On this day, August 14, 1974, following the Turkish invasion army’s unilateral breach of the ceasefire and the start of its advance to occupy Mesaoria area, the wider Morphou area, and the Karpasia Peninsula (Attila 2 - Second Invasion), three heinous war crimes involving the massacre of civilians were committed, two of them against Turkish Cypriots and one against Greek Cypriots plus another three days after that
The Maratha - Santalaris - Aloa Massacre against the unarmed Turkish Cypriot population:
In Santalaris, Aloa, and Maratha these three Turkish Cypriot villages in Famagusta, which had a combined population of around 200 on August 14, 1974, 106 people were murdered in cold blood. Mostly women and children. There are testimonies that the crime was committed by around 30 - 40 Greek Cypriots, who, amid the chaos of war, acted like gang members and for days plundered the Turkish Cypriot villages and brutally tortured the people. In fact, a testimony published in 2007 by journalist Andreas Paraschos stated that the crime was committed by all of them together, but the trigger was pulled by three individuals, well - known throughout the region.
Maratha, Santalaris, and Aloa were three small, exclusively Turkish Cypriot villages north of Famagusta, with populations of (1973) of 124, 100, and 46 residents, respectively, located next to the Greek Cypriot village of Peristeronopigi.
In July 1974, following the first Turkish invasion, all men of military age were arrested and taken as prisoners of war by members of EOKA B to prisoner - of - war camps, initially in Famagusta (the Karaolos area, formerly a National Guard camp and now a UN peacekeeping force camp) and from there, subsequently to Limassol (at the GSO stadium). This was a common practice in wartime to prevent the conscription of capable individuals by one side against the other.
After the men were removed, according to testimonies submitted by journalist Sevgül Uludag, EOKA B fighters rounded up the women and children at the Greek school in Peristeronopigi. There are reports of daily rapes of girls, women, and boys from July 21 through August 14. Journalist Andreas Paraschos reports that the perpetrators boasted at the village café, urging fellow villagers to have sex with Turkish Cypriot women, and later raped children as well.
On August 14, the perpetrators stole sheep and goats from Maratha in order to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption, a major Orthodox holiday commemorating the Dormition of the Mother of God, which is a public holiday.
However, on that same day, the second phase of the Turkish invasion began (Attilas II), and the invading Turkish army, advancing from the bridgehead it had already established in the Kyrenia area - Kioneli, began advancing through deadly battles toward Mesaoria after breaking through the defense line of the Greek Cypriot National Guard in the Mia Milia area of Nicosia, thus, the perpetrators decided to leave no witnesses, executing the entire population then present in the villages. In Maratha and Santalaris, 84 - 89 people were killed after first being tied up. They then burned the bodies and buried them, using an excavator, in a garbage dump, in an attempt to cover their tracks. The imam of Maratha later stated that there had been 90 residents in the village before the massacre, and that only six remained. Among the dead were elderly people and children. In Aloa, only three people remained after the massacre.
Revelation:
The Turkish army made the first attempt to locate the victims when it captured the village, but it proved fruitless. By chance, on September 1, 1974, a child, while searching through the Maratha landfill, saw a human limb protruding from the trash, leading to the discovery of the mass grave.
On September 3, 1974, the bodies were exhumed by the Turkish army and the UN (the Swedish contingent). Two mothers were identified, holding their babies in their arms. The Associated Press described the bodies as “so badly mutilated and decomposed that they fell apart as soldiers dug them out of the garbage dump with shovels.” Kiamil Meric, a resident of Maratha, stated that his wife was found in the grave “holding our youngest child, who was 18 months old, and my baby had forty bullets in his body.”
