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Dear Tufan,
I’ve been working as a journalist on this island since 1988. I’ve written thousands of reports on the Cyprus problem, focusing on the humanitarian issue of the missing persons. In the United Nations statement following your meeting on Thursday, 11 December 2025 at Nicosia’s old airport with Nikos Christodoulides—hosted by the UN Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy Angela Holguin Cuellar at the UN Good Offices Mission—it notes, amongst other things: “Before their meeting, the leaders visited the anthropological laboratory of the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) in Cyprus. They expressed their great appreciation for the effective humanitarian work carried out by the CMP, including its members, the staff of the anthropological laboratory, all involved personnel and donors. Mr Christodoulides and Mr Erhürman stressed the vital importance of keeping the CMP’s work free from political interference, urging everyone to avoid politicising this humanitarian process. They also called on anyone with information about possible burial sites to share it with the CMP, assuring that the principle of confidentiality would be strictly maintained”. This is a practice followed by the successive leaders since the anthropological laboratory was established at Nicosia airport—as you well know from your time alongside Mehmet Ali Talat. Yesterday, you and Mr Christodoulides emphasised “the vital importance of keeping the CMP’s work free from political interference, urging everyone to avoid politicising this humanitarian process”. You both know, given your long involvement with the Cyprus issue, that all this talk about “CMP work free from political interference” and avoiding “politicisation of this humanitarian process” sounds terribly important—but the results tell a different story entirely. The proof? Sixty-two years on, we’re still trying to establish the fate of 748 Greek Cypriots out of 1,510 and 196 Turkish Cypriots out of 492 on the official list of missing persons.
Which is precisely why you two “post-war” leaders—who declare you’re committed to continuing to work in Cyprus “to achieve tangible results for the benefit of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots and to ensure the success of the next informal meeting in a broader context”—need to put your finger on the actual pulse of the families of the 944 missing who remain unclaimed. Because the horror experienced by their loved ones (those still living, at least) is infinitely greater than the spectrum of problems arising from “the issue of creating new crossing points, the halloumi/hellim issue, and the construction of pipelines from the Mia Milia water treatment plant”—greater even than solving the Cyprus problem itself. Here, memory is alive, and as the poet says, “wherever you touch it, it hurts“. The pain of memory cuts deeper than any gaping wound. For proof, you can ask your close colleague Mustafa, whose father was my classmate at the American Academy of Larnaca in 1974. After 20 July, once the two mahallas in Larnaca were occupied, the Turkish Cypriot prisoners were marched to what was then the Turkish Cypriot gymnasium (today’s Drosia Gymnasium) in humiliating fashion—on foot and wearing only their underwear. My classmates were 14- to 16-year-old boys who carried traumatic memories from the events of 1963-67, when roughly 300 Turkish Cypriots went missing. There, in that Turkish gymnasium, during those July nights, they endured “mock executions” by EOKA B’ thugs. Ask Ahmet to tell you about it. He told us in 2003, just before the checkpoints opened, at a gathering organised in Pyla by our classmate Nikos Anastasiou, later a professor at the Academy. There, we—together with students from the school—listened to our Turkish Cypriot classmates recount their experiences from 1974 onwards. It was a shattering experience, especially for those of us who’d lived through the fascism of the coup, with the dead in Larnaca—Aygen recounting the loss of his Greek Cypriot best friend, not knowing that Yiorgos Charalambous had died in my arms that cursed Monday in Acropoli, killed by murderers who remain unpunished to this day.
The fact that our 11 Turkish Cypriot classmates didn’t end up victims of mass execution—like the 80 from Assia, the 70 from Tochni, and the 126 from Maratha, Aloa and Santalaris—was, I believe, because they were arrested in July and taken to the GSO Stadium in Limassol, where most Turkish Cypriot prisoners were held. I could tell you dozens of stories about the ordeals of Greek Cypriot prisoners who were ultimately executed—but right now we need to talk about substantive current issues.
Expressing your support for the CMP regularly is necessary because it helps those who may know information but haven’t revealed it to finally do so when they hear the leaders calling for evidence. But here’s something more tangible: Give instructions for the Health and Engineering units that collected and buried the dead to hand over their archives so burial sites can be located. And what about that rubbish dump in Dikomo that was beautified—where, according to six testimonies given belatedly, the bones of the murdered Assia prisoners were buried? Isn’t it time to investigate?
Then there are your 22 dead at Mandria in Paphos, murdered by Greek Cypriot paramilitaries and buried there—families who still demand exhumation today. Isn’t it time to say “yes”? Your predecessors, Mr Erhürman, used to say they feared the list of Turkish Cypriot missing would grow and didn’t want that. But to the families, these are sinful excuses. A Cypriot proverb says: “He who doesn’t want to go to the mill will sieve flour for five years”.
Dear Tufan,
The missing are another tragedy within the tragedy of military confrontations and hate crimes in Cyprus during the second half of the twentieth century. The tragedy itself is the loss of life in 1963-67 and 1974; the tragedy within the tragedy is 62 years of deathly agony for those waiting for their missing. In this, there are two sides: perpetrators and victims. The perpetrators are known: Turkey, Turkish Cypriot paramilitaries (TMT), the Greek junta that staged the coup, Greek Cypriot paramilitaries (EOKA B’). But the victims are multiples of the 1,510 Greek Cypriot and 492 Turkish Cypriot missing. Each missing person carries behind them a family and a tragic story. Those 2,002 missing—think about it—are followed by fathers, mothers, siblings, but also spouses and children. They drag behind their sacred remains stories of battles, crimes and orphanhood. Above all, though, they carry the permanently wounded lives of their children, spouses and mothers. I’ve written this before: Behind those 2,002 black-and-white photographs lie an equal number of incurable stories. The most unthinkable and shameful thing on our side was that the list of missing persons was kept top secret until December 2000. Who would give information about someone killed if they didn’t know they were officially considered missing? Then there’s the enormous chapter of the Turkish army’s criminal movement of graves. We exposed it, wrote about it again, appealed all the way to the UN Secretary-General. A voice crying in the wilderness. But we—eternally romantic and stubborn—will keep searching for the truths behind those 2,002 incurable stories. Until we die. Because they’re all children of this beautiful, wounded island. Dear Tufan, play your part!
This article was first published on 14.12.2025
Source: DEAR TUFAN, PLAY YOUR PART!
