Shocking testimony almost half a century after the bloody invasion of the village of Sysklipos in Cyprus: "I was 12 years old, the Turks raped me and next to me they beheaded my brother" is revealed this year (2018) for the first time by a woman who cannot forget that summer when time stopped...
It has been almost half a century since the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. “Not half a century. It’s been 44 years,” a friend who lost his home that summer corrects me. He agonizingly counts the years he has been away from the place where he was born.
There are others who count the months. 528 months have passed since the day they lost their siblings, their parents, their friends. They were murdered, they were killed in battle, there were losses in a lasting crime.
A woman, certainly not the only one, counts the days one by one since August 1974. She remembers them all and every morning she struggles to erase them and pretend that it was all a nightmare from a night that passed.
That she is 12 years old again, as she was that summer. The summer when she stopped being a child. The dirty breath of the Turks who raped her, the blood on their hands, the screams, the gunfire are her eerie companionship in a life that tries to make her like everyone else, almost normal.
All these years, months, days and hours, from the moment he found himself in the hands of the Turks, he did not speak. He did not want to speak. He did not want anyone to know.
Just a few days ago (2018), however, she dared. Without photos, without names, without details that would take her out of the anonymity she had built, she spoke to a journalist from the Cypriot newspaper "Politis".
In a suburb of Nicosia, where she works at a private company, she recalled her memories and spoke about her own story. A story that was not written in any book, concerned few, angered a few, and was ignored by many.
WHEN THEY ENTERED THE VILLAGE
The ceasefire, which was supposed to be in effect on July 23, 1974, has made the few residents who remained in the village of Sysklipos, on the slopes of Mount Pentadaktylos, hope that the storm will pass and their own people who abandoned the village will soon return. They gave each other strength
WHEN THEY ENTERED THE VILLAGE
The ceasefire, which was supposed to be in effect on July 23, 1974, has made the few residents who remained in the village of Sysklipos, on the slopes of Mount Pentadaktylos, hope that the storm will pass and their own people who abandoned the village will soon return. They gave each other strength most of them elderly - and they gathered in a house on the outskirts of the village that belonged to Evgenios Hatziiraklis. About 15-20 souls. Among them was a father with his 12-year-old daughter and his 19-year-old son. With their ears glued to the radio to find out if "We threw the Turks into the sea," as the RIK, which had been seized by the coup plotters on July 15, reported. They also watched the news in Greek from the illegal Turkish Cypriot station Bayrak, which triumphed over Turkey's successful "peace" operation.
The National Guard, disbanded by the coup, had folded and the village had been left helpless at the mercy of the Turks, who occupied it on the evening of July 26, 1974. The Turkish soldiers, accompanied by some armed Turkish Cypriot irregulars, found 14 people in the house of old Evgenios.
They went every morning and recorded them to make sure no one escaped. Shouting, pushing, cursing… but that was it. That was until August 3, 1974.
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