It seems the truth always comes out. Not that I condone the killing of anybody, but these soldiers are not as innocent as everyone assumed. The apparently carried their own executions in the village some hours before they were caught.
The truth about the hell at Djiaos
By Makarios Droushiotis
FOR A WHOLE week now the public has been blitzed with information and witness testimony about the five National Guardsmen, who were photographed alive after being captured by Turkish soldiers and who went missing ever since. The average Joe has been stumped by this welter of statements, testimonies and interviews by the protagonists. But what really happened back in 1974? What is the real story behind the iconic photograph?
August 1974: talks in Geneva for a political solution on Cyprus break down, following the Turkish invasion of 20 July. The Turkish army launches a two-pronged offensive, advancing from northern Nicosia toward Morphou and Famagusta.
Weakened by the coup and by the first phase of the invasion, and armed with World War II weapons, the National Guard was on the brink of disintegration. The Turkish forces, deploying motorised means and modern tanks, rolled into the plain of Mesaoria and advanced onto Famagusta, meeting virtually no resistance.
The National Guard’s Infantry Battalion 398 was stationed in the area around the Turkish Cypriot village of Djiaos, situated in the plain of Mesaoria. A group of soldiers, headed by reserve sergeant Antonis Korelis received orders to open fire with their antiquated No.4 rifles at an incoming column of tanks that was headed toward Famagusta.
Having fired at the tanks, the soldiers themselves gave away their position and took fire from the Turkish forces. Three or perhaps four of the tanks broke from the column and headed for the hill where the Greek Cypriot soldiers had taken cover. Two of the soldiers managed to escape; the remaining five were surrounded by Turkish forces and forced to surrender.
These are the same five men seen in the famous picture, taken by the Turkish photographer Ergin Konuksever, surrendering with their arms raised above their heads. They are Antonis Korelis, Panayiotis Nicolaou, Christoforos Skordis, Ioannis Papayiannis and Ioannis Hadjikyriacos. The snapshot was to become a symbol of the struggle to determine the fate of missing persons. It was only this past week that the relatives of the five men learned that their remains, found inside a well at Djiaos, were identified using DNA analysis.
The facts
For years the Committee of Missing Persons (CMP) sought to establish the fate of the five National Guardsmen. According to a source at the CMP, both Konuksever and Turkish Brigadier-General Haki Boratas, who was in command of the operation, testified before the CMP some 10 years ago. This was their version of the events: after the five Greek Cypriots were captured by the tank crews, Brigadier-General Boratas was summoned to the spot as the armored division was unable to process prisoners. Boratas decided to hand the prisoners over to Turkish Cypriot fighters of the outlaw organisation known as TMT. The latter, instead of treating the Greek Cypriots as prisoners of war, executed them in cold blood in an act of vengeance.
Between 20 July and 14 August 1974, the village of Djiaos was overrun by Greek Cypriot soldiers and army irregulars. During this period, allegations were made that the Greek Cypriot forces attacked the local inhabitants. Speaking recently on CyBC television, Yiannakis Christodoulou, a comrade of the five captured POWs who had managed to escape and then looked on from a distance of 100m as the five were being rounded up, described the chaos that reigned within the National Guard at the time: “We did so many [bad] things at Djiaos, it was only natural that whoever of us was caught was a goner,” Christodoulou said candidly.
What’s more, a second-lieutenant whom we spoke with (and who for obvious reasons wished to remain anonymous; we have his full name) revealed that, just six hours before the five POWs were gunned down, four Turkish Cypriots had been executed in a similar fashion by Greek Cypriot soldiers.
The photographer
Ergin Konuksever experienced his own personal adventure. He and a colleague, Adem Yavuz of the ANKA news agency, were shadowing the Turkish army and covering the military operations. Not knowing their way around Cyprus, at one point they lost their bearings and ended up behind Greek Cypriot lines. The two photographers had been traveling in a car which was fitted with a Turkish flag to avoid friendly fire. The car was immobilised after taking fire from soldiers of the Greek Cypriot Military Police. The two photographers, who were injured during the gunfire, were captured and taken to a hospital. Adem Yavuz died shortly later and Konuksever, in an interview with Hurriyet newspaper, claimed that he was beaten up by soldiers outside the hospital. Konuksever himself survived, thanks to the treatment he received from a Greek Cypriot doctor by the name of Andreas Demetriades.
