By Athena Karsera
THE CYPRUS branch of Doctors of the World yesterday condemned the government for doing nothing to assist their Turkish quake rescue mission, though they were satisfied with their own contribution to the relief mission.
Speaking to reporters about their trip to the disaster zone yesterday, Doctors of the World’s Cyprus’ head of mission Dr Neophytos Xenofontos said that the government — as during past relief efforts — had offered no assistance to the group, not even paying for their air-tickets.
“Previously we asked for the Interior Ministry to help pay for a group to give aid to people in Palestine. Our food and board would have been paid for there, but the government refused even to pay for our tickets.”
Xenofontos did, however, later concede that the Interior Ministry had paid for a mobile unit with medical goods to be sent to Turkey.
He said a second mission would be sent to Turkey but that it would mostly consist of delivering pharmaceutical goods, perhaps with Cypriot doctors also filling in for their Greek colleagues.
As many as 40,000 people are feared dead in the devastating earthquake that struck north-western Turkey last Tuesday.
The Doctors of the World team arrived in Turkey last Thursday and returned to Cyprus on Monday.
Xenofontos added the NGO’s doctors had gone to Turkey on their own time and so could not be away from their usual jobs for extended periods: “They are volunteers.”
Cyprus Branch vice-president Dr Eleni Theocharous said the organisation did want to remain autonomous: “We do not want to be completely funded by the government, but we would like some financial help.”
She said Greece’s branch of Doctors of the World had received some financial help from its interior ministry.
Nurse Savvas Papademetriou, who was part of the three-man mission to Turkey, added to the bitter complaints: “The Cypriot authorities did not even call us once to see how we were doing.”
The team left Turkey at the insistence of the Turkish government, who said there was not much the Cypriot doctors could do at that point.
“What they need after this type of disaster are surgeons, and our team did not contain a surgeon,” Xenofontos said.
The doctors also noted that — contrary to media reports — there were enough Turkish surgeons on the scene to treat the injured.
Papademetriou said he had been impressed by the way the group had been treated by their traditional enemies.
“To my surprise they treated us well at the Turkish Embassy (in Athens).”
Dr Argyris Andreou, who was also part of the mission, said that one thing would always stay in his mind: “When we were leaving and got off the bus that had picked us up from the airport and took us from village to village, I went to shake our Turkish driver’s hand and he embraced me and kissed me on both cheeks.”
Papademetriou, who understands some Turkish, added: “The driver said ‘Thank you brother’.”
Pathologist Dr Nicholas Panayiotou, a Cypriot living in France, said he had always wanted to volunteer for a good cause and to visit Turkey as his family had originally lived in Turkey and he speaks Turkish.
“Because I was worried about our safety as Cypriots, I told the others we should try to stay in Istanbul because I wondered how the Turks in villages would see us.”
But Panayiotou said his fears had been unfounded: “The Doctors of the World t-shirt gave us some protection. The logo on ours was in Greek but I had stickers in French that we could have stuck over the patch in case of an emergency. In the end this was not necessary.”
Panayiotou was in Cyprus for the 11th World Congress of Overseas Cypriots when the earthquake struck and like the other participants, Papademetriou and Andreou, used a second non-Cypriot passport for their journey.
Xenofontos explained: “Cyprus has no diplomatic ties with Turkey and even though we had some assurances that the mission would be accepted with Cypriot passports, we had no way of knowing whether this would actually be the case.”
Papademetriou added: “The (Turkish) ambassador in Greece said it wouldn’t be a problem, but we might have got there and been arrested by a customs officer who didn’t know any better.”
Theocharous said importance should not be placed on the passports the doctors had travelled on, but on the fact that a Cypriot mission had been there. “We always travel on two or three different passports,” she added.
The three-man group travelled from Cyprus to Greece and then were offered free flights by Turkish Airlines into Istanbul.
Arrangements had already been made for a Greek military C-130 plane to take them to Turkey, however, and the mission decided to take advantage of this flight as it would be leaving earlier.
Once in Turkey, they were taken by bus from Istanbul to badly hit villages in the Turkish countryside.
Panayiotou said there had been many foreign volunteers and that the Cypriot team had not been treated differently from any of the others.
One thing did make an impression on him, and that was that families who had escaped alive from the ruins immediately moved to safer areas leaving their trapped kin behind as they felt nothing could be done too save them — “and this was just 24 hours after the quake.”
Theocharous said the Organisation’s Cyprus branch had been asked in the past whether they would ever give aid to Turkey and that she had always answered that they were a non-political body that offered help to people torn by war, civil-war and natural disasters.
“We do not distinguish between colour, nationality, language or religion.” Xenofontos added that they had not hesitated for a moment: “We are people first and then Greek Cypriots.”
