Cyprus-Forum.com

[iceman]

Former Mayor of Nicosia (Turkish sector) Kutlay Erk gave a moving speech on his fathers 44 years late funeral.


Dear Friends,
On behalf of myself and my family, I thank you all for attending this funeral of our father.
Our father had been working at the Central Prison from 1952 onwards as a prison warden.
On the day that the intercommunal conflict of December 1963 broke out, he was in the Nicosia State Hospital. We were told that on 23rd December some friends of his from the Central Prison came to the hospital and took him away and he was never seen again.
On 23rd of May 2008 we received news of our father from the Committee for Missing Persons who informed us officially that the remains of our father had been found. Exactly 44 years and 5 months after he was last seen alive.
The remains of our father was found in the Ottoman wells in Strovolos where he had been thrown and where he remained for more than 44 years. But today we will be putting him to eternal rest next to his wife.
We carry very mixed feelings today ...............
We are experiencing an event with overwhelming emotions
We are both happy and sad: we have found our father after nearly 45 years and are burying him.
We are deeply saddened that his wife our mother did not live to see this day. She died in 1999 and even though she had no doubt that her husband had been killed, until her death she still carried hopes of ‘who knows, he may return’.....
We have carried this burning flame inside us until today and today it is time to bury it.…
It has been nearly 45 years of
Hope and pain
Dreams and nightmares
Expectation and heartbreak
Memories and longing
Keeping our pain to ourselves in silence
Not speaking but not forgetting …
For nearly 45 long years
Today we close that era
His story ends today
This is the picture of our mixed emotions …
But we have to be wise and put wisdom first
Standing in front of this coffin today we remember the events that have happened over the past 50 years in Cyprus. And we remember once again how important it is and how desperately we need to achieve a sustainable peace on the island.
And as the family of Mustafa Arif we vow to continue our efforts towards achieving peace
It has to be remembered that finding and returning all the missing Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots to their families is a very important right that should never be politicised.
We consider ourselves fortunate because our missing father has been found and we hope that those families who have not yet been so fortunate will also find their loved ones soon.
The families of missing Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots and also those from other conflicts throughout the world share the same fate and the same pain: irrespective of their language or colour or religion their grief is the same, their tears are the same.
We express solidarity and share the pain suffered by all the missing of the world and their families.
We pray for an end to all conflicts and wars on our island and throughout the world, so that there are no more incidents of missing persons, where a family can leave their loved one alive and well one day to be reunited with them 45 years later in the form of bare bones in a tiny coffin…
Dear Friends
On behalf of myself and my family I have to express our deepest gratitude to those who helped us reach the result we have today:
• To my dear friend and comrade President Mehmet Ali Talat - soon after he became Prime Minister in 2004 he took the initiative and showed the will to reactivate the Committee for Missing Persons and created the climate to depoliticise the issue. He also agreed to the transfer of funds for the financing of this work from the EU Financial Aid Regulation
• To the Greek Cypriot leadership for following this approach of Talat and also for not politicising the issue and for continuing to do so
• To the CMP for the work and effort they have shown with patience and determination
• To all those sponsors who have provided financial support for the work of the CMP
• To the experts at the DNA laboratory, the archeologists, the anthropologists, the psychologists and all experts and researchers involved in the exhumations
• To the witnesses who helped by giving information that led to this conclusion
• To the Turkish Cypriot Human Rights Foundation for the work they have done to inform families of the missing on developments
• As the children of Mustafa Arif, to our own families, our wives and husband and children, for the support they continue to give us
• To the Mayor of Famagusta Mr. Oktay Kayalp and his team for assisting in the funeral and burial
• To those of you who have come here today from all over the island to share our grief
• To the Greek Cypriots who are among us, for giving constructive message by attending this funeral
• To my friend Dimitris Hristofias, for his willingness to attend the funeral but due to other obligations is not among us, and for sending his representative to be with us
• To the ambassadors and delegations from the embassies for being with us

WE THANK YOU ALL

Dear Friends,
Finally, on behalf of myself and my family I want to say to our father:
‘Father, welcome back among us and may you rest in peace next to your beloved wife who waited for your return until her death’
God Rest his Soul…
Thank you

[halil]

Allah rahmet eylesin .

we need more peoples like Kutlay Erk and his family .Great supporter of Peace in Cyprus .

