of a former classmate of his from the English School… He had gone to Karpaz to visit Apostolos Andreas Monastery… Coincidentally there had been a busload of women who had come from Limassol to visit Karpaz and Apostolos Andreas and Elvan from Limassol, a young and strikingly beautiful girl was also amongst this group of women… Osman Talat would see her and would start following the bus all the way from Karpaz to Limassol on his motorcycle!
By the time they would arrive in Limassol and the women would get off the bus to go back to their homes it would be dark and Osman Talat would not be able to see where Elvan had gone! He would hang around the Turkish Cypriot neighbourhood with his motorcycle and try to figure out how to find out where she had gone…
Hanging around like that, he would attract the attention of an elderly Turkish Cypriot from the mahalle… He would ask him "What are you doing here son? You seem lost…"
And he would tell this elderly man, Uncle Hasan that he had seen this girl at Apostolos Andreas and had followed the bus but did not see in which house she had entered…
Uncle Hasan would say to him, "Son, following other people's daughters is not considered nice behaviour in this neighbourhood of Turkish Cypriots" and he would say, "No, no! I am serious… I liked her so much, I want to get married with her!"
So Uncle Hasan would show him the house and soon they would meet and get married. They would settle in Limassol and have three kids: Mustafa and Korman (two boys) and Sultan, the little girl…
He would resign from his job at the British Bases in 1962 and would open a shop… Throughout his life, he would be a commercial person, always looking for opportunities for trade… For his shop he would import kimonos from Japan, shoes from Italy and plates from England… The sets of porcelain plates would be sold to customers who would be getting their daughters ready for marriage and these plates would be part of the dowry of the girls… He would import all these things and distribute to shops according to their orders… He would have two chauffeurs: A Turkish Cypriot and a Greek Cypriot…
He would dress well all his life and he would always like to take his family by the seaside for trips – he would dream of going to England with his family and settling there but his wife Elvan would not accept to leave Cyprus… They would live together in the house of the father and mother of Elvan in the "Arnavut Mahallesi" (The Arnaoudi Neighbourhood) of Limassol, a Turkish Cypriot neighbourhood…
Long before he would resign from the army he would import the first cotton candy fluff machine and a popcorn machine to hire at different panayiri and he would pay some money to work with these machines to some Turkish Cypriots and he would also get some income from these…
Up until the 22nd of November 1963, things would be normal for the family… And from that day onwards their lives would turn upside down: He would go "missing"…
The five-year-old Sultan would see everyone crying in the house… Some Turkish Cypriot officials would come and visit her mother and advise her "Not to go to the police since her husband had been in TMT and that this might endanger his life…" She would only go and visit the police in Limassol about 15 days after the disappearance of her husband.
But a Turkish Cypriot would go the following day, on the 23rd of November 1963 to the Limassol police and would report him as "missing" – this Turkish Cypriot would also make up some stories about it and would also give a false address of the family…
On the day Osman Talat Hanifi would "disappear" an English man would come and ask for him – he would wait all day long for his return and in the end would leave the house, understanding that Osman Talat is not coming back…
The police would want to visit the wife of Osman Talat, Mrs. Elvan but the Turkish Cypriot authorities would not allow them to go to her house…
Things would turn sour for the five year old, once upon a time the happy girl Sultan – the girl whose father had treated her like a princess, the girl whose requests he would immediately fulfil, the girl whose father took her to the golf course since he liked playing golf and she would collect little bugs and would fill up the holes at the golf course and her father would reprimand her not to do it: "You shouldn't do that Sultan, my daughter – they will get angry with you! You are not supposed to fill the holes with bugs!"
When television would be the new thing in Limassol, one of their neighbours would get a TV set – all the kids would flock there to see and the neighbour would allow them the first day to see this magic box. Second day she would not allow them to come into the house and the third day, she would tell them "Don't come again!"
Sultan would be sooo disappointed and would run home to her father:
"See, they sent us away! We don't have a TV to watch!"
Immediately Osman Talat would get a TV set and for installing a huge antenna, even a helicopter would come to help! In those days, with this antenna, they would be able to watch TV from Syria and surrounding countries…
When her father would "disappear", Sultan would become miserable, seeing all the family crying all the time…
She would not eat, she would not play – she had just started school at the age of five and at the kindergarten her teacher Mrs. Ulker would tell her, "Look Sultan, you are not eating your breakfast at school, you are not playing with your friends – I would have to give you punishment!"
And Sultan would open her tiny hands to the sky and say, "Oh God! Please take my life! When I am at home, everyone is crying – when I am at school, they want to punish me!"
The teacher would be shocked to hear such words from such a small child and would take her hand and they would go to her house to find out why Sultan is acting like that… Mrs. Ulker did not know anything about the "disappearance" of the father of Sultan and she would be so upset… She would take Sultan to her own house to stay for a few days with her… What Mrs. Ulker wouldn't know at that time is that her own husband, Ozer Reshat Kansoy would go "missing" on the 18th of April 1964… The remains of Ozer Reshat Kansoy would be found at Kapedes-Macheras years later, together with other "missing" Turkish Cypriots and I would attend the funeral for him when he was being buried in Nicosia…
The truth about why the father of Sultan, Osman Talat Hanifi "disappeared"?
