A funeral was held on Friday for 12-year-old Miray Bicer, who died when the ferry on which she was travelling sank off the coast of Kyrenia in August.

The service was held in the town of Turkish town of Reyhanli and Bicer was buried next to her five-year-old brother Asaf Bicer, who also died in the same accident and was buried on September 30.

Friday’s funeral was attended by her mother Ayten Bicer, her father Hayri Bicer, other members of her family, Reyhanli district governor Muharrem Coskun, and Reyhanli mayor Ahmet Salman Yumusak, as well as other dignitaries.

On the day after the ferry sank, Ayten Bicer recounted the ordeal, saying that her daughter was “saying, ‘don’t let go’.

“I swear, I didn’t let her go,” she said, tears streaming down her face, before explaining that a suitcase fell on top of her, forcing her daughter from her grasp.

She said that she had grabbed her daughter’s foot, but that her shoes, coated in engine oil from the overturned boat, slipped through her hands.

His father, meanwhile, explained that everything happened suddenly on the day of the accident. 

“We couldn’t intervene. We lost our children. We made a lot of effort, but we couldn’t save our children. Two of my children are gone. One of my sons is alive. Two of my children are gone. Two of my three children are gone. We left them. We are leaving them on this island as we go,” he said.

Kyrenia, ferry

‘She slipped out of my hand’

Ayten Bicer later said that “it was slipping like oil” and that “there was diesel, our feet were slippery”.

“It was slippery everywhere. It was like oil. She slipped out of my hand. Mehmet Asaf held on to his father here,” she said, showing the collar of her T-shirt – “saying, ‘Baba’”, she added. 

The ferry capsized shortly after leaving the new port of Kyrenia en route to the Turkish port of Tasucu at a little after midday on August 30, with 259 passengers and eight crew members on board. A total of 27 people are confirmed to have died as a result of the accident, while one passenger remains unaccounted for.

Shortly after the accident, a total of nine people – the ferry’s captain, Mustafa Oz, seven members of its crew, and one director of its operating company, Filo Denizcilik – were arrested, and all nine remain in custody, with court proceedings against them ongoing.

They had appeared in court earlier on Friday, where it was heard that the ferry’s black box had been turned off two days before it sank.

Previously, it had been heard that he Turkish Cypriot authorities were not informed about a crack which had appeared on the ferry’s left side on June 17, despite both Oz and Filo Denizcilik having been obliged to inform the authorities.

It had also been said in court that the captain Oz had bought his Honduran captain’s licence for $3,500. A police representative said at the time that Oz had said under questioning that he had initially obtained a licence in Turkey, but that it had become invalid after he did not work as a boat captain for ten years.