THOUSANDS of Turkish Cypriot mourners were joined by nearly all of Turkey’s political elite yesterday as they flocked to the streets in the north of Nicosia to pay their last respects to former Turkish Cypriot leader and founder of the ‘TRNC’ Rauf Denktash who died last Friday after a prolonged illness aged 88.
“He was our father; we owe our existence to him,” a tearful fifty-six year-old Huseyin Pasha told the Cyprus Mail minutes after Denktash had been laid to rest in a memorial site on the northern edge of the divided capital.
Yesterday’s ‘state’ burial of the man seen as “the father of the Turkish Cypriot people” began in the morning with the arrival of a host of dignitaries, including Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul at the ‘presidential palace’, once the British colonial governor’s residence.
A host of Turkish ministers were also in attendance, including Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Minister for EU Affair Egeman Bagis, making it the without doubt the biggest mass excursion for the Turkish government ever. Even some of the Turkish former ministers who launched the 1974 invasion of the north were also present.
After respects had been paid to the late Denktash at the ‘palace’, military pall-bearers loaded Denktash’s coffin onto a gun carriage which then filed past the crowds amassed along the 1km route to Selimiye Mosque, formerly the Ayia Sophia cathedral. Many cried openly and held pictures of the man they called a “national hero”.
“I cried as if I’d lost my own father,” said Fetin Korman, 48, the owner of supermarket said. “We never thought he would die; I feel we have been orphaned,” he added.
Crowds swelled as the cortège approached Selimiye Mosque, where prayers were to be read ahead of Denktash’s burial. Many were unable to get near the mosque and had to offer their prayers in the streets surrounding it.
Political divisions between those who back Denktash’s staunch belief in a separate Turkish Cypriot state and those who support reunification with the Greek Cypriot majority appeared to have been put aside yesterday as members of all parties joined in prayer for the late leader. Military brass rubbed shoulders with civilians, as did the young and old, in a joint expression of grief under a brief spell of sunshine.
Prayers said, the cortege headed out of the city centre en route to the memorial site of TMT, the Turkish Cypriot paramilitary of which Denktash was a founding member during late 1950s and 60s. Denktash was buried close by. All along the route, well-wishers applauded the former leader’s coffin; thousands more were waiting at the burial site itself.
Denktash had earlier expressed a wish to be buried “among the people” in the public cemetery; his family decided it more appropriate to bury him near the TMT memorial ground close to the suburb of Gonyeli.
While there was a strong feeling in the north yesterday that an era of Turkish Cypriot politics had come to an end with the death of Denktash last Friday, his supporters were yesterday vowing to “continue his mission”.
“He gave us our heritage, and there is no turning back from the country he gave us,” 70 year-old retired businessman Erdil Nami said.