[Piratis]

Was the speech given in English or this is a translation?

we need more peoples like Kutlay Erk and his family .Great supporter of Peace in Cyprus .

Yes Halil, but peace is not a slogan. Peace is the result of following universal principles, such as human rights, democracy, minority rights, freedom of speech etc. You can not create peace by having ethnic cleansing and human rights violations as the basis.

I hope the right lessons are learned from the past, so our future can be a better one.

[halil]

with your ideas Pirates we can not achieve . We are living at 2008 .

if you keep saying your rights are the perfect ones all the time .You are making big mistakes .

İn Cyprus 2 communities lives other two communities are integrated into GC society . To stop the division of the island .ROC was forumed .We all know how it was accepted by 2 communities .Rules are written down ... İf one side was trying to change the rules we have seen what happened at 63 .... afterwards we came through 74 .... both sides are very carefull this time ....
with majority or minority ideas this will not work again ....

[Viewpoint]

Was the speech given in English or this is a translation?

we need more peoples like Kutlay Erk and his family .Great supporter of Peace in Cyprus .

Yes Halil, but peace is not a slogan. Peace is the result of following universal principles, such as human rights, democracy, minority rights, freedom of speech etc. You can not create peace by having ethnic cleansing and human rights violations as the basis.

I hope the right lessons are learned from the past, so our future can be a better one.

Would that be just like in 1963??

[Piratis]

The "rules" for peace are the same everywhere. They are the universal principles such as human rights, democracy, minority rights, freedom of speech etc.

Imposing anything other than the above, so that small group of people and some foreigners can have gains on the expense of the rest of the population can only bring more conflicts. This is what the history not only of Cyprus, but of the whole world teaches us.

You can't reject human rights and democracy, and instead support ehtnic cleansing, racist discrimination, segregation and human rights violations, and then claim that you want peace.

Would that be just like in 1963??

I hope that this time we will be allowed to have democracy, no racist discrimination and no segregation, so we can finally have a permanent solution and peace.

If you again stop Cyprus from having the above universally accepted principles that bring peace, then peace will not come.

[CBBB]

Why do so many people fail to see the realities of the situation!

In an ideal world, human rights would reign supreme, but we don't live in one of those. We have to make the best of what is availabe.

We can all go to our graves (metaphorically, as I intend to be cremated) dreaming of the perfect solution to the Cyprus Problem, but people have to see that ain't gonna happen. OK, we can be martyrs and resist any solution that doesn't give us everything that is fair and just, but what's the point?

Just for the sake of it?

[iceman]

Was the speech given in English or this is a translation?

Mr Kutlay Erk gave the speech in Turkish then in English...It is not a transilation.

[Tim Drayton]

Allah rahmet eylesin .

Amin

[Oracle]

Was the speech given in English or this is a translation?

we need more peoples like Kutlay Erk and his family .Great supporter of Peace in Cyprus .

Yes Halil, but peace is not a slogan. Peace is the result of following universal principles, such as human rights, democracy, minority rights, freedom of speech etc. You can not create peace by having ethnic cleansing and human rights violations as the basis.

I hope the right lessons are learned from the past, so our future can be a better one.

Would that be just like in 1963??

Reflect on this ...

Turkish Cypriots who favored compromise or a close relationship between the two ethnic communities were targets of TMT violence. Turks caught smoking Greek cigarettes or visiting Greek shops were beaten, and Turkish gangs forced some Turkish Cypriots to resign from Greek Cypriot trade unions. In Limassol, a Turkish Cypriot owner of a restaurant popular with Greeks was threatened and later murdered by the TMT. Two progressive-thinking, London-educated Turkish barristers who spoke against partition were killed outright by these same Turkish gangs.

Turkish extremists forced several thousand Turkish peasants to abandon their farms and animals and move into an overcrowded Turkish enclave in Nicosia. "Thus the aim of partition, camouflaged by Turkish propaganda as `federation,' was relentlessly pursued regardless of loss of human life and the human misery created. However, this so-called `first phase' of the invasion of Cyprus by Turkey only partly succeeded, since well over half of its brethren refused to obey instructions to abandon their homes for the predetermined enclaves" (The Making of Modern Cyprus, Panteli). On December 23, 1963, Turkish gangs also moved through the Armenian quarter of Nicosia and forced the inhabitants at gunpoint to leave their houses, shops, church, school and clubs to make room for more Turks.