Cyprus-Forum.com

[RAFAELLA]

Turkey´s war crimes in Cyprus resurface

John Akritas January 29, 2009

´Those who want to rape the daughters of the priest, come now!´

It´s been stomach-churning witnessing the moronic coward Attila Olgac retracting the confession he made on Turkish television regarding the murder of Greek POWs during the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus.

Olgac now wants us to believe that his description of war crimes was a figment of his imagination and, indeed, a plethora of the actor´s associates have been put up to assert that Olgac is, among other things, unbalanced, a weakling and a fantasist. Olgac´s original story may or may not be true; but what is beyond question is that every conceivable war crime was committed by the Turks in Cyprus in 1974 – mass murder, mass rape, looting, ethnic cleansing and so on – and that Turkey has never been held to account for its actions.

Indeed, Olgac´s war crimes´ revelations, even if he exaggerates or lies about his personal involvement, rather than encouraging Turks to broach the subject of the atrocities they committed in Cyprus in ´74 has prompted them instead to resort to the usual denials and lies.

It is mind-boggling that Turks cannot conceive that they are capable of wrongdoing, and this despite the fact that all the evidence of history shows that Turks, far from being uniquely righteous and immaculate, are, in fact, guilty of some of the most notorious and heinous crimes against humanity ever committed. I even heard on Cyprus (RIK) news that the association of the Turkish veterans of the Cyprus invasion had condemned Olgac for suggesting POWs were mistreated in Cyprus in ´74 and claimed instead that ´we even shared our food with prisoners´.

This is not so much a lie as a deranged inversion of the truth and fits in well with Turkey´s Cyprus narrative, which describes not an invasion but an ´intervention´; not a brutal assault, but a ´peace operation´; and not ethnic cleansing aimed at Greek Cypriots, but genocide suffered by the Turkish Cypriots.

In fact, the ability of Turks to commit the worst imaginable atrocities and then deny (or justify) their crimes, not only to the outside world but also to themselves, is truly chilling. Normally, only the worst kind of psychopath can exist without a conscience.

The European Commission on Human Rights issued two reports on the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, one in 1976 and the other in 1983.

http://www.greece.org/cyprus/ECHR1.htm

http://www.greece.org/cyprus/ECHR2.htm

Here´s an excerpt from the 1976 report on mass rape:

"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 practiced, all women and girls of a village were 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 occasions 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, rape was followed by the stabbing or killing of the victims. Victims included pregnant and mentally retarded women."

And here´s an extract from Turkish Cypriot journalist Sevgul Uludag´s 2006 book, Oysters with the Missing Pearls, recording events in an unnamed (presumably mixed Greek/Turkish) village during the invasion in which a priest and his daughters were held prisoners in a church. Uludag, whose humanity and honesty is exceptional among Turks, interviewed a Turkish Cypriot villager, who recalls:

"They were making announcements each night in the village… They were calling the men to go to the church… 'Those who want to rape the daughters of the priest, come now!' they were saying. My father was angry and was telling me to get inside the house and remain there… 30 of them, 40 of them would go to rape the girls inside the church… They kept the priest there to watch… Now, no one pointed a gun to their heads to do this. These were the ordinary men of the village that you see every day… Later the Red Cross or some other organisation came to the village to take the girls. The girls were brought outside on stretchers; they were covered in blood and they were taken away. I remember those announcements, people going round the houses and saying, 'Who wants to come tonight?' Now if we told these stories, imagine how a 10-year-old boy who loves his chubby grandfather and finds out that he had been part of the raping of the girls in the church, would feel… How his world will be crushed if he finds out that in fact his grandfather had killed seven or eight persons."

To watch Michalis Cacoyiannis´ film ´Attila ´74: the Rape of Cyprus´, go here:

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doc ... &plindex=2

http://hellenicantidote.blogspot.com/

Article from:
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/89381

[miltiades]

War is a horrid brutal event that unleashes the savage instincts in men , hatred of immeasurable levels suppresses all traits of human decency .
There are many who still call the Turkish invasion as a peace operation !!

[bill cobbett]

VP, Zan and other supporters of The Turkish Piss Operation and its Annexation Plans, your comments please.

