Cyprus-Forum.com

[Agios Amvrosios]

The following article appeared in The Sunday Times of London on 23 January 1977, written by the newspaper's Insight team.

"The terrible secrets of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus
The plight of Cyprus, with 40 per cent of the island still occupied by Turkish troops who invaded in the summer of 1974, is well known. But never before has the full story been told of what happened during and after the invasion. This article is based on the secret report of the European Commission of Human Rights. For obvious reasons, Insight has withdrawn the names of witnesses who gave evidence to the Commission.

INSIGHT

Killing
Relevant Article of Human Rights Convention: Everyone's right to life shall be protected by law.

Charge made by Greek Cypriots: The Turkish army embarked on a systematic course of mass killings of civilians unconnected with any war activity.

Turkish Defence: None offered, but jurisdiction challenged. By letter dated November 27, 1975, Turkey told the Commission it refused to accept the Greek Cypriot administration's right to go to the commission, "since there is no authority which can properly require the Turkish government to recognise against its will the legitimacy of a government which has usurped the powers of the state in violation of the constitution of which Turkey is a guarantor." No defence therefore offered to any other charges either.

Evidence given to the commission: Witness Mrs K said that on July 21, 1974, the second day of the Turkish invasion, she and a group of villagers from Elia were captured when, fleeing from bombardment, they tried to reach a range of mountains. All 12 men arrested were civilians. They were separated from the women and shot in front of the women, under the orders of a Turkish officer. Some of the men were holding children, three of whom were wounded.

Written statements referred to two more group killings: at Trimithi eyewitnesses told of the deaths of five men (two shepherds aged 60 and 70, two masons of 20 and 60, and a 19-year-old plumber). At Palekythron 30 Greek Cypriot soldiers being held prisoner were killed by their captors, according to the second statement.

Witness S gave evidence of two other mass killings at Palekythron. In each case, between 30 and 40 soldiers who had surrendered to the advancing Turks were shot. In the second case, the witness said, "the soldiers were transferred to the kilns of the village where they were shot dead and burnt in order not to leave details of what had happened."

Seventeen members of two neighbouring families, including 10 women and five children aged between two and nine were murdered in cold blood at Palekythron, reported witness H, a doctor. Further killing described in the doctor's notes, recording evidence related to him by patients (either eye-witnesses or victims) included:

Execution of eight civilians taken prisoner by Turkish soldiers in the area of Prastio, one day after the ceasefire on August 16, 1974.
Killing by Turkish soldiers of five unarmed Greek Cypriot soldiers who had sought refuge in a house at Voni.
Shooting of four women, one of whom survived by pretending she was dead.
Further evidence, taken in refugees camps and in the form of written statements, described killings of civilians in homes, streets or fields, as well as the killing of people under arrest or in detention. Eight statements described the killing of soldiers not in combat; five statements referred to a mass grave found in Dherynia.

Commission's verdict: By 14 votes to one, the commission considered there were "very strong indications" of violation of Article 2 and killings "committed on a substantial scale."

Rape
Relevant article: No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Charge by Greek Cypriots: Turkish troops were responsible for wholesale and repeated rapes of women of all ages from 12 to 71, sometimes to such an extent that the victims suffered haemorrhages or became mental wrecks. In some areas, enforced prostitution was practised, all women and girls of a village being collected and put into separate rooms in empty houses where they were raped repeatedly.

In certain cases members of the same family were repeatedly raped, some of them in front of their own children. In other cases women were brutally raped in public.

Rapes were on many occassions accompanied by brutalities such as violent biting of the victims causing severe wounding, banging their heads on the floor and wringing their throats almost to the point of suffocation. In some cases attempts to rape were followed by the stabbing or killing of the victims, victims included pregnant and mentally-retarded women.

Evidence to commission: Testimony of doctors C and H, who examined the victims. Eyewitnesses and hearsay witnesses also gave evidence, and the commission had before it written statements from 41 alleged victims.