On 20 July 2009, Konuksever was in the occupied north on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the Turkish invasion. He sought out Demetriades, and the two met up and had a meal together. Their picture was taken, and Konuksever was later interviewed by Sigma news channel. In the interview, Konuksever talked about the five Greek Cypriot POWs. This was before the CMP announced that the remains of the soldiers had been identified.
The pictures
In 1974, Greek Cypriot soldiers had confiscated the cameras and film reels of the two Turkish photographers. Konuksever claims that the confiscated material included pictures of the aftermath of the capture of the five National Guardsmen. He claims to have taken pictures of the five soldiers as they were being buried. Of the dozens of pictures then taken, only the one showing the five being captured was ever published. Some of the soldiers who captured the two Turkish photographers started pillaging the equipment and the photographic material confiscated. Eventually the photographs ended up at Machi newspaper (owned by Nicos Sampson), which ran them in late August. To this day, authorities say they do not know what happened to the rest of the pictures.
The relatives
With the publication of the photographs, which made it possible to identify the five POWs, the soldiers’ relatives gained new hope that they were alive and would return. This, however, was not to be despite a prisoner swap programme.
Testimony that the five soldiers were alive at the time of their capture fed rumors of the existence of a camp somewhere in Famagusta containing some 200 undeclared POWs. Speculation mounted that Glafcos Clerides would intercede to secure their release. One of the tales doing the rounds at the time was that the captured sergeant Korelis had spoken on Turkish radio Bayrak.
Today, the relatives feel that the story of the five, as well as the famous photograph, has been abused for propaganda purposes. They say that no attention was paid to the grief of the kin, who for 35 years were let to wait endlessly for their loved ones to return. “They kept us in the dark, they used us for propaganda. It feels like we were used. That’s the most tragic bit,” remarked Elena, the sister of Christoforos Skordis, in a comment to Phileleftheros newspaper.
In the dock
Once the truth had come out regarding the fate of the five, certain sections of the media began calling for Turkey’s indictment before a war crimes tribunal. Phileleftheros and Simerini pulled out all the stops to have Turkey put “in the dock,” and demanded that “Attila’s” files be opened. Lawyers who handle cases of legal redress for refugees (such as Loucis Loucaides and Christos Klerides) began urging people to take recourse to the European Court of Human Rights. Meanwhile Andreas Angelides, a lawyer and politician, proposed that Turkey be ejected from the Council of Europe, and Kypros Chrysostomides called for recourse to the UN Security Council in order to refer the case to a criminal court.
The stance of the government, AKEL and DISY has been rather low-key. This has outraged certain journalists of the so-called “patriotic front”; in an article published in Imerisia (an Athens-based newspaper), reporter Michalis Ignatiou railed against these “spineless politicians, these clowns.”
The government chose to keep a low profile, knowing full well that the process of identifying missing persons (information, exhumation and identification) is clearly defined by the remit of the CMP. Article 11 of the agreement governing the establishment and function of the CMP states that “the Committee shall not attempt to apportion responsibility for the death of any missing person, or investigate the cause of such deaths.”
The rationale behind this article is that the issue of the missing persons should be treated as a humanitarian issue alone. In this way, people will be encouraged to come forth with information, without the threat of criminal liability hanging over their heads. Moreover, the very raison d’être of the CMP is to heal old wounds, not open fresh ones.
If this agreement were to be breached, it would quite simply signal the end of efforts to determine the fate of missing persons, and we would be back to square one. What’s more, let us suppose that Greek Cypriots started taking legal action; the other side would be sure to follow, and the Turkish Cypriots possess an equally incriminating brief with cases of soldiers as well as women and children who were killed in cold blood. The Cyprus problem would once again be dragged into a never-ending legal quagmire, which would only serve to benefit the lawyers/politicians and those sections of the media that have undertaken a mission to prove that “coexistence is futile.” Once again, also, it is the relatives of the missing persons who would pay the price.
Caption: Doctor Andreas Demetriades (with glasses) with Turkish photographer Ergin Konuksever. The two met in Nicosia a few weeks ago, before the furor over the five National Guardsmen broke out.
Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2009
