Woman raped by invading soldiers says family, God allowed her to carry on

Forty-eight years are not enough for a young girl to forget a rape at the hands of Turkish soldiers, during the 1974 Turkish invasion. Now 62, the girl only identified as M told the Cyprus News Agency the summer of 1974 has overshadowed her life.

“I know the years have gone by, but what I went through in the hands of Turks, is something I relive every moment of my life, awake or asleep. It is a real nightmare that haunts me and there is no relief,” she told CNA.

No one from her family, except her mother who passed, knows about the rapes. “I have hidden the secret very well and will take it to my grave. It fills me with shame,” she said.

Only in the last three years has she received a benefit from the government granted to victims of rape during the invasion.

Every summer, when the anniversary of the invasion approaches, everything she went through comes back.

“I cry, I relive those awful moments. It is a never-ending nightmare,” she said.

From a farming family, M and others had hidden in their village from the Turkish soldiers for four days but at some point the families went to the village with raised hands in the air. “They rounded us up at the school yard. They separated the men, women, children, those over 60 and put them in school classes. They loaded two trucks with prisoners of war. My father was captured,” M said.

M and her mother, sister and other women and children were taken to one of the last houses of the village.

The first night, the soldiers came to count the women. “They took me and some other young girls and pulled us outside in the dark, took us to some fields. My mother was trying to stop them but they hit her with the gun barrel. They pulled me outside and dragged me far from the house. They were raping me, one by one, and I was bleeding, I was begging God to help me, I was screaming, I was only a 14-year-old child. But they cheered on and only when they were done, they would take us back. Some of the women were thinking of ending the torture by turning on the kitchen gas, to escape from the torment.”

Every night it was the same routine, M said, even if they tried to hide. She said this carried on for two to three months.

Arriving in the free areas at the age of 16, she became engaged and got married two years later, and the birth of her own two sons and a daughter gave her a reason to keep going. “I needed a lot of love and understanding from my husband which unfortunately, I didn’t receive,” she told CNA.

M managed to put aside the psychological repercussions from her ordeal and offer her children the love they needed to blossom, and this has finally somehow lifted the burden she has felt for nearly half a century.

“I have managed to get through, with the help of God. I needed to hold on to something. No one knew what I went through. I turned to God and the Virgin Mary who helped me stand on my own two feet and continue to support me. They have helped me raise my children, to get through life”.