Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
On November 30, 2018 our journalist friend Stavros Antoniou, on his social media page wrote an important note saying, `Today we learned about Sevket Salih Sakalli and Yusuf Emir Hasan…
The joy felt when informing co-villagers and relatives of missing Turkish Cypriots that you have finally spotted the burial site of their people who have been missing since 1964, is indescribable.
And that you will soon show the burial site to the competent authorities for the exhumation to begin the soonest possible, so that the remains are returned to their families after 54 whole years.
Believe me, the feeling caused by the idea that you have done a duty to your country is unprecedented. And it is the duty of all of us, to contribute in this effort to locate the missing people so that the relatives bearing all the pain and the anxiety of the bloody history of our land can find peace and if possible, heal their wounds so that we can move forward together G/Cy and T/Cy to a common future.
So, any of you that have some information about a missing person, do not hesitate to talk to the authorities or to a journalist dealing with these issues. You will see that you will feel better because we all bear a bad conscience about all the bad things and the crimes that were committed by the previous generations.
Today, we identified the (possible burial site of the) last two missing persons of the village of Kivissili in the Larnaca district. Today we learned where Sevket Salih Sakalli and Yusuf Emir Hasan are buried…"
Stavros Antoniou had contacted me about this and we would go together to see this possible burial site. For this, I tried to arrange a Turkish Cypriot and a Greek Cypriot investigator to go with us which took a long time but finally we managed to go together on the 3rd of January 2019 Thursday together with Mine Balman, the Assistant to the Turkish Cypriot Member of CMP and also head of investigations and the Greek Cypriot investigator from CMP, archaeologist Angeliki Anthousi…
Stavros Antoniou, after investigating about the two Turkish Cypriot "missing" from 1964 showed me and the officials of the CMP their possible burial site at Mazotos… Stavros Antoniou was making a very humanitarian gesture, going out of his way to search for a burial site from half a century ago… He was showing his humanity by pointing out to CMP so they can make investigations and if they decide, to do excavations on that spot… Previously, Stavros Antoniou had also helped the CMP in the search for the burial site of Halil Ziya Desteban from Meneou who had disappeared in 1964 at Pervolia… With the help of Stavros and some other people, his remains had been found in a water arch in Kiti…
On the morning of the 3rd of January 2019, Thursday we would meet at the Ledra Palace checkpoint to go together to Mazotos…
In Mazotos, the place we would go is close to the Petounta Church, an isolated area still at this time…
We need a four-wheel drive to get there since everywhere is soaked with water on the dirt tracks and muddy… A normal car cannot pass or would get stuck in these muddy dirt tracks…
We stop at some point when he sees the reeds and we get down…
This place was a government land… So they had buried the two "missing" Turkish Cypriots not in a private but state owned land… The fields across are all private properties but the land we stand on is state land.
Close to the sea, there has been no building works here – no constructions or no buildings – completely empty… But further up, we see that there are instruments showing that some people were taking soil from there… But the area shown to us by Stavros Antoniou looks untouched… If the CMP decides to do excavations here, their work would be very easy since there is nothing in this land to prevent them from digging.
While there, we learn that the CMP did have information that the two Turkish Cypriot "missing persons" were buried in Mazotos, in the area of "Petounta" but we learn that for the first time, they are being shown a specific location, the place Stavros is showing them…
Stavros tells us that a group of four or five Greek Cypriots were coming back from the funeral of a Greek Cypriot at Anaphotia village and on the road going to Mazotos, they had seen two Turkish Cypriots by the side of the road, grazing their animals and would kill them as "revenge" and then take their bodies to this area near the Panagia Petounta Church and would bury them next to the reeds – seven feet from the reeds, there had been a natural cavity (not a well) and would bury them there…
In 2009 I had written about these two "missing" Turkish Cypriots – my information was that they were grazing their sheep and they would stop the bus of Mazotos to ask for cigarettes… Yusuf Emir Hasan was an old man who could not speak or hear and he would point with his two fingers putting them next to his lips while asking for cigarettes… In my article published ten years ago in POLITIS on the 27th of September 2009 I had written:
"He was deaf and mute, an old man who could neither hear, nor speak... The only way this old shepherd could communicate was by using his hands, making signs, using the expressions of his face and body... Yusuf Emir Hasan was an old man, a shepherd from Djivisil, who was grazing his sheep in the fields outside Djivisil, together with a cousin of his in early February 1964... He was not aware that this would be the last day of his life, that this would be the last time he would smile, last time that he would see the sun, the last time that he would look at his sheep... He was exactly 74 years old.
He saw some people coming on the main road to Mazotos and he was not aware, this old shepherd, that this was a crowd coming from the funeral of a policeman at Anaphotia village – the policeman, Tasos Constantinou, had been killed at Ayios Sozomenos (Arpalik). Was he one of those policemen who had been ambushed and killed at the motor house at the edge of the village in early February 1964 or was he later killed during the fighting that arose after this ambush set up by a team of young TMT guys, without the consent of the TMT leader of the village?
The old shepherd did not know any of this – according to a Greek Cypriot friend who told me his story, when he saw a crowd coming, he went forward to greet them and to ask for a cigarette, holding his two fingers to his mouth and making a sign as though smoking a cigarette.
