The Turkish side once more attempts to manipulate politically the issue of the missing persons
Turkish Cypriot daily Gunes newspaper (12.04.12) reports that Huseyin Ozgurgun, self-styled minister of foreign affairs of the breakaway regime, has alleged that the Greek Cypriots are trying to prevent the work of the Committee on the Missing Persons. In statements to Turkish Anatolia news agency, Ozgurgun referred to the problems experienced at the stage of theDNAidentification and claimed that the Greek Cypriots try to prevent the work of the Committee by arguing that the data belongs to the Institute of Neurologyand Genetics, which is a Greek Cypriot institution. “I assume that the UN will also react to this”, he added.
Ozgurgun alleged that the issue of the missing persons was put onto the agenda by the Greek Cypriots, who were arguing that “the Turkish army killed many Greek Cypriot missing persons in 1974”, and claimed that the Greek Cypriots were annoyed when the graves of many Turkish Cypriot missing persons started to come to surface and their own actions were revealed.
Alleging that there are many Turkish Cypriots missing from that period and that when the “realities started to come to surface” the Greek Cypriots were annoyed, Ozgurgun argued: “And as far as I understand, the last step is in the direction of preventing theDNAtests and we know that approximately eight thousand samples exist in theDNAdata base, because there are many Turks missing from that period. Now this is a step taken to prevent this”.
Ozgurgun alleged that the intention of the Greek Cypriot side is perhaps to stop the works of the Committee and lead the issue to be forgotten, because the number of the Turkish Cypriot missing persons is growing and this is a problem for the Greek Cypriots.
Meanwhile, writing in her daily column in Turkish Cypriot Yeni Duzen newspaper (12.04.12), Sevgul Uludag reports that Ozgurgun and the Turkish daily Hurriyet newspaper are trying to turn the issue of the missing persons into a “Turkish-Greek war”. Under the title: “They have involved politics into the ‘missing persons’ issue”, she writes that these efforts by Ozgurgun and Hurriyet saddened the relatives of the missing persons, who have been calling her all day long yesterday to express their sorrow and concern for the politicization of a humanitarian matter.
Referring to the news published by Hurriyet’s correspondent Omer Bilge that eight thousand samples exist in theDNAdata base of the Institute and that the Greek Cypriots prevent the access of Turkish Cypriots who work at the institute as employees of the UN, Uludag reports that these allegations are untrue, because 1,000 out of the 8,000 thousand samples belong to relatives of Turkish Cypriot missing persons and the Turkish Cypriot experts work together with their Greek Cypriot colleagues without any problem.
According to Uludag, other Turkish websites such as those of NTV television’s and Milliyet newspaper’s also published the same false information yesterday causing comments by readers that increased the “war climate”.
