Address by Erbay Akansoy, Bicommunal Organization for Missing People and Victims of War “Together we can”
14th July 2020, Local Club of the Left at Tsakkileros refugee camp
Turkish Cypriot Erbay Akansoy, whose relatives were massacred during the slaughter committed by the coupists of EOKA B in the Turkish Cypriot villages Maratha – Aloa – Santalari in the summer of 1974, addressed a moving event organised by the Local Club of AKEL and the mass organizations of the Left in the Refugee Camp of Tsakkilero in Larnaca on behalf of the Bicommunal Association for relatives of Missing People and Victims of War “Together We Can” on 14th July 2020.
This is part of our Movement’s long standing and consistent policy of promoting a movement for rapprochement, mutual understanding and cooperation between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots through joint actions and the organisation of numerous common initiatives on many levels. By doing so, we combat the poison of nationalism-chauvinism which has caused so much suffering and pain and which has committed abhorrent crimes and atrocities which of course were subsequently exploited by imperialism and its local representatives to promote the policy of “divide and rule” and the division of the Cypriot people.
This is an excerpt from the address of Erbay Akansoy.
“… I am a citizen of a country where people were massacred just because of their ideological beliefs by so-called “patriots” in the name of “protecting the state and the Nation”. A country where young children were killed, women were raped. A country where people who trampled on human dignity were proclaimed heroes and even had streets named after them. A country where people carelessly say, “This house and fields belongs to me now” which belonged to others. I am part of a divided island where the scales of justice have lost their orientation, where young people were massacred because of their political views by military commanders who knew they were going to be murdered, languages were forbidden to be spoken and the names of villages were changed.
I am part of a divided island, but at the same time I am part of an island where people live who are struggling with all their strength for the reunification of my homeland, where people are fighting against injustice, who toil on this land for a just society, for a common homeland, people who stand against injustice, who have a free spirit, and people who genuinely show their appreciation for the homeland and the common people, not only in words but also in deeds.
Over the past few years I often visit Maratha, the village of my father and family, a ruined village that has been lost in time. The hot dry air of the Mesaoria plain burns and roasts everything as if it has been exemplified by history and as if it does not want to leave anyone alive. We, the young generation, are not very accustomed to its soil and heat. The old house where my father was born in 1956 is about to collapse. “We will make it alive, against death,” my father says. And we recall the lyrics of the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet…
After planting olives, we saw that Maratha welcomes us differently. A cool wind blows from the cauldrons. “Let’s plant almond trees, let’s plant legumes,” says my father. “To plant fig trees in the depths of the caves.” And you saw him as if he was a small child. He shows one by one the holes of the caves that his brothers, that is, my uncles, had opened up. He shows us the places where his sisters played, that is, my aunts. He shows us the place where his mother, my grandmother, made halloumi cheese. He shows grandmother’s house with the yard and the trees planted by his uncle and nieces.
Suddenly grief overwhelms that man full of life who just a little while ago was feeling young again. And we ask him “What happened?” We ask him “Did the past come into your thoughts again?” “No,” he says with a smile, “because they have never left my mind. That roof just stuck in my mind.” I immediately tell him, “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it, we will change it”. And he says to me, “Yes, but take care not to hurt the pigeons”…
We mustn’t allow them to hurt again Kika, Maria, Andreas, Sibel, Erbay, Mustafa, Sezin and all other children, people both young and old, whose names we do not mention.
Let us never forget: If children disappear, so does hope, happiness, the future and humanity…”
