Which Methods did We Deploy?

Date: Tuesday, 04.08.2014

Time: 11.15-12.45

Place: The house of Cennet Yörüsün at the entrance of Boğsak Village

Interviewer: Adil Yılmaz

 

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Cennet Yörüsün (the wife of Kerim Ali Yörüsün's paternal uncle):  She was born in 1939. Until her marriage in 1963, she had a transhumant life. With her husband, she settled in Boğsak in 1964. Her husband passed away seven years ago. Now she lives with her children. She is unable to walk due to a disability. Her grandfather is a veteran of the war in Yemen and her father of the Turkish War of Independence. She has four children (two sons, two daughters) and seven grandchildren. Neither of his sons studied. One of her daughters graduated from high school, and the other graduated from university. Her daughter, who graduated from the university, is currently working as the chief clerk at the Silifke Courthouse. Cennet Yörüsün did not go to school as her family was transhumant. Back then, only boys were sent to school in the Işıklar Village so that they could learn just how to read letters. That's why she could not attend any school. Nevertheless, she learned to read and write during the Literacy Campaign  after 1980. 

 

“The people of the nearby Akdere Village call the people of our village Bolacalı / Bolaçlı. We call them Işıklı¹. The nearby Bağlan and Çatak Villages are also from Bolaca, just like us. My father used to say that we came from the environs of Kars. But I don't know because I didn't ask exactly. 

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When the people of the village settled in Karabucak where the old village was situated, there were seven black tents. When the weather was good,  they stayed in tents, other times they stayed in the nearby caves. A man named Mustafa Hoca, who came from outside as a groom, taught the villagers how to weave cloth. The peasants began to earn their living in this way. 

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I don't know whether Karabucak had any ruins when the villagers settled there. As there are rocks everywhere, they shaped them and used them as walls.

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In my childhood and youth, we used to leave here and migrate to the highlands in Karaman. At night-times, all the goods were loaded on camels, and the children would walk barefoot. It would take 10-15 days to get from here to Karaman. We used to stay in a different place every night. When we get there, the men would plow the fields and threshed the grais. Then we would go back in the same way towards winter. 

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My late husband was a farmer until 1964. The place where the Intermot hotel is located today belonged to them. He used to cultivate sweet and unripe melons. Later, we sold that place to motel owners, and opened a restaurant in the stone building across the canal for two years. Before that, my father was working as a stonemason in the village. One day, my husband bought a boat from Taşucu and we started to earn our living by fishing. He was the first to bring fishing to the village. I helped him until he got sick. At that time, they did not know much about fishing. For this reason, they would take the torn nets to Taşucu for repair, and bring them after they had been mended there. My husband learned how to sew there and began to mend the nets on his own. We used to make ropes from goat hair and try to fix the nets with it. Unlike today, different types of threads did not exist back then.

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As they were novices in fishing, they first thought that the groupers were inedible and threw them back into the sea. One day, they were surprised to see that a foreign boat was full of groupers. After the boat owner told them, "Fish the groupers every day. I will buy it from you. This is the best fish", they started fishing them. Until then, they thought groupers were poisonous.

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After my sister passed away, my brother-in-law went to Tokmar village to ask the hand of a girl. He said to my husband, "Let's bring them groupers”  My husband answered, "they are poisonous. You may take those people's life". But they still brought them as gifts. In the house where they went to make their debut in the evening, the host family ate the fish, but my brother-in-law did not eat it because he thought they were poisonous. Nothing happened to the host family. Before returning to home, they said, "Bring that fish again." 

There was no school in the village until 1968. The children would cross the hill and go to other villages. A teacher was appointed to the village that year. Since there was no school building that year, teaching was held in the village mosque.³ The following year, education started in the school building. 

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Electricity came to the village in 1978. 

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The creek bed in the village would only fill up when there was a flood, and the school building would also be flooded. When it rained, everyone would go to save their child. At that time, the village's only source of water was the well, which still stands on the land opposite the mosque. We used to salt the goatskin and make tuluk⁴. We used to carry water to the houses with it. The water of the well dwindled but never ceased. We used to do laundry there too. Women from Boğsak and Karabucak would come, and we would wash our clothes together. 