[RichardB]

And all the British who have bought stolen property should be forced to watch this from around the 30 minute mark to see the rightful owners of their properties and hang their heads in shame. |Their properties bought so cheaply because most of it was paid for with the blood and tears of the rightful owners

[Bananiot]

Actually, in 1998 we had stronger and more reliable evidence of crimes committed by the Turkish army but somehow, nobody bothered at the time. A book by Sofia Iordanidou describes the experience of Yialtsin Kucuk, a university professor now and a young army officer during the second phase of Attila. He lived in self exile since 1993 in France where he wrote more than 40 books. He was prosecuted a number of times in Turkey because of his books and his articles that appeared in some Turkish newspapers. He eventually returned to Turkey where he was immediately arrested and imprisoned. It was the Demirel administration that was in power when Kucuk returned.

His book “dalga – dalga” (waves – waves) was presented to the Greek society in Athens in 1998 on August 26. This book constitutes the first testimony of war crimes committed in Cyprus by the Turkish army and it came more that 10 years after the confession of this Olgac actor, who sounds and looks more than a bit of a sensationalist attention-seeking individual. Kucuk is a serious person and what he wrote in his book was devastating. After he left Athens, he headed straight to Turkey where on the 29 of the same month he was arrested and imprisoned.

When asked why he was returning to Turkey he said that he was no hero and that he was scared of prison. Citing the famous verse of Nazim Hikmet, “if I don’t get burned, if you do not get burned, how will light shine through darkness” he said that living away from home is a prison too. Asking the GC’s not to think of him with pity he explained that all he was asking was for light, more light, and he concluded that without sacrifice the truth could not surface.

[Bananiot]

I have just read in "Simerini" newspaper that Kucuk appeared yesterday on TV in Turkey (first appearance after he was released from jail) and spoke about Olgac. He was no soldier he said, describing Olgac and futhermore he did not fire one single bullet. I met him in Cyprus and we became friends. He was an actor and soon we sent him back to Turkey.

This guy even gave a lecture at the University of Cyprus on 13 May 1998. On May 12 he apparently gave a lecture at Panteion University Greece. What the hell is happening here. We had all the evidence then, from a serious person, a university professor, yet we did nothing then and all these ultra nationalists who are shouting their heads off to exploit joker Olgac to the maximum and bury Turkey, kept a ... low profile back in 1998.

[Bananiot]

Here is a short excerpt from “waves – waves”.

“Suddenly I heard shots fired from nearby and saw two soldiers Sefik and Suleiman, shout proudly: “Oldurdum, oldurdum, komutanim”, that is, I killed, I killed captain. I knew them, they were hooligans. I went near to where they were pointing. A young, rather largish woman lay squirming convulsively (in Greek, σφάδαζε, not sure of the English word). Her arms were tight behind her body and her legs wide apart. Thick pious staff and blood run down her thighs. The soldiers emptied their pistols in her vagina. As I watched her die, I felt sick ….” There is more but I think the above speaks volumes.

Kucuk went on to say that mass executions were performed by the Turkish army but most of them were carried out by the Turkish Cypriots, he said. He called them mukavement mucahit (iceman or halil, can you help here?). Denktash was their leader he said, who was a real war criminal, not Karadzic.

He said that many officers were inhuman and looted freely. The worst were the extreme right wing fascists.

[Bananiot]

Of course, these extereme right wing fascists, are the same every where. We have our fair share of them here too. Some even write in this forum.

[Kifeas]

I have just read in "Simerini" newspaper that Kucuk appeared yesterday on TV in Turkey (first appearance after he was released from jail) and spoke about Olgac. He was no soldier he said, describing Olgac and futhermore he did not fire one single bullet. I met him in Cyprus and we became friends. He was an actor and soon we sent him back to Turkey.

This guy even gave a lecture at the University of Cyprus on 13 May 1998. On May 12 he apparently gave a lecture at Panteion University Greece. What the hell is happening here. We had all the evidence then, from a serious person, a university professor, yet we did nothing then and all these ultra nationalists who are shouting their heads off to exploit joker Olgac to the maximum and bury Turkey, kept a ... low profile back in 1998.