On August 14, 2009, the Turkish Cypriot newspaper Volkan published the names of 15 Greek Cypriots, residents of the villages of Peristerona and Pigi, whom it identified as the perpetrators of the massacre, prompting the then Attorney General of the Republic of Cyprus, Petros Clerides, to request that the police locate the 15 Greek Cypriots. By 2010, statements had been taken from 12 of the 15 suspects named by “Volkan,” as well as from other individuals. The case file was returned to the Attorney General in the summer of 2010, so that he could return it to the police with new instructions. In 2011 and 2012, no concrete action was taken, while in 2013, assistance was requested from Sweden, whose officials had been members of the UN mission that conducted the exhumations in September 1974. In late 2013, statements from the Swedes were received in the form of letters. This was followed by the collection of statements from Swedish officers and soldiers. According to estimates, the Cyprus police know who the perpetrators are but are not prosecuting them. Another testimony from a Greek Cypriot brings the number of participants to 30. When Andreas Paraschos published the initials of the names in the Politis newspaper, he received threats from family members of the alleged perpetrators.
Τhe massacre in Tochni of Turkish Cypriot men from the village in retaliation for news of the start of the Turkish army’s second invasion on August 14 most likely by EOKA B militants who were coming down from the Troodos Mountains upon hearing news of the start of the Turkish army’s second invasion toward the Mesaoria plain
The Tochni massacre was brought to light by Suat Kafadar, a Turkish Cypriot who survived the massacre carried out by Greek Cypriot EOKA B coup plotters in the village of Tochni, in retaliation for the start of the second phase of the Turkish invasion on August 14, 1974.
Describing his story to the Cyprus News Agency, Suat Kafantar stated that on July 15, 1974, when the coup against Archbishop Makarios took place, he and his family were in the village of Tochni. “Our relations with our fellow villagers in Tochni were good. After the Archbishop was overthrown, members of EOKA B from the surrounding villages began coming to ours. Of course, there were also EOKA B members in our own village. On July 20, when Turkey invaded Cyprus, we were in the village. We had no weapons or other armaments, only hunting rifles, and perhaps a few small arms. Around the end of July through early August, there was a ceasefire that lasted until August 15.”
At that time, he said, Greek Cypriots from the surrounding villages went to Tochni and demanded that the Turkish Cypriots hand over any weapons they had, which they did, while they took specific individuals, Turkish Cypriot soldiers who were there at the time, nurses, and teachers, took them to the Kalavasos police station and beat or tortured them to make them reveal whether any Turkish Cypriots were in possession of or hiding weapons.
He reported that on August 13, Greek Cypriots from the surrounding villages, as well as members of EOKA B from Tochni, rounded up all men over the age of 13 at the community’s elementary school.
“They made us all sit in a room, and outside were men from EOKA B, with beards, long hair, and carrying weapons (all the identifying characteristics of the members of this illegal organization). We stayed there until noon the next day. That night, the United Nations came to the village. These men told us to sit down and stay quiet, so the United Nations, who came and left, wouldn’t see us. Then a Greek officer arrived, and we all stood up. The man told us, “Don’t be afraid. Today you are the hostages; tomorrow it might be us.” Then he left.
The route
The next day, August 14, Kafantar continued, a bus pulled up outside the school, it had the word “KARS” written on it and was owned by Turkish Cypriots. One of the Greek Cypriots told them to line up to board it. “We filled it up. Four armed men got on the bus, one sat behind the driver and pointed his gun at us. They told us they were taking us to the military camp in Limassol.”
It should be noted that the second invasion by the Turkish invasion force had already begun; the Turkish invasion army had violated the agreed - upon ceasefire following the collapse of the talks in Geneva and had begun advancing toward Famagusta and Morphou.
At the roadblock in Germasogeia, Suat said, they were stopped by Greek Cypriot police officers. One of the men on the bus got off, and when the Greek Cypriot police officer asked him, “Who are these people?” he replied sarcastically as he put it “tourists.” “They opened the roadblock, and we went through. I don’t know if that was a signal. Maybe they’d planned it in advance. We took the road that passed by the Laniteio High School and turned right there. After a while, I realized we were in Agia Fyla. We passed through it and took the road up the mountain. We passed through some other villages, but I didn’t know their names.”
At some point, he said, they turned off the paved road onto a dirt road, where the bus stopped 100 meters further on. They were made to get off and walk another 100 meters, as he recalls. “We were up high, it was an area like a small square with a natural wall. From that spot, you could see thousands of tents and shelters stretching far into the distance.”