Instead of a cigarette, he would be killed here, on the main road to Mazotos together with his cousin Shevket Salih Sakalli... Shevket was 44 years old, also from Djivisil, married with Pembe and had six children... Some Greek Cypriots who were coming back from the funeral of the policeman at Anaphotia would kill them both and both are still "missing" since that day…
I am sure the old man did not and could not understand why he was being killed... After all, he only wanted a cigarette... In his silent world, he would not even be able to shout out loud, to tell his killers `Stop! Please stop!..` He would meet death, as he had met life in total silence – perhaps only with his eyes and his face and his hands, he would make signs to try to tell the Greek Cypriot killers that all he wanted was a cigarette!... The old man was not aware of the young TMT guys who had set an ambush outside Ayios Sozomenos, he did not know that there was fighting afterwards and some Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots had been killed, he was not aware that Ayios Sozomenos would be evacuated and all the Turkish Cypriots would be taken to Louroudjina (Akincilar) to live a life of displaced for the rest of their lives... He was not aware that Ayios Sozomenos would become a ghost village, at the edge of Dali and Potamia – over the years the buildings would crumble into stones and dust and nothing would remain, nothing except the memory of those who remembered how life was in this village..."
And my article would continue about what had really happened at Agios Sozomenos…
I would write the article in 2009 and a reader would also call and give more information about the two "missing" Turkish Cypriots in 2011 and I would also share what he had said with my readers…
On the evening of the 3rd of January 2019, before I publish the information given to us by Stavros Antoniou, I try to find the relatives of these "missing persons" to inform them about the developments now and the possible burial site. I always try to contact the relatives, whether they are Turkish Cypriots or Greek Cypriots, to inform them before I publish anything with the names of their relatives in order to avoid "shocks"…
So I speak with Yusuf Aykan – he carries the name of the "missing" Yusuf Emir Hasan since he was his great uncle. When his great uncle and his father Shevket Salih Sakalli went "missing", he had been only a seven-year-old kid. Yusuf Emir Hasan was never married and did not have any children. The mother of Yusuf Aykan, Mrs. Pembe died years ago. His brother Ilkay died in 2011. His sisters Zehra and Ayshe passed away… His brother Alpay with whom I had spoken in 2009 and 2011 was in a sort of a coma for the past three years, in a dramatical health condition. His sister Emete's husband was very ill… So the story of one of those killed in Mazotos, Shevket Salih Sakalli is very dramatic – while waiting all these years for his burial site to be found by the CMP, his wife died, three of his six children died and the fourth in critical condition… While waiting for news from their father "missing" since 1964, a whole family is becoming extinct… 55 years went by and they are still waiting – perhaps now, with the humanitarian gesture of Stavros Antoniou, they might be able to get back the remains of their father and their great uncle…
Yusuf Aykan tells me that after their great uncle and his father went "missing", they left Djivisilli and went to live in Larnaca… They tried to get back the flock of their father and great uncle from the Greek Cypriots who took them but could not get all of the animals back. Only with the help of British soldiers, they got back some animals…
Yusuf Aykan says:
"My father was a great joker… He always liked to make jokes and everyone loved him… He was a very happy person… There was no Greek Cypriot from Mazotos who did not know him. All Greek Cypriots from Mazotos and surrounding villages knew him. There were these buses that contained wood in their frames and bodies that used to go from villages to towns… My father would stop these buses and would tease everyone… On that day, he would stop the bus to tease them and some Greek Cypriots on the bus told those who wanted to kill him "Don't shoot him! He is one of us…" We were told that there was a Greek soldier with a gun on the bus and he had shot and killed Uncle Yusuf and my father…"
Back in 2011, one reader had told me the following about their killing:
"Among those who killed him was the son of a well-known person from Pervolia… He saw the Turkish Cypriots as his enemy… He was from EOKA… When he saw that Shevket had a white mandilla on his head, he realized he was a Turkish Cypriot because generally the Greek Cypriot men had black mandilla and stopped the bus and killed both Shevket and Uncle Yusuf. We learned that when they came back to bury them, they could not find Uncle Yusuf because he had not died but was wounded and they found traces of blood a mile – he had crawled and left a trace of blood a mile from the village and they had found him near a stream and killed him.
After five or six years when things settled a bit, the son of Shevket, Ilkay would go to Pervolia to the coffee shop and some Greek Cypriots would invite them to eat and drink. While eating and drinking, the guy I told you about from Pervolia came. He was drunk… And he started boasting about how he had killed Shevket, not realizing that at the same table was his son… When the Turkish Cypriot friend sitting next to Shevket's son told him that "This is his son", he would not stop and tell him, "Let me tell you how your father died…" Ilkay would start crying and the Greek Cypriots from Pervolia would take this killer away from there and also asked Ilkay and his friend to leave… When Ilkay came back, he was shouting and screaming in the coffee shop… After that date, Ilkay would not be given a gun while on duty when he was doing his military service so that he would not go and shoot that Greek Cypriot. He passed away about six months ago… When he was alive, always when we sat down to eat and drink, he would tell us this story…"
I thank our journalist friend Stavros Antoniou for his humanity…
I hope that after 55 years, CMP manages to find the remains of Yusuf Emir Hasan and Shevket Salih Sakalli to return them to what is left on earth of their family… This is so cruel… And this is so inhuman… The first crime is killing them… The second grave crime is making their relatives wait for more than half a century without any results…
I hope that the humanitarian gesture of Stavros Antoniou would encourage those responsible for investigations to look deeper and further into this – he has given very valuable clues and an indication of a possible burial site… Let's see if we shall be able to finally help their relatives – whoever has remained on this earth, that is…
19.1.2019
Photo 1: At the possible burial site together with Ms. Angeliki from CMP and our journalist friend Stavros Antoniou...
Photo 2: Stavros Antoniou together with Ms. Angeliki and Ms. Mine Balman from CMP...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper in Greek on the 10th of February 2019, Sunday. Similar series of articles were published in the YENİDÜZEN newspaper in Turkish on the 4th and 7th of January 2019 and here are the links:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/stavros-antoniudan-insani-jest-13446yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/stavros-antoniudan-insani-jest-2-13461yy.htm
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