Dr H said he had confirmed rape in 70 cases, including:

A mentally-retarded girl of 24 was raped in her house by 20 soldiers. When she started screaming they threw her from the second-floor window. She fractured her spine and was paralysed;
One day after their arrival at Voni, Turks took girls to a nearby house and raped them;
One woman from Voni was raped on three occassions by four persons each time. She became pregnant;
One girl, from Palekyhthrou, who was held with others in a house, was taken out at gunpoint and raped;
At Tanvu, Turkish soldiers tried to rape a 17-year-old schoolgirl. She resisted and was shot dead;
A woman from Gypsou told Dr H that 25 girls were kept by Turks at Marathouvouno as prostitutes.
Another witness said that his wife was raped in front of their children. Witness S told of 25 girls who complained to Turkish officers about being raped and were raped again by the officers. A man (name withheld) reported that his wife was stabbed in the neck while resisting rape. His grand-daughter, aged six, had been stabbed and killed by Turkish soldiers attempting to rape her.

A Red Cross witness said that in August 1974, while the island's telephones were still working, the Red Cross Society recieved calls from Palekyhthrou and Kaponti reporting rapes. The Red Cross also took care of 38 women released from Voni and Gypsou detention camps: all had been raped, some in front of their husbands and children. Others had been raped repeatedly, or put in houses frequented by Turkish soldiers.

These women were taken to Akrotiri hospital, in the British Sovereign Base Area, where they were treated. Three were found to be pregnant. Reference was also made to several abortions performed at the base.

Commission's verdict: By 12 votes to one the commission found "that the incidents of rape described in the cases referred to and regarded as established constitute 'inhuman treatment' and thus violations of Article 3 for which Turkey is responsible under the convention."

Torture
Relevant article: see above under Rape.

Charge by Greek-Cypriots: Hundreds of people, including children, women and pensioners, were victims of systematic torture and savage and humiliating treatment during their detention by the Turkish army. They were beaten, according to the allegations, sometimes to the extent of being incapacitated. Many were subjected to whipping, breaking of their teeth, knocking their heads against walls, beating with electrified clubs, stubbing of cigarettes on their skin, jumping and stepping on their chests an hands, pouring dirty liquids on them, piercing with bayonets, etc.

Many, it was said, were ill-treated to such an extent that they became mental and physical wrecks. The brutalities complained of reached their climax after the ceasefire agreements; in fact, most of the acts described were committed at a time when Turkish armed forces were not engaged in any war activities.

Evidence to Commission: Main witness was schoolteacher, one of 2,000 Greek Cypriot men deported to Turkey. He stated that he and his fellow detainees were repeatedly beaten after their arrest, on their way to Adana (in Turkey), in jail in Adana and in prison camp at Amasya.

On ship to Turkey - "That was another moment of terrible beating again. We were tied all the time. I lost sense of touch. I could not feel anything for about two or three months. Every time we asked for water or spoke we were being beaten."

Arriving at Adana - "...then, one by one, they led us to prisons, through a long corridor ... Going through that corridor was another terrible experience. There were about 100 soldiers from both sides with sticks, clubs and with their fists beating every one of us while going to the other end of the corridor .I was beaten at least 50 times until I reached the other end.

In Adana anyone who said he wanted to see a doctor was beaten. "Beating was on the agenda every day. There were one or two very good, very nice people, but they were afraid to show their kindness,as they told us."

Witness P spoke of:

A fellow prisoner who was kicked in the mouth. He lost several teeth "and his lower jaw came off in pieces."
A Turkish officer, a karate student, who exercised every day by hitting prisoners.
Fellow prisoners who were hung by the feet over the hole of a lavatory for hours.
A Turkish second lieutenant who used to prick all prisoners with a pin when they were taken into a yard.
Evidence from Dr H said that prisoners were in an emaciated condition on their return to Cyprus. On nine occasions he had found signs of wounds.

The doctor gave a general description of conditions in Adana and in detention camps in Cyprus (at Pavlides Garage and the Saray Prison in the Turkish quarter of Nicosia) as reported to him by former detainees. Food, he said, consisted of one-eighth of a loaf of bread a day, with occasional olives; there were two buckets of water and two mugs which were never cleaned, from which about 1,000 people had to drink; toilets were filthy, with faeces rising over the basins; floors ere covered faeces and urine; in jail in Adana prisoners were kept 76 to a cell with three towels between them and one block of soap per eight persons per month to wash themselves and their clothes.

