By This post is also available in: ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ (GREEK) TÜRKÇE (TURKISH)
Last Sunday, 7 September 2025, I titled my column ‘Murderers, heroes, and the “worst examples of humanity”!’, in response to an article by a Sabahettin Ismail on the Turkish website 5G VIRUSNEWS, dated 1 September 2025. The article was a ‘report’ about the infamous ‘bathtub crime’.
For those unfamiliar with it, the crime was discovered on 24 December 1962, when Mürüvet, the wife of Turkish military doctor-major Nihat İlhan, was found murdered in the bathroom of their home in the Turkish quarter of Nicosia, along with their children Murat (6), Kuçi (4), and Hakan (6 months). Sabahettin wrote that the killer was Tassos Markou and gave the article the title ‘These are the worst examples of humanity – The EOKA killer Tassos Markou and how he paid for his crimes.’
I wrote in my article that we veteran journalists covering political news met Sabahettin. Whenever we went to Denktaş’s ‘presidential palace’ for meetings with foreign mediators during the talks, we would find him there as a state security agent, checking our credentials. He even spoke Greek because, as he told us, he was born in Thessaloniki, the birthplace of Kemal Atatürk.
In the days that followed, I received several messages, some from Turkish Cypriot friends and colleagues, who explained that the Sabahettin I was referring to was Sabahettin Egeli, who had also served as head of the PIO and was now deceased. The Sabahettin who wrote the article was a younger man and a former publisher of the nationalist Volkan and later Nacak. One of the messages was an invitation for coffee from a friend I trust a lot, who told me I was going to meet a very ‘wise man’.
I went. I met my friend at the Ledra Palace and we walked together to a cafe, where we met the ‘wise man’, who was about 85 years old. A late colleague, who passed away three or four years ago, had once told him that I was an honest journalist.
‘You wrote in Phileleftheros on Sunday about ‘the bathtub crime’, arguing that Tassos Markou didn’t commit it,’ he said. ‘How do you know?’ I replied that I had spoken to people who were with Markou on that mission, and I knew for a fact that he was not the perpetrator of that crime. He responded by saying he would tell me who the perpetrator was, but that I, in turn, should question why the Republic of Cyprus, from 1963 to this day, has not taken it upon itself to clear up such a great stain as the murder of a mother and her three children… The Turkish side exploited the crime. The bathroom photographs became an image used for Turkish propaganda internationally.
The ‘wise man’ took a big sip of his Cypriot coffee and began to speak like someone who knew every last detail: who gave the order, who carried it out, and who witnessed the killing. He told me that what the Turkish photojournalist who took those photographs, Ahmet Baran, had recounted to Costas Gennaris was a deception. Gennaris included this in his 2000 book Ex Anatolon (From the East), where he writes that Nihat İlhan, the husband of the murdered woman and father of the three children, killed his family in a moment of heightened tension.
‘Ahmet Baran may have told Gennaris that he didn’t want to die without telling the truth, but he didn’t tell the whole truth,’ the old man said. ‘He told the part he wanted to, the part that didn’t harm the main narrative—Denktaş’s narrative’. When I asked about Rauf Denktaş’s role in the crime, the ‘wise man’ answered that he gave the order, explaining that they killed the military doctor’s family to force Ankara to get actively involved in the conflict.
The ‘wise man’ said that what I wrote in my article about the Afrika front page was very close to the truth. Şener Levent’s paper revealed photographs of the bathtub without blood and with the victims’ bodies outside of it. On 2 January 2015, Levent wrote that a different version existed from the official one used for “political propaganda”. He claimed the scene was staged by Turkish journalist Ömer Sami Coşar, a correspondent for the newspaper Milliyet at the time, who also worked as an intelligence officer for Turkey.
I pressed him to reveal the killer’s name, and he told me it was now public knowledge. It is published in former army officer İLKER ÖZKUNT’s book DUMBUK, which means ‘Pezevenk’. The book reveals many crimes of the TMT that were ordered by Rauf Denktaş, to whom the author refers in an abusive manner. The description of the bathtub crime begins on page 179, and it names sniper Alpay Mustafa, Denktaş’s chief henchman, as the perpetrator.
The ‘wise man’ then told me the following story: In 1967, at a wedding party in a bar in Çağlayan, many of the TMT’s leaders gathered. Alpay was there, too. They called him over to their table and started mocking him because he disrespected them. He became enraged, accused them of turning him into a child killer, and added that he did not kill them in the bathroom. In the ensuing fight, he pulled out a gun and shot two ‘captains’ in the legs. Guns were drawn, but Alpay managed to get away. He went to the home of Dr Küçük, who was very fond of him and advised him to surrender to the police and not be afraid. Alpay went to the Sarayönü and surrendered.
In the meantime, the then-leader of the TMT, Kemal Coşkun, also known as Bozkurt (‘Grey Wolf’), who was dining at another restaurant, was informed of the incident. He went to the Sarayönü and executed Alpay in his cell, and they then buried him in a field in Hamit Mandres. When Fazıl Küçük learnt what had happened the next day, he was furious, gave an order to unearth Alpay, and had him buried with appropriate honours in the Muslim cemetery of Nicosia. At that time, the TMT was divided into two camps: half with Alpay and Fazıl Küçük, and the other half with Bozkurt, who was officially Turkey’s Military Attaché in Cyprus. According to the ‘wise man’, Alpay never carried out a ‘mission’ without witnesses or escorts. And in the bathroom house, he had two, whose names we know.
So, Mr Sabahettin Ismail, what you have written against Tassos Markou about the bathroom crime at Christmas in 1963 is not only proven to be heinous lies, but it is also a crime against children and their mother, perpetrated to serve dirty propaganda and ethnic hatred. This is a tactic you promote even today, and you are trying it out, probably as part of the ‘electoral’ campaign in the occupied territories.
What you are doing, Mr Sabahettin Ismail, is not journalism; it is propaganda. Because for journalism to be a true sister of truth, it must stand the test of time, and your truth, as you can see, died in less than a week!
P.S. My heartfelt thanks to the wise man!
This article was first published on 14.09.2025
