Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
One of my readers calls to tell me the following:
"While going from Tymbou to Louroudjina, on the right side of the road, there are some flags and a place like a monument for the martyrs. You would be going from the old road – now that a new road has been built, I do not know what the situation of the old road is…
While going from Tymbou to Louroudjina, this place would be on your right, a few hundred meters prior to the old farm. I believe that there had been a farm there, a farm set up by the Jewish people in old times called "The Margo Farm"… So this place is close and across that old farm, few hundred meters before you get to the farm.
Maybe that monument was built there as a symbol or something…
An old Turkish Cypriot from the former underground organisation had told me that they had buried some "missing" Greek Cypriots there and each time I was going through that old road going to Louroudjina, I was staring at this place, thinking of what he had told me…
This old Turkish Cypriot from the former underground organisation was in fact from Louroudjina and he was claiming that some Greek Cypriots who had gone "missing" from Assia had been buried there… The old man who had told me these is no longer alive…"
I would start investigating about this place and call another reader and he would tell me the following:
"The place you are talking of is a place prior to Kirklar, close to the area where the new section of the airport in Tymbou is being built. It is in a fenced area and I think it belongs to the Ercan Airport. While putting up these flag posts, they had opened the fences and put them up and then closed the fences anyway… I think they put a stone there and had written the names of some martyrs, perhaps the names of martyrs from a certain unit and they had even planted some trees there… What they planted there grew and became big trees… So while passing as you look at that place, due to the trees they had planted, it is difficult to see the monument…"
In January 2019, I have informed the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee about this place and asked them that if they like, we can try to go together to check it out and to do further investigation…
Was this old man from the underground organisation telling the truth or did he imagine these things? Without further investigation, it is difficult to find out… But one other reader expressed his views about this saying that we need to see if this place with the flags and the monument is visible to UNFICYP since they patrol some areas there and he questioned what my reader had told me, saying "Why bury people in a place, if it is visible to the UN patrols? You need to tell this to the CMP so that they check where the UNFICYP is doing patrols…"
Together with an official from CMP, we had tried to locate some Turkish Cypriots who might have been responsible in that time period because my reader who told me the story he had heard from the old man said further that "Those Greek Cypriots who had been killed and who are "missing" had been buried there around the 17th-18th of August 1974… The old man had gone there and saw the burial and had learned what had happened and told them 'Why you did this? We have Turkish Cypriots who are prisoners of war in the southern part of the island… If the Greek Cypriots find out what you have done here, they will start killing our prisoners of war…' I believe the old man's story is genuine, but you check it out and do further investigations…"
I thank all my readers for speaking to me and giving me details… I have shared everything they have said with the officials of the CMP… Let's see what further investigation will bring to us…
Another reader calls me and wants to meet with me face to face… I do not know him, so I arrange to meet with him to see what he has to say…
He tells me the following:
*** I have just found out something that is connected with a well that the CMP had dug years ago – they had been looking for a "missing" skull… You had written the story of the "missing" skull more than ten years ago… The skull was acquired by the father of a girl from Aphania studying medicine in Istanbul in return for two truckloads of manure and then she tried to take it to Istanbul and was caught in the scan since she had put it in her handbag… It is about that skull… As I found out, the CMP was looking for the skull in the wrong well… They had dug a well and did not find anything – I believe that well is still open. Since after the digging they did not fully close that well, the villagers are throwing their trash in there.
*** One of my friends told me that he had seen the exhumations, he knew that the CMP was digging the wrong well, but he did not go and speak to them since he did not want to be involved with these things. "That skull is in another well about 100 meters away from the well they dug" he told me. If the CMP would search the wells in that area, they will find the skull of a "missing" Greek Cypriot. If the bulldozer scratches the surface, they will find the mouth of that well… The skull is in a closed well…
I had written about the "missing skull" of a Greek Cypriot more than ten years ago in YENIDUZEN and in POLITIS. We had even gone with the officials of the CMP and a Greek Cypriot reader in order to do investigations about the possible burial site of the skull in Aphania on the 21st of July 2010.
What was the story of the "missing skull" that I had written more than 10 years ago?
A student from Aphania studying to become a doctor at a medical university in Istanbul asked from her father to find her a skull. Her lecturers had asked that so that she could study the skull during her classes. Her father would go to the coffee shop in Aphania and had found the bulldozer operator who had buried "missing" Greek Cypriots during the war in 1974 and said to him, "My daughter will become a doctor, her professors gave her a task to find a human skull because she needs to study the skull. Can you find me a skull please?"
The bulldozer operator would tell him, "If you give me two truckloads of manure (gubri), I would get you a skull…"
So the father of the girl studying medicine and the shiro operator would agree. A skull in return for two truckloads of manure…
The bulldozer operator would immediately go to behind the church in Aphania where a number of Greek Cypriots were killed and buried in a mass grave on the banks of a stream. Since he had buried them, he knew the place. He would open the mass grave, take a skull and then in return for two truckloads of manure, would give the skull to the father of the girl studying medicine. The girl would be happy that her father had found her the skull that her teachers had asked from her and while going back to Istanbul, would put this skull in her handbag and would go to the Ercan Airport… This was around 1995…
While passing her hand luggage through the scan at the airport, the policeman checking the luggage would be shocked…
He would ask her, "What is this?????!!!!"
And she would answer him, "That's my homework. My father gave two truckloads of manure (gubri) for that skull, don't you take it!"
Of course the police would take it and would take the girl's father and the bulldozer operator to the police station in Mora. The police would take the skull…
My Greek Cypriot reader with whom we went to Aphania says that he had learned what had happened to the skull from some of his Turkish Cypriot friends… According to the story told to him, the police gave this skull to a teacher in Aphania saying "Take this and make it disappear… It became a curse!" And the teacher would take it and throw it in a well behind the school in Aphania and make it "disappear"….
On the 21st of July 2010 with this reader and with the officials of CMP of that time, Xenophon Kallis, Murat Soysal and Okan Oktay we go to Aphania, find the school and try to search for the well… Kallis finds an open well, half filled with soil… Was this the well that some Turkish Cypriots of Aphania were talking about?
The CMP digs that well but finds nothing and the story fades away until this reader contacts me to remind me of the story of the "missing skull"…
I thank my reader and will continue to work to find more information about the well… As always, I have also informed the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot officials of the CMP about this new information…
My reader promised to show me where the well is so that I can show it to the CMP… He says he does not want to be involved with CMP but wants to help anonymously… And that is fine with me…
(Note to my readers: When the skull was found in the handbag of the young medical student at Ercan Airport and she was taken to the Mora police station, the policemen would also call the bulldozer operator there… Later on, some officials would ask the bulldozer operator to take them to the mass grave from where he took the skull to show them and they would do an "operation" to empty this mass grave – they would empty partially and take the remains to outside Phota village… Years later the group of persons buried in that mass grave would be found – some in Aphania, some in Phota…)
2.3.2019
Photo: Kallis investigating the well behind school in 2010...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper in Greek on the 24th of March, 2019, Sunday. Similar articles were published in the YENİDÜZEN newspaper in Turkish on the 1st of March 2019 and the 28th of January 2019 and here are the links:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/lefke-kseroda-cmc-bolgesine-yumusak-topraklarin-bulundugu-yere-bazi-kibrislirumlar-g-13554yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kuyuya-atilan-kafatasini-yanlis-kuyuda-aradiydilar-13685yy.htm
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