REST IN PEACE YANNAKIS Life is a strange thing. You are born, you grow up, in between other things you love, you hate, you change and one day you die. I am no exception. I was born (in 1962) , I grew up, reached middle age and in the meantime constantly changed. At a very early age I was full of hatred for everything that was Greek and I had my reasons for it. I hated them for having burnt down my grandparents village and forcing them to live a life of poverty stricken refugees. I hated them for the hours of waiting and humiliation that we were forced to endure whenever we attempted to cross into the Turkish sector of Nicosia. I hated them because of the fear we felt crawling up our spines whenever there was a police control on a main road. And I hated them for being responsible for the fact that my childhood friend İnanç never got to know her father. She was a newly born baby when the intercommunal troubles broke out in 1963 and despite all the warnings her father who was stuck in Nicosia when the troubles broke out, decided to go back to his wife and newly born baby in Limassol. He was never seen again. And then came 1974. At the time I believed that divine retribution was at hand and did not flinch at the suffering and devastation that was unleashed on those people. Like most other Turkish Cypriots I looked the other way, thinking “They asked for it.” Fast forward 40 years and welcome to a very different “moi”. There were tears in my eyes when I read the news about the funeral service of Yannakis Savvis Liasi that will be held at the Karpaz village of Sipahi on Saturday. Liasi was a university student when he was called to the army in 1974 and last that his family had heard from him was on 11 August 1974 when he told them they were being sent to Çatalköy. They never heard from him again. His remains were found at a mass grave at Arapköy four years ago and the DNA identification took four years. He will now be laid to rest at Sipahi because his parents had refused to leave their ancestral village, where they still live despite all the harrasments they must have endured in the past to force them to leave. Karpaz, used to be a predominantly Greek Cypriot peninsula with a few Turkish Cypriot villages scaterred here and there. Before 1974 life was harsh , to say the least, for the Turkish Cypriots there. For example my paternal village Avtepe and the two neighbouring Turkish villages of Kuruova and Kaleburnu did not have electricity supply until 1974. In 1974 most of the Greek Cypriots of Karpaz fled but about 20,000 had remained. We made sure that they too left. Today there are only a couple of hundred left. Karpaz has become Anatolia. The majority of its population are now Turkish settlers. His sister who lives in Holland is quoted as saying “It has been 40 years since my brother went missing. Now he is coming home. He is coming back to where he spent his childhood years, where he laughed and played without a care in the world. The only place where he will be in eternal peace is his home.” May he find peace at his ancestral village where his parents still live as living monuments of love and dedication to their homeland. A tragic homeland that has been sacrificed at the altar of competing ethnic nationalism.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 08:09:01 +0000
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