One man, it was alleged, had to amputate his own toes with a razor blade as a consequence of ill-treatment. Caught in Achna with another man, they had been beaten up with hard objects. When he had asked for a glass of water he was given a glass full of urine. His toes were then stepped on until they became blue, swollen and eventually gangrenous. (The other man was said to have been taken to hospital in Nicosia, where he agreed to have his legs amputated. He did not survive the operation.)

According to witness S, "hundred of Greek Cypriots were beaten and dozens were executed. They have cut off their ears in some cases, like the case of Palekythro and Trahoni..." (verbatim record).

Verdict by commission: By 12 votes to one, the commission concluded that prisoners were in a number of cases physically ill-treated by Turkish soldiers. "These acts of ill-treatment caused considerable injuries and in at least one case, the death of the victim. By their severity they constitute 'inhuman treatment' in the sense of Article 3, for which Turkey is responsible under the convention."

Looting
Relevant article: Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions.

Charge by Greek Cypriots: In all Turkish-occupied areas, the Turkish army systematically looted houses and business premises of Greek Cypriots.

Evidence to the commission: Looting in Kyrenia was described by witness C: "...The first days of looting of the shops was done by the army, of heavy things like refrigerators, laundry machines, television sets" (verbatim record).

For the weeks after the invasion, he said, he had watched Turkish naval ships taking on board the looted goods.

Witness K, a barrister, described the pillage of Famagusta: "At two o'clock on organised, systematic, terrifying, shocking, unbelievable looting started... We heard the breaking of doors, some of them iron doors, smashing of glass, and we were waiting for them any minute to enter the house. This lasted for about four hours."

Written statements by eyewitnesses of looting were corroborated by several reports by the secretary-general of the United Nations.

Verdict of the commission: The commission accepted that looting and robbery on an extensive scale, by Turkish troops and Turkish Cypriots, had taken place. By 12 votes to one, it established that there had been deprivation of possessions of Greek Cypriots on a large scale.

Other charges
On four counts: the commission concluded that Turkey had also violated an Article of the Convention asserting the right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence. The commission also decided that Turkey was continuing to violate the Article by refusing to allow the return of more than 170,000 Greek Cypriot refugees to their homes in the north.

On three counts: the commission said Turkey had violated two more articles that specify that the rights and freedoms in the Convention shall be secured without discrimination on any ground, and that anyone whose rights are violated "shall have an effective remedy before a national authority.""

[insan]

On April 17, 1991, Ambassador Nelson Ledsky testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "most of the 'missing persons' disappeared in the first days of July 1974, before the Turkish intervention on the 20th. Many killed on the Greek side were killed by Greek Cypriots in fighting between supporters of Makarios and Sampson."

On Nov. 6, 1974, Ta Nea reported that dates from the graves of Greek Cypriots killed in the five days between July 15-20 were erased in order to blame these deaths on the subsequent Turkish military action.

On March 3, 1996, the Greek Cypriot Cyprus Mail wrote: "(Greek) Cypriot governments have found it convenient to conceal the scale of atrocities during the July 15 coup in an attempt to downplay its contribution to the tragedy of the summer of 1974 and instead blame the Turkish invasion for all casualties. There can be no justification for any government that failed to investigate this sensitive humanitarian issue. The shocking admission by the Clerides government that there are people buried in Nicosia cemetery who are still included in the list of the 'missing' is the last episode of a human drama which has been turned into a propaganda tool."

On Oct. 19 1996, Mr. Georgios Lanitis wrote: "I was serving with the Foreign Information Service of the Republic of Cyprus in London... I deeply apologize to all those I told that there are 1,619 missing persons. I misled them. I was made a liar, deliberately, by the government of Cyprus . .... today it seems that the credibility of Cyprus is nil."

[insan]

Greek newspaper Eleftherotipia published an interview with Nicos Sampson on Feb. 26, 1981 in which he said, "Had Turkey not intervened I would not only have proclaimed ENOSIS, I would have annihilated the Turks in Cyprus."

[insan]

"Turkey intervened to protect the lives and property of the Turkish-Cypriots, and to its credit it has done just that. In the 12 years since, there have been no killings and no massacres" Lord Willis (Labor) told the House of Lords on Dec. 17, 1986.

On March 12, 1977, Makarios declared, "It is in the name of ENOSIS that Cyprus has been destroyed."