Yes Bananiot, but professor Kutcuk also said that he was not always together with Olgac in Cyprus, as he (Olgac) arrived in Cyprus earlier than him and thus he was or could not have been sure of his whereabouts before that. Kucuk said Olgac did not fire a bullet, but he was reffering to the time since he met him and on. It could very well be possible that after Olgac was asked or pushed to engage in criminal acts, he indeed (as himself revealed) suffered a shock and a “nerve breakdown,” and therefore he was removed from "active duty" and into some auxiliary type of duties, and then sent back to Turkey. That is when and were probably the then TC director of the theatrical association met him, i.e. “peeling potatoes,” after he was asked by his mother to seek for him. After all, it doesn’t take too long to kill 10 people, and such a thing may as well have occurred during the very first few days of his arrival in Cyprus. Such a scenario coincides with the KYP (Greek CIA) agent's accounts when Olgac approached him in Smyrna Greek Consulate, in which he said to him that after what he "went through" when he arrived in Cyprus, he broke down and begun suffering psychologically for many years, feeling remorse, etc.

The thing is, Olgac, regardless of him presumably been an attention seeker, he is not an entirely stupid person. After all, he maintained a successful career as an actor in Turkey, as far as I understand, something which cannot be attributed to a stupid person. He is not a mentally retarded person, that is for sure! He might not be the most intelligent person on earth, but he surely knew or understands in what kind of trouble he may end up with, by disclosing such claims out of sheer imagination and the need to seek attention, and such a motive is not strong enough to lead someone claiming in public that he assassinated 10 people, one of which was a hostage with his hands tight behind him. If he did this for merely seeking attention and in order to boast or show pride, he surely knows that saying he killed someone not in battle but while being his handcuffed hostage, is not something that will bring him pride and honor but quite the opposite, even in Turkey. He certainly did not say that for bravado, for he is not so stupid not to know that one cannot be proud for such a thing, regardless of the fact that the victim was a Greek Cypriot. There must be other, deeper motives or needs that made him say what he said!

[Tim Drayton]

I have just read in "Simerini" newspaper that Kucuk appeared yesterday on TV in Turkey (first appearance after he was released from jail) and spoke about Olgac. He was no soldier he said, describing Olgac and futhermore he did not fire one single bullet. I met him in Cyprus and we became friends. He was an actor and soon we sent him back to Turkey.

This guy even gave a lecture at the University of Cyprus on 13 May 1998. On May 12 he apparently gave a lecture at Panteion University Greece. What the hell is happening here. We had all the evidence then, from a serious person, a university professor, yet we did nothing then and all these ultra nationalists who are shouting their heads off to exploit joker Olgac to the maximum and bury Turkey, kept a ... low profile back in 1998.

Yes Bananiot, but professor Kutcuk also said that he was not always together with Olgac in Cyprus, as he (Olgac) arrived in Cyprus earlier than him and thus he was or could not have been sure of his whereabouts before that. Kucuk said Olgac did not fire a bullet, but he was reffering to the time since he met him and on. It could very well be possible that after Olgac was asked or pushed to engage in criminal acts, he indeed (as himself revealed) suffered a shock and a “nerve breakdown,” and therefore he was removed from "active duty" and into some auxiliary type of duties, and then sent back to Turkey. That is when and were probably the then TC director of the theatrical association met him, i.e. “peeling potatoes,” after he was asked by his mother to seek for him. After all, it doesn’t take too long to kill 10 people, and such a thing may as well have occurred during the very first few days of his arrival in Cyprus. Such a scenario coincides with the KYP (Greek CIA) agent's accounts when Olgac approached him in Smyrna Greek Consulate, in which he said to him that after what he "went through" when he arrived in Cyprus, he broke down and begun suffering psychologically for many years, feeling remorse, etc.

The thing is, Olgac, regardless of him presumably been an attention seeker, he is not an entirely stupid person. After all, he maintained a successful career as an actor in Turkey, as far as I understand, something which cannot be attributed to a stupid person. He is not a mentally retarded person, that is for sure! He might not be the most intelligent person on earth, but he surely knew or understands in what kind of trouble he may end up with, by disclosing such claims out of sheer imagination and the need to seek attention, and such a motive is not strong enough to lead someone claiming in public that he assassinated 10 people, one of which was a hostage with his hands tight behind him. If he did this for merely seeking attention and in order to boast or show pride, he surely knows that saying he killed someone not in battle but while being his handcuffed hostage, is not something that will bring him pride and honor but quite the opposite, even in Turkey. He certainly did not say that for bravado, for he is not so stupid not to know that one cannot be proud for such a thing, regardless of the fact that the victim was a Greek Cypriot. There must be other, deeper motives or needs that made him say what he said!

These comments slipped out during an unscripted chat show. They were probably made on the spur of the moment without taking the possible consequences into account.