A TURKISH man who saw a photograph of missing child Christakis Georgiou in Sabah newspaper contacted Politis saying the child in the photo was familiar to him, the paper reported yesterday.
Since early this year, Politis has been pursuing leads in Turkey in an attempt to track down Georgiou, who disappeared after the Turkish invasion when he was five years old.
The original claim that the boy was still alive came from a retired Turkish corporal, who said he had been brought to Turkey alive and not seriously injured with a bullet to the leg. He believes Georgiou is still alive.
It was established that Georgiou was taken to Turkey in a helicopter after sustaining a leg injury, and his mother was told a number of times that he would be coming home. He was never brought back.
Former Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash said recently the boy had later died from his injuries, despite saying in 1975 that the boy was alive in Turkey.
The trail appeared to have gone cold following the initial revelations of the Turkish corporal, but Politis has been giving a rundown over the past two days on where it led.
Yesterday, the paper said it was contacted by email after the Sabah article on March 5. The email was written in bad English saying only: “Hi. l call from turkei n ADANA ,l sending mail for This Subject, l read politis new this cildren picture same to me. cotact to me. kenan kenan”.
The paper assumed he was saying that the picture in the paper was the same as him. They decided to meet him and told their journalist in Turkey Anna Andreou to make contact, which she did. However, nothing was clarified in that meeting, and they arranged to meet again the following day.
During that meeting a series of coincidences made them believe they were on the right track.
The paper said Kenan had a big gap in his memory up to and including the age of five. He also had a scar on his left knee consistent with a bullet wound. Kenan was also born in 1969. It turned out his real name was Hakan and that Kenan Kenan was an email alias.
Hakan is married with two children and lives in Adana, working in the computer section of a large company that sells detergents.
Another meeting was arranged, where Politis journalists were to fly to Turkey from Cyprus to meet Hakan themselves. The paper then decided to tell Geogiou’s mother Myrofora what they had found so far.
“She said that if her son was indeed alive in Turkey and some other family had raised him, she wanted to assure them it was not her intention to ruin their lives or to worry. She only wanted to see him for a little and give him her best wishes,” the paper said. “She did not ask for anything else.”
The paper said it would today publish details of the meeting with Hakan and his family in Adana.
