The memory of the 1963 massacre of over 360 Turkish Cypriots by the extreme nationalist EOKA terrorist organization in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) remains as fresh as ever for the family of a victim whose body is still missing.
Fifty-nine years have passed since EOKA, a Greek Cypriot terrorist group responsible for the deaths of hundreds and the 1974 coup that divided the island in two, slaughtered 364 Turkish Cypriots in the north of the island on Dec. 21, 1963, in an act of violence that was dubbed “Bloody Christmas.”
Decades later, TRNC authorities still haven’t been able to find the body of Lütfi Celül, one of the victims killed that day.
Celül’s niece Nejla Clements spoke to Anadolu Agency (AA) about her last memory with her uncle, the events that left their mark on the decade and Türkiye’s intervention that changed the course of history.
The last time Clements saw her uncle was in October 1963, two months before he was killed, when he drove her to the airport with his bus for her flight to the U.K.
“I have been living here ever since,” 75-year-old Clements said.
She talked about the time between 1958 and 1963 when Greek Cypriots launched a campaign of oppression and fear against Turkish Cypriots while she was living in the seaside town of Erenköy, which sat between two Greek Cypriot villages at the time.
The mid-20th century was a time of turmoil for the island of Cyprus, the beginning of a decadeslong struggle between the Turkish and Greek Cypriots when ethnic attacks forced the Turkish Cypriots to withdraw into enclaves for their safety and a 1974 coup aiming at Greece's annexation led to Türkiye's military intervention. The conflict has been ongoing for long years, drawing multiple international efforts for a solution. The U.N. has been working for years to reach a comprehensive agreement on the Cyprus issue, proposing a reunification plan for a federation and sponsoring peace talks that eventually broke down. While Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration support the U.N.’s suggestion of a federal Greek Cypriot administration, the TRNC and its guarantor Türkiye have been resolutely calling for a two-state solution, stressing that “the sovereign equality and the equal international status of the Turkish Cypriots are non-negotiable.”
According to Clements, Celül was a member of the Turkish Resistance Organization (TMT), a paramilitary group formed by the TRNC’s founding President Rauf Denktaş to counter EOKA, and he helped protect five villages, including his own, Erenköy, which was home to Turkish Cypriots.
“Greek Cypriots didn’t even allow food or medicine to be brought into those villages or let the villagers leave,” Clements said.
The massacre on Dec. 21 marked the start of EOKA’s intensifying pressure on Turkish Cypriots.
Her uncle, along with his friends, attempted to leave the town a couple of times in the last week of December 1963 to fetch food but the Greek Cypriots prevented them.
“On Jan. 1, he tried again and nobody saw him ever again. He never came back home,” Clements said.
TMT members managed to reach out to high-ranking officials through a landline but the Greek Cypriots became aware and cut off their connection. Celül left the village to discover what was happening and get information from the higher-ups, Clements explained.
“There were no other means of communications in the village; my uncle was going to look into that as well but his main purpose was to bring food, things like flour, wheat, and dry goods,” Clements said.
As she put it, her uncle was hailed as a hero by everyone in their village. “My father waited for a long time for his return. We all waited. We were young. It broke our hearts. We were devastated,” Clements said.
At the time, Celül’s siblings, including Clements’ father, were all in London, he was the only one living in Cyprus. Clements recalled her father being “very sad” that his siblings had left Celül “all alone.”
“They all begged him to come to London. He came to visit once and stayed a while but he didn’t like it, so, he went back. ‘I cannot leave my Cyprus,’ he would say,” Clements said.
Celül had four children, one of whom was only 2 years old when he was killed in the EOKA massacre.
“My grandmother and my uncle’s wife waited long years (for the truth). It was revealed that a couple of people from EOKA killed my uncle. The ones who committed this terrible evil were exposed but they’re refusing to tell us where he was buried or where his bones are. They haven’t said anything until today. We have no idea at all what happened to my uncle’s bus and his friend,” Clements said.