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They called the place where the well was located the infidel grave. There were old stones there.  Later, they disappeared. In the place where the camping is located today, there was a place we call the "Infidel Castle". There were many high walls. They crushed up the walls there later. There is nothing left. 

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Of the seven tents that first established the village, 17 were martyred during the war. My father was young at that time. When they said "Arab soldiers are coming" during the invasion, everyone was afraid and ran away.⁵ My grandfather stayed in Yemen.⁶ My husband's uncle was also taken prisoner there. Then he ran away. On the way, they used to break the bellies of the Turkish soldiers saying, "they have gold in their bellies". My uncle came to a river, where the Arabs asked, "Do you have any money?" He took out two medjidies in his pocket and passed the river like that. After coming here by walking from the mountains, he knocked on the door of a nomad and asked for bread. The nomad woman did not give food even though she had gold on her, because she knew he was a fugitive. "I came from Yemen. I went hungry in my own hometown," he said. 

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When I was young, foreign ships used to come to the Boğsak Bay. A lot of people would come out of it and travel the mountains and forests. While they were there, none of the women and girls could go out as they were afraid of them. Now they can't come as they want.  

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For a long time, I  herded goats. My husband said let's leave the goats on the island.⁸ We left four goats on the island. A few days later, he said that they died. Couldn't believe it, I went to have a look. They were really dead. One of them gave birth to its baby in there by the grave⁹, and it died too. I was very sad and cried. 

 

I don't know the island very well due to my illness. All I know is there are some structures that are visible. There is a tomb, and then there are some walls. 

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Once a donkey was left on the island. A woman living alone in the village could not take care of her donkey in winter, so they took it to the island and left it here. When I herded my livestock on the shore, it would come up to the shore of the island and shout. 

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We bought rabbits for our grandchildren. When it started attacking my chickens, we left it on the island. They bred there. Later we heard that they were all hunted. They are gone now. 

 

A butcher from Belen brings his cattle to Dana Island in winter times. He's still bringing them to the island. He used to take the animals that stayed there all winter and take them to the plateau in the spring. He had hundreds and thousands of animals. He was taking boats from the Mavikent side. Sometimes he couldn't find some of the animals. Now a few of them are roaming the island. 

 

People in old times were better. Money was little, but they worked hard and lived long. They are now dying of disease at a young age. Now, when the Nuclear Power Station is built here, everyone will get sick. There will be no fish in the sea. They said that the soil will also be poisoned. 

 

It is better that the highway was taken out of the village. In the past, our chickens, cats, and dogs were crushed when the road passed through the village. Now this problem went away. 

 

Sometimes, when we look at the village from the house, I say that our people settled in the worst place as there is no soil or water here. Looking at the beauty of the sea and the environment, sometimes I say that our people settled in the most beautiful place. 

 

Today's young people do not know the troubles we went through. They have everything within their arm's reach. It's a lot of work for those who work here. There's a lot of money to be made. When I see unemployment in metropolitan cities on television, I feel grateful. 

 

In the past, they wouldn't even let us hammer a tent nail. Now it's all concrete buildings. Now that there is no one left, I miss the old days.”

 

¹ Işıklılar  Is a great tribe known in the seventeenth-eighteenth centuries.  A branch of the tribe lives in the mountainous villages of the Soma district in the Manisa province. One of the villages is called Işıklar. (A.Y.) 

² Village refers to  Karabucak (A.Y.) which is where the locals lived before Boğsak

³ The old village mosque. It was located on the site of the present mosque. 

⁴ Leather bottle (A.Y.) 

⁵ In this context, Arab means soldiers of African descent in the British and French Occupation armies (A.Y.)

⁶ Martyrdom (A.Y.) 

⁷ Husband's uncle (A.Y.)

⁸ Boğsak Island (A.Y.) 

⁹ Church V is known is the grave (A.Y.)

*Adil Yılmaz and Cennet Yörüsün (2014)