[erolz]

DAILY EXPRESS

We went together into the sealed-off Turkish quarter of Nicosia in which 200 to 300 people had been slaughtered in the last five days. We were the first Western reporters there and we have seen sights too frightful to be described in print - horrors so extreme that the people seemed stunned beyond tears and reduced to an hysterical and mirthless giggle that is more terrible than tears.

DAILY MAIL Report by John Starr from Nicosia, 28 December 1963

... I was allowed to move through the whole besieged Turkish sector. I was taken to the Kumsal district and trod over shattered glass into a green and white house with orange trees in the garden, and an ownerless black and white cat wandering around. The bathroom of this house was a bloodsoaked shambles with a woman and three small boys lying dead huddled together in the bath, and in an adjoining room another dead woman. My guide said this second woman and her children were the family of a Turkish major and were all shot by Greek Cypriots.

Wherever I looked in the Turkish sector there were the stark and tragic signs familiar to any town which has endured civil war. Sandbags and sentry positions, haggard men with guns whose faces behind the stubble of beard show nothing but fatigue. Men and women lying on their backs in impoverished aid centres with shot and stab wounds, gazing up blankly at a world they no longer recognise. The uncheckable allegations . . . ‘They used dum-dum bullets . . . our soldiers obeyed orders from Ankara not to move . . . they (the Greeks) changed into civilian clothes and attacked . . . they took 30 women and children, some one, two and three years old and we know nothing of their fate’.

THE GUARDIAN 31 December 1963

. . . Whoever fired the first shots in the early morning of December 22, when a Turkish man and woman were killed, there is no doubt that certain Greeks had been deliberately provoking the Turks to action. For a week or two before this, Greeks in civilian clothes had been demanding to see the identification papers of Turks in Nicosia which caused bitter resentment and when on December 23rd armed Greek police shot at Turkish school boys who booed them, the tinderbox was set aflame.

THE GUARDIAN 31 December 1963

It is nonsense to claim, as the Greeks do, that all casualties were caused by fighting between armed men of both sides. On Christmas Eve many Turkish people were brutally attacked and murdered in their suburban homes, including the wife and three small children of the Turkish head of army medical services - allegedly by a group of forty men, many in army boots and greatcoats.

DAILY HERALD Peter Moorhead reporting from the village of Skylloura, Cyprus. 1 January 1964

In this village of shame today I found grim evidence of the hatred between Greek and Turk that has bedevilled this beautiful island. A few days ago, 1,000 people lived here, in their solid, stone built homes which hug the coast road to Kyrenia, 13 miles from Nicosia. Then in a night of terror 350 villagers - men, women and children - vanished. They were all Turks. Today I was one of two British correspondents to drive to the village to investigate the mystery. In the dusty village street I found hungry Greek children playing listlessly. From doorways men and women eyed me suspiciously. When I asked where are the Turks, the women averted their gaze. The men shuffled their feet and said ‘We don’t know. They just left.’

DAILY HERALD 1 January 1964

And when I came across the Turkish homes they were an appalling sight. Apart from the walls, they just did not exist. I doubt if a napalm bomb attack could have created more devastation. I counted 40 blackened brick and concrete ‘shells’ that had once been homes. Each house had been deliberately fired by petrol. Under red tile roofs which had caved in, I found a twisted mass of bed springs, children’s cots and cribs, and ankle deep grey ashes of what had once been chairs, tables, wardrobes.

In the neighbouring village of Ayios Vassilios, a mile away, I counted 16 wrecked and burned out homes. They were all Turkish. From this village more than 100 Turks had also vanished. In neither village did I find a scrap of damage to any Greek house.

DAILY SKETCH Reported by Louis Kirby from Nicosia. 2 January 1964

. . . Turkish homes in the city had been set ablaze by arrows tipped with paraffin soaked rags, and hundreds of hard core EOKA men were prowling towns and villages under arms.