Celül’s son Alper Lütfüoğlu is still searching for his father’s remains. Investigations by several organizations, including the United Nations, remain fruitless, Clements reported.
“Ever since, they go to Northern Cyprus on Aug. 8 and remember the fallen. Our uncle doesn’t have a grave but there is a photograph. So, we go down there and look at his photograph. I was there in August this year, and I saw him again. Even if it’s a picture, I will go there and look at it,” she said.
Clements also revealed that she believes the Bloody Christmas massacre was actually “a genocide.”
“Of course, it is genocide because from what I understand, from what I have read, if (Greek Cypriots) could, they would have slaughtered all Turkish Cypriots on the island one night, no matter who they came across. That was their plan but they failed,” she said.
Clements has also translated into English “Erenköy and Life,” a book penned by Celül’s close friend and her uncle on her mother’s side, Fadıl Elmasoğlu, about Erenköy’s struggle to survive.
“My uncle was best friends with my uncle Lütfi, that’s why this is important for me,” Clements said, noting that she translated the book for everyone to know the truth about Turkish Cypriots and Erenköy.
Türkiye’s intervention as a guarantor power in 1974 to stop the Greek oppression and persecution of Turkish Cypriot people with the Cyprus Peace Operation was a “turning point” for the island, Clements continued by saying.
“Were it not for Türkiye’s help, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus would have never existed. Maybe there would be a few Turkish Cypriots left but people who lived through those days know very well what happened. My parents, my siblings. We were oppressed by EOKA in 1958. They bombed us. Every family in our village lost someone. There wouldn’t have left a single Turkish Cypriot, nor would there be a state called TRNC,” Clements said.
“That’s why our father brought me and my five siblings here to England. My mother, my sister and I nearly died in 1958,” she said, recalling an instance when her uncle Celül was driving them to their village and they were attacked by EOKA terrorists.
“Many Turkish Cypriots came to Britain to flee persecution and violence. I think if it weren’t for Türkiye, Cyprus would belong to the Greeks. I’m surprised by how everyone doesn’t comprehend this but people of Erenköy do,” Clements said.
The events leading up to Bloody Christmas started in 1955 with the foundation of EOKA, led by Georgios Grivas, a veteran officer of World War I and World War II and a staunch opponent of communists and Turks.
On Dec. 21, 1953, the infamous day also known as Black Christmas, EOKA militants murdered 364 Turkish Cypriots and displaced 103 Turkish villages in the north of the island.
After the massacre, increasing Greek Cypriot attacks gave impetus to the armed conflict between the island’s ethnic groups over the following decade.
While initially EOKA’s primary aim was to fight against the British occupiers of the island, they later directed their attacks against Turkish Cypriots and their purpose morphed into clearing the island of Turks and reuniting it with Greece.
EOKA’s killing and torturing of Turkish Cypriots throughout its deadly terror campaign are well documented by local authorities, Türkiye and the United Nations.
Three years before his death in January 1974, Grivas started EOKA-B around an ultra-right-wing nationalist ideology to achieve the enosis (union) of the island of Cyprus with Greece. The group, encouraged by the Greek military junta and in cooperation with the national guard, staged a military coup on July 15, 1974, which subsequently led to Türkiye's military intervention and the ultimate foundation of the TRNC in 1983.
Türkiye also remembered the victims of Bloody Christmas on the anniversary of the massacre.
"We have not forgotten our Turkish Cypriot brothers and sisters who we lost in the Bloody Christmas attacks launched by the Greek terrorist organization EOKA 59 years ago today," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement released on Wednesday.
Türkiye commemorates "all the martyrs of the Turkish Cypriot national struggle with mercy and our veterans with gratitude," it said.
Meanwhile, the Turkish Defense Ministry said: "We condemn the Greek Cypriot terrorists who barbarously murdered hundreds of our brothers, children, and women in the events known as Bloody Christmas."
