Turkish Cypriots on Friday commemorated the third anniversary of the two devastating earthquakes which struck southeastern Turkey on February 6, 2023.
A total of 49 Cypriots were among the more than 50,000 people recorded dead as a result of the earthquakes. Of those 49, exactly 35 Cypriots, including 24 children, were killed when the hotel in which they were staying, the Isias hotel in the city of Adiyaman, collapsed.
The 24 children had made up the Famagusta Turk Maarif Koleji (TMK) school volleyball team – posthumously colloquially known as the Champion Angels – with the focus of the day as such on Famagusta.
There, a ceremony was held at the cemetery where the 35 who were killed in the Isias hotel are buried, with Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman and the north’s ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel among the attendees.
Mourners, led by Rusen Karakaya, whose daughter Selin was among the 24 Cypriot children killed at the Isias hotel, released white balloons into the skies above the cemetery.
In Nicosia, meanwhile, a ceremony was held at the Turkish Cypriot cemetery in Nicosia to commemorate the third anniversary of the death of Amac Arnavutoglu, who died during the earthquake while in the town of Kirikhan, in the Hatay province. That ceremony was attended by Turkish Cypriot Nicosia mayor Mehmet Harmanci.
Earlier, Ustel had released a statement to mark the anniversary, saying that “the pain of losing lives in the earthquake … remains in our hearts with the same weight as on the first day, despite the passage of time”.
“Our Champion Angels, teachers, parents, and all the earthquake dead who remained trapped under the rubble of the Isias hotel in Adiyaman, are a test and a symbol of unfulfilled dreams, silenced hopes, and the profound pain that we, as a nation, are experiencing,” he said.
He added that the Cypriots who died at the Isias hotel “will forever live in the memory of the Turkish Cypriot people”.
“On the third anniversary of this tragedy, I state once again, clearly and unequivocally: the Isias case is not closed for us. The process of justice is continuing, and we will closely follow the next stage. We are determined to pursue this process to the end to ensure that justice is served fully and completely,” he said.
He promised the families of the dead that they are “not alone in their pursuit of justice”, and that “we stand by them today as they did yesterday, and they will not be left out in the cold in the future”.
His reference to “justice” comes with it being widely expected that the families of those who were killed in the Isias hotel will appeal rulings made by two separate courts in Adiyaman which found a total of 12 people guilty of causing death by conscious negligence in the hotel’s collapse.
The families wish for the convictions to be upgraded to the more serious charges of causing death by probable intent, with it expected that appeals may be filed at higher courts in Gaziantep and Ankara, and as a possible last resort, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
After the most recent ruling had been handed down last month, Pervin Aksoy Ipekcioglu, whose daughter Serin was among those killed at the Isias hotel, expressed disgust at it, saying that “our motherland’s courts told me, ‘you were guilty for sending her, I condemn you to a lifetime of her absence without justice being secured’”.
“Now, those responsible get to go home, and I go home without her. Only one word crossed my mind: disgrace … Then, I looked around. Those who sent us were there for the show, but they were absent when the verdict was announced, to avoid making eye contact with the system to which they were grateful,” she said.
She added that she does not forgive the judges who made the ruling, and said, “may every breath taken by every immoral person they allowed to live free through those decisions be forbidden to them”.
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