DAILY TELEGRAPH 3 January 1964

. . . A sinister demonstration of EOKA power occurred during the height of the Christmas crisis at Kyrenia, the north coast harbour town. EOKA men, working with the regular Greek Cypriot police, took control of key points. These included the telephone exchange, where EOKA men with sub-machine guns made the Turkish operators leave their posts with their hands up and guns at their backs. They were told to go home and stay there. Telephone lines to most British and other foreign residents in the area were cut and these are still out of order.
EOKA groups put up road blocks in the town and on mountain roads behind it. Turkish policemen were arrested by men with guns. Four leaders of the Turkish community were arrested on Christmas Day when they arrived for a conference with the Greeks on keeping order in the town. With the policemen, they were hand-cuffed in pairs and imprisoned for seven days in a village near Kyrenia. They were told all the Turks in Kyrenia would be wiped out if Turkish forces landed in Cyprus.

THE TIMES 4 January 1964

... On the Greek Cypriot side the extremists resent President Makarios’s acceptance of British intervention and would have preferred the fighting to continue, leading to the extermination of the Turkish community.

NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE 13 January 1964

. . . Some of the heaviest fighting took place in the Turkish suburban neighbourhood of Omorphita. Dozens of homes were burned down or gutted. Greek youths can be seen pulling doors and shutters off houses. A looter’s car, nearly sagging under the weight of everything from an old refrigerator to mattresses, slowly chugged away. Curiously, some houses had not been touched. The Greeks claim the suburb was a hive of underground tunnels with caches of arms, but a British sergeant on patrol said ‘You can have my 12 months’ pay if you can find any tunnels around here’.

DAILY TELEGRAPH 14 January 1964

Silent crowds gathered tonight outside the Red Crescent hospital in the Turkish sector of Nicosia, as the bodies of 9 Turks found crudely buried outside the village of Ayios Vassilios, 13 miles away, were brought to the hospital under an escort of the Parachute Regiment. Three more bodies, including one of a woman, were discovered nearby but they could not be moved.

Turks guarded by paratroops are still trying to locate the bodies of 20 more believed to have been buried on the same site. All are believed to have been killed during fighting around the village at Christmas.

It is thought that a family of seven Turks who disappeared from the village may be buried there. Their house was found burnt, and grenades had been dropped through the roof.

Shallow graves had apparently been hurriedly scooped by a bulldozer. The bodies appeared to have been piled in two or three deep. All had been shot. One man had his arms still tied behind his legs in a crouching position and had been shot through the head. A stomach injury indicated that a grenade may have been thrown into his lap.

LE FIGARO Report by Max Clos 25-6 January 1964

. . . I have seen in a bathtub the bodies of a mother and of her three young children murdered just because their father was a Turkish officer . . .

Archbishop Makarios is too much of an ecclesiastic to express himself so brutally, but it is a fact that he has never openly condemned the horrible excesses committed by his partisans, leaving a delirious press the task of pursuing a campaign against the Turks . . .

.. . The Turks at least are logical with themselves. They say, ‘Life under these conditions is impossible. We are 120,000 menaced, in the full sense of the word, by extermination. There is but one solution: the partition of the island in two, we in the north, the Greeks in the south.’ The Greeks are less frank. They deny the evidence . . .

. . . According to him (Archbishop Makarios) some changes in the constitution would be enough. The trouble is that these ‘amendments’ all tend to deprive the Turks of the rights and guarantees which had been accorded to them in 1960. The Turks reply: This amounts to saying to a drowning man ‘Remove your lifebelt and everything will be all right! . .

DAILY TELEGRAPH ‘Cyprus Risks ALL’, editorial 15 February 1964

If the Turkish Army has not already landed reinforcements to its Treaty Force in Cyprus, that is simply proof of the patience of Turkey. Its right to do so cannot be denied. If international treaties mean anything, Turkey can protect the Turkish Cypriot minority from further massacre. It is racial discrimination in its most bestial form. Although there have been efforts to cloud the issue by suggesting that both Cypriot communities are to blame, by far the heaviest guilt is that of the Greek Cypriot force known as Eoka or Edma.

LE FIGARO Excerpts from a report by Max Clos 15-16 February 1964

It is a real military operation that the Greeks launched against the six thousand inhabitants of the Turkish quarter yesterday morning. A spokesman of the Greek Cypriot Government has recognized this officially. . .
It is hard to conceive, how Greeks and Turks may seriously contemplate working together after all that has happened . ..

and I could go on and on and on.

Want some more Agios Amvrosios ?