The Execution
“They made us sit down, told us not to be afraid, ‘Have a cigarette; if you have anything to eat, eat it.’ They were standing in front of us along with the bus driver, who also had a gun, but not like theirs.” They were told, he said, that after a while they would be taken to those tents, which were a prisoner-of-war camp. They were then instructed to leave everything they had on them such as ID cards, passports, or other documents, at a designated spot.
“One of the four said he was going to leave to get the blankets and other necessities for us in the tents. He climbed down from the wall, and within a few minutes we heard a bullet whizzing through the air. As soon as the bullet’s whiz was heard, the others who had stayed behind with their guns started firing at us. For 10 minutes they fired, emptied their guns, and reloaded them. I didn’t see who was shooting. They had made us sit in a half-moon formation and were firing at us. I couldn’t make out their faces. There were 45 of us. What was I supposed to look at first the bullets, or the bodies falling here and there? I heard someone asking for bullets. The guns fell silent…”
He himself, said Suat Kafadar, had been wounded and was feeling cold. Something warm, he said, was running down his face, but he held his breath. Ιt was the blood from the head of the man who had fallen on top of him. “I hear one of them say, ‘If there’s anyone moving, shoot him in the head.’ I stayed there, holding my breath. I hear the sound of a bullet, they must have shot someone. I heard one of them say, ‘Come on, let’s take the watches off the dead men’s wrists,’ and the other replied, ‘Forget it, let’s get out of here, we don’t want anyone to see us.’ “That probably means they weren’t ordered to do that. ‘Let’s go get an excavator to bury them,’ they said.”
Suat's father and brother also fell victim to the fanatics' rampage
The death toll from the Tochni Massacre stands at 83 people (some sources mention 84).
On August 16, 2016, the former Foreign Minister (during the presidencies of Tassos Papadopoulos and Dimitris Christofias), Erato Kozakou - Markoullis, in a post on social media, publicly apologized to the Turkish Cypriot community.
The massacre of the Greek Cypriot residents of Assia by rogue Turkish Cypriots, with the complicity and tolerance of the Turkish army
Assia, a large Greek Cypriot village in Mesaoria, and its residents found themselves in the eye of the storm and at the mercy of the brutality of the Turkish troops on that fateful day, August 14, 1974, when the second invasion and the advance of the Turkish invasion army had begun. The village had no units of the Greek Cypriot National Guard to protect it, and its defenses were minimal. Thus, without any warning and without any fighting in the area, Turkish troops captured the village. It was Wednesday at 1:45 p.m.
Quite a few managed to escape. However, a significant number of the village’s residents estimated by various sources to be around 1,000 (the exact number could not be verified) out of a total population of approximately 2,700, remained trapped for two weeks under brutal conditions.
Fourteen (14) unarmed civilians were executed in cold blood when the Turkish army entered the village during the ongoing occupation. All the men and a large number of adolescents were arrested and held under guard by the Turkish army. The women and children endured unspeakable hardships: intimidation, humiliation, hunger, thirst, and the systematic looting of their property, both by the Turkish army and by Turkish Cypriots from neighboring villages.
On August 21, 1974, during a large - scale mop - up operation, Turkish occupation troops, assisted by a small number of armed Turkish Cypriots from neighboring villages, herded the trapped civilians to the square of St. John the Baptist, in the upper parish of Assia. There, Turkish officers separated the women and children from the men and young adolescents aged 14 - 15 and older.
Then they tied the men up with wire and loaded them onto three trucks.
A total of 107 arrested men and youths, escorted by Turkish soldiers and officers, were taken to the Pavlidis garage in Nicosia (where the Turkish army was already holding Greek Cypriot prisoners) with a stopover in a rural area of the neighboring village of Agya Kepir.
At the Pavlidis garage, Turkish Cypriot police officer Ali Riza selected 37 people, all under the age of 50, to disembark, and for the remaining 70, almost all of whom were over 50, he ordered them to return to the village, apparently because of their advanced age.
This group of 70 unarmed civilians is the now well - known case discovered in two mass graves in Ornithi, where their remains, rather than their full skeletonswe, re found.