He had been taken by the Turkish Cypriot authorities in Limassol and would be killed by strangled with his own green cravat, sitting in a chair in a house where he had been "questioned"…
He would be buried somewhere near the new port of Limassol in an area that the Turkish Cypriots had called "The little forest"…
The reason? According to Sultan Osman Talat who would investigate years later the "disappearance" of her father was trying not to pay for the guns they had asked him to buy from some English persons from the British Bases…
"Probably he had got some guns for them once" Sultan says "and they had paid… And probably they did not want to pay for the second batch and I suspect they did have this money for the guns but did not want to give it to my father and keeping and sharing the money themselves… That is the reason why my father resigned from his job at the British Bases – because he was fed up with the amount of pressure they were putting on him to get guns…"
They would not put him on the official "Missing Persons' List" and would try to put the blame on the Greek Cypriots for his "disappearance"! In the First Volume of the "Martyrs' Album" published by the "Relatives of the Martyrs Association", they would claim that "Osman Talat was kidnapped and killed by the Greek Cypriots on the 22nd of December 1963"!
So they would try to "cover up" this cold blooded murder of Osman Talat and would also hide his burial site…
His wife would not be given a wage, as was the "custom" of those times – for seven years they would make her suffer until one day, a Greek Cypriot, Mr. Nicos would notice that Sultan had great talent in learning languages – Sultan would get out of the elementary school every day and would go to the Customs of Limassol where her grandfather, Mustafa Horozcu was working. While waiting for him, she would speak with Mr. Nicos, a co-worker of her grandfather… Mr. Nicos would take the initiative to arrange a meeting with a Mr. Vassilis – a rich person of those times – and would invite Sultan, her grandfather Mustafa and another co-worker, Mr. Ozay Akif who was in TMT in those times… They would go to meet Mr. Vassilis without knowing the reason: Mr. Vassilis would say to Sultan, "I hear you are very talented with languages, so you should enrol at the Terrasanta School…" The grandfather would say "But we can't afford that school" and Mr. Vassilis would say "I will pay for it and when you have money, you can pay me back…"
Mr. Vassilis would instruct Mr. Ozay to take Sultan to Terrasanta, enrol her and be her "guardian parent" at the school…
Probably Mr. Ozay Akif would report this to the Turkish Cypriot authorities – and exactly seven years after the "disappearance" of Osman Talat Hanifi, the Turkish Cypriot authorities would start giving a wage to his wife under the title "Victim of the Conflict" – 29 Cypriot pounds which would be the exact amount they would pay to the Terrasanta School! The grandfather, Mustafa Horozcu would immediately go to pay Mr. Vassilis the amount he had paid for Sultan to start the school…
Sultan Osman Talat, with her own efforts would try to find out where her father had been buried: She would speak with two persons who had buried him and would take them at different times, separately, to the possible burial sites – each would show a different spot along the same line, very close to the new port of Limassol… The CMP would start excavating the first place they had shown but would stop saying that Osman Talat is not on the "official list of missing persons" but is a person classified as "known dead". So the second possible burial site would not be excavated by the CMP.
I would suggest to Sultan Osman Talat to apply to Mr. Photiou's Office and see if they can do the excavations in the second possible burial site… She would agree and on the 25th of June 2018, we would go with Sultan Osman Talat to visit Mr. Photis Photiou, the Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs and Sultan would officially make an application to him to do exhumations in the second possible burial site… She would also give samples of her DNA and we would visit the area on the 4th of July 2018 with Xenophon Kallis in accordance with the instructions of Mr. Photiou in order to see this second possible burial site…
We will continue our investigations for this second possible burial site and see if we can find out more details…
I want to thank Mr. Photis Photiou for accepting to do something about the "missing" Osman Talat Hanifi… Sultan was only five years old when he "disappeared" – she is approaching 60 years now – she lost her mother Elvan, her brothers Mustafa and Korman and she has been waiting for the past 55 years about news of her father's fate… There is no one alive from her family – her grandmother, grandfather, her mother and her brothers have died… She is the only one left alive in her family to receive the remains of her father, if his burial site is found…
Such are the hidden stories and the tragedies of our island…
7.7.2018
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 5th of August 2018, Sunday. An extended version of this article in Turkish was published in the YENIDUZEN newspaper on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th of July 2018 and here are its links:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kayitsiz-kayiplarin-drami-9-12603yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kayitsiz-kayiplarin-drami-10-12606yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kayitsiz-kayiplarin-drami-11-12611yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kayitsiz-kayiplarin-drami-12-12615yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kayitsiz-kayiplarin-drami-13-12618yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kayitsiz-kayiplarin-drami-14-12623yy.htm
The link to the article in Greek in POLITIS:
http://politis.com.cy/article/thee-mou-pare-parakalo-ti-zoi-mou
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