[brother]

Dear forum users,

this shit is counter productive and will turn the forum into an arena, the past should stay where it is, for the historians, today we should be communicating to resolve our problems for a better future.

This guy is dragging up the past and pulling out all our hate, fear and paranoia which does nothing but serve the likes of EOKA and TMT.

[Piratis]

I will repeat what I said in anotherpost:

My position is that we should look into the future, and that we should apply human rights for everybody in a democratic free Cyprus.

However some TCs keep bringing the past as an excuse for telling us that we do not deserve to get our human and democratic rights.

So maybe somebody (e.g. Agios Amvrosios) should remind these people that their 1 decade of suffering is nothing compare to the centuries of Ottoman rule, the Turkish invasion (6000 dead in just days) and the 30 years of occupation.

So do you want to leave the past behind and move on for something new were nobody will ever have to suffer again because human rights will be applied to their maximum for everybody?
Or you will continue bringing up your decade of suffering as an excuse to keep violating our human rights?
If you want the second, then you give us no choice from reminding to you the 100 times more suffering that you have caused to us. Would this be protective? No. But somebody should say the truth to those that pretend that TCs are the victims that now have to be reworded, while GCs have to be punished even more.[/quote]

[magikthrill]

ante pali (here we go again)

both of you.

[brother]

Were both trying to nip it in the butt to stop it going any further as some people have already been hooked and starting to respond with counter propoganda.

[erolz]

However some TCs keep bringing the past as an excuse for telling us that we do not deserve to get our human and democratic rights.

Agios Amvrosios started this round of 'digging up the past' and of that there can be no doubt. He (she?) has created thread after thread of 'quotes' about the 'evils' of T and TC. Is it then so strange that TC have _responded_ in kind?
We do not deny your human rights. We just insist that you also recognise ours as well.

So maybe somebody (e.g. Agios Amvrosios) should remind these people that their 1 decade of suffering is nothing compare to the centuries of Ottoman rule, the Turkish invasion (6000 dead in just days) and the 30 years of occupation.

So in your view AA is responding to TC and not the 'starter' of this round of 'digging up the past' ? So a GC that specifically and methodically posts thread after thread of quotes digging up a very selective version of the past is 'just reminding' TC - where as a TC _responding_ to this in kind is trying to create hatred and excuses to deny your human rights. This is your idea of being unbiased?

If you were truely unbiased you would have critised AA for 'diggin up the past' and question his motives and the value of his actions with regard to finding a settlement. Instead you seek to blame only TC. No wonder we are in such a mess.

So do you want to leave the past behind and move on for something new were nobody will ever have to suffer again because human rights will be applied to their maximum for everybody?

I am happy to leave the past behind. However I am not so saintly that when someone like AA decides to use 'diggin up the past' as a 'strategy' - posting historic articles not just in one or two threads but in 10's and 20's that I will just ignore this action. AA has tried to make out a history of TC and T 'evils' as if this is all that happened in Cyprus. I respond with a list of articles that counter this view in a SINGLE thread and I am the (TC) promoter of hatred and division and AA is to be priased for 'reminding' TC of the events post 74! Get real Piratis.

Or you will continue bringing up your decade of suffering as an excuse to keep violating our human rights?

If GC keep trying to define the 'Cyprus issue' as being a case of a peaceful and happy Cyprus being destroyed by Turkey in 74 thorugh military force simply as a means of stealing GC land, then I will have no option but to 'remind' GC that this is simply not the case.

If you want the second, then you give us no choice from reminding to you the 100 times more suffering that you have caused to us. Would this be protective? No. But somebody should say the truth to those that pretend that TCs are the victims that now have to be reworded, while GCs have to be punished even more.

Look Piratis take and unbiased look at what occured on these boards and it is clear that a GC has come onto the boards, with a very 'confrontational' attitude - ingonring much of the equittee of these forums. They have started posting thread after thread aftre thread containing quotes from articles from the 70,80 and 90. When one or two TC respond in kind you then 'attack' these TC accusing them of promoting hatred, of not wanting a solution (so they can steal) and more besides. Looking to AA and their culpability in this return to 'digging up the past' would be a place to start - instead you seem to take the view that a GC can do nothing wrong and their actions can only be 'positive' but a TC who responds in kind (but to a much lesser degree) is to be condemed.