A Turkish Cypriot who was held captive in Limassol by Greek Cypriots for 93 days after Turkey’s invasion of the island has opened up about his experience on the eve of the invasion’s 50th anniversary.
Mustafa Ahmet Binatli, 81, was born in Limassol in 1943, and told the Anadolu Agency about his life first as a member of the Turkish Resistance Organisation (TMT), and then as a prisoner of the Greek Cypriots after the invasion.
He explained that he had travelled to Ankara to study law and joined TMT while studying in 1961, before returning to Cyprus two years later, alongside his brother Hasan, “to protest the oppression of my compatriots by the Greek Cypriots”.
In doing so, he fought alongside his brother in the Battle of Tillyria in 1964, as the National Guard attempted to cut the coastal village off from Turkish supplies.
“My brother was using a heavy machine gun, I was using an infantry rifle. We were fighting in different positions. I did not know if my brother was alive or not. I followed the sound of guns until the last second. When we met at night and I saw that he was alive, it was my greatest happiness,” he said.
Following the Turkish Cypriots’ successful defence of the beachhead at Kokkina, he returned to Ankara to complete his education, before then moving back to Limassol in 1971 to practice law.
While working as a lawyer, he was appointed as a non-commissioned officer in TMT by Rauf Denktash.
In that role, he said, when the Greek military junta sponsored a coup d’état on the island on July 15, 1974, “we responded to the Greek Cypriot forces despite the impossibilities”.
Five days later, when Turkey invaded the island from the north, he said Greek Cypriots in Limassol “began targeting women and children with heavy weapons.”
“I was separated from my five-and-a-half-month-old son and was taken captive together with the Turks in Limassol,” he added.
He explained that the Turkish Cypriots who were taken captive were marched out of Limassol’s Turkish Cypriot enclave and taken to a clinic.
“That clinic was the one where my son was born. A Greek Cypriot solder recognised me and said, ‘aren’t you a lawyer?’. I told him I was, and he asked, ‘what are you looking for?’, and I told him, ‘there is a chance my son will come here. I need a blanket and bread’. He said, ‘I know you, when your son was in the hospital, my child was in the same hospital’. He gave me bread and a blanket and we shared it between seven or eight friends,” he said.
The following morning, a number of vehicles took the captured Turkish Cypriots to a primary school.
“There were machine guns in front of our faces. They made us walk barefoot on molten asphalt in 45-degree heat,” he said.
They were then taken to another primary school, he said, adding that this was around the time that late Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit learned of the fact that there were still Turkish Cypriots being held prisoner.
“There, a friend of ours named Cafer started to recite the national anthem, saying ‘I will not be a prisoner to these people. I cannot live as a prisoner, how happy is he who says I am a Turk!” he said.
“When he was reciting the anthem, he walked towards the Greek Cypriot marauders who were standing in front of him. They shot him immediately. He was wounded, and he recited the national anthem while being taken to the hospital. He became a martyr.”
He added that Greek Cypriots had begun to “severely torture” the prisoners they had identified as TMT fighters, and that at some point during the ordeal, he and the other prisoners had learned about the invasion over the radio.
“We heard about the operation on the radio, our morale improved. We learned that the landings had started early in the morning, I cannot describe the joy and enthusiasm among us.”
“We shared this joy among ourselves for days, saying ‘we have been liberated, no one can kill us so long as Turkey is behind us!’” he said.
However, his personal ordeal was not yet over.
“We stayed there until October, and it was Eid. We were going to make Eid prayers in the courtyard, and they were making fun of us. It hurts but you cannot do anything there,” he said.
He added that they then heard there would be a prisoner exchange, whereby Greek Cypriots held prisoner in the north would be set free as Turkish Cypriots were offered the same, and passage to the north.
“We learned that there would be an exchange. Lists were prepared, we would leave in groups. The [United Nations] peacekeepers would take us to Nicosia in their own vehicles,” he said.
He added that when he left the camp, he and the other prisoners waved their radio at the Greek Cypriot soldiers, “saying that this was how we were getting our news”.
Having spent a total of 93 days as a prisoner, he was reunited with his family and given a house in Morphou, before then moving back to Ankara the following year.
Looking back on the events of 1974, he said, “the greatest importance is that … the Turks in Cyprus are free to live as they wish under their own flag, without any threats or pressure.”
“We lived under pressure and blockades for years. The operation brought us our freedom. If the operation had not happened, we would have been forced to leave Cyprus. They would have achieved Enosis,” he said.
He added, “I will be grateful to Turkey as long as I live. If I can breathe, if I can speak, it is thanks to Turkey, my motherland. If it were not for them, there would not be a single Turk in Cyprus today.”