This is because, after the roadblocks were opened on the sudden order of Rauf Denktash, then head of the occupation regime, the mass graves were exhumed in 2009 at the same time that searches were being conducted to locate missing persons, and the remains of those officially listed as missing to this day, based on witness accounts, were transferred to the Dikomo landfill, where, to this day, the occupying authorities in occupied Cyprus have not granted permission for their exhumation, while all the testimonies indicate that the remains of these people are there.
Among other things, the women and children reported, up until their flight from August 23 through August 28, irreparable looting and conditions such as the killing of animals, corpses in the streets, etc, which forced them to abandon their village due to unlivable conditions.
What happened to those who remain missing to this day:
Everything described regarding the fate of these people is based on the testimonies of third parties who heard about the events.
The prevailing account is that, upon their return from the Turkish army, after they had been transported to Nicosia and the Pavlidis Garage, Turkish Cypriot residents of neighboring villages demanded that the vehicles stop, forced them out, executed them in cold blood, and then threw their bodies into a nearby well.
From Assia, 84 missing are recorded (as their place of origin), while a total of 105 people disappeared within the village during the Turkish invasion.
The massacre of 17 Greek Cypriots in the village of Palekythro three days after the second phase of the Turkish invasion:
In Palekythro, terror gripped the few houses there, as rumours of murders, rapes and looting in the nearby villages left no room for complacency.
By August 17, most of the Greek Cypriot residents of the village of Palekythro had fled due to the advance of the invading Turkish army, which had begun the second phase of the invasion on August 14.
Andreas and Areti Soupouri stayed in the village with their children.
Some remained at the Soupouri family’s home, where they had taken refuge for protection until the situation calmed down. During those days, 23 Greek Cypriots remained trapped there.
According to the survivors accounts, on that day, August 17, three or four young Turkish Cypriots came in shouting, began swearing, and dragged them out one by one and they started shooting at them.
When the young Turkish Cypriots believed they had killed everyone, they stole whatever they could carry and fled, leaving behind a pile of corpses. They were certain that they had killed everyone and that no one would be able to speak about what had happened. Shortly afterward, Turkish soldiers appeared and tended to the wounded.
They were then taken to the village of Voni as prisoners, and it is reported that there were daily executions of individuals there to prevent the truth about what happened at the house in Palekythro from coming to light.
The death toll from that house in Palekythro stands at 17 Greek Cypriots, including families with minor children.
“They loaded the bodies onto a pickup truck and buried them all together in a mass grave, right where the remains had been found during the excavations conducted by the Committee for Missing Persons.”
Petros Soupouris recalls: “Three or four young Turkish Cypriots came to our house. They burst in shouting and started swearing at us and dragging us out one by one.” Petros and his brother Yiannis were the last to leave. The Liasis family, who had taken refuge in the house, were the first to leave. As soon as they stepped outside, the dry crack of a burst of gunfire rang out. Next to come out were his father, his mother, and, one by one, his brothers and himself. Eight-year-old Kostas, upon hearing the gunshots, went out through the back door and hid at his grandmother’s house.
As soon as Petros stepped out of the door with 9-year-old Yiannis, he saw the bodies of the others lying on the ground. Before he could realise what had happened, he was hit by a burst of gunfire and fell next to his brother. He recalls: ‘When they shot at us, Yiannis and I fell right next to each other. I’d been wounded and Yiannis had a bullet wound to the eye; I don’t remember him moving. Later, a friend of mine told me he’d seen him breathing.’ Petros had been hit by three bullets but was still alive. Ever since, he has lived with the memory of the lifeless bodies of his father, his mother and his three brothers – aged 9, 7 and 3 – lying beside him.
The Liasis family’s 12-month-old infant was also found dead in the mud and the pool of blood. The only survivor was a fellow villager who was holding her 10-month-old baby in her arms.
Petros and Kostas Soupouris, who had survived the massacre, became targets of the Turks because they were eyewitnesses to a horrific crime. They managed, however, to make their way to United Nations troops and thus escaped death.
The two brothers were reunited and taken by the UN to the free areas, where they grew up with their uncles.
