They Call It the “Invisible Enemy”: My Only Fear Was the Landmine and I Stepped on One …

Abstract

(Showing photographs): Look, this is Camp Şive, this is one of the deserted villages, and this is when we were out on a patrol … Here we are watching a football game, a Fenerbahçe game, together with friends from GATA. We lost the game; the score was 1–0. … This is the minister. I forgot which minister, the Health minister may be. We get confused because each administration changes the cabinet at least three to five times. … Here I am with the psychologist. He is only a couple of years older. This photo shows me after I came out of the operation. Here you can see my two feet tied to each other so they won’t move. This photo is from the Eğridir Commando Training Camp. I made ten copies of this and sent it to friends and family. This one is from one of our operations, the Sparrow Hawk Operation. Soldiers are crazy about photos. We could get them developed in Siirt, but they kept the negatives for security reasons. This is one of the trenches; not one that I made, though. In this photo, we are in the Training Unit. It was forbidden to take photos but we took it anyway. This is on new year’s eve. We were celebrating it with the nurses. The year 1996 is over and 1997 is on its way. My favorite hobby is photography. I have about 300–400 photographs from those days. This one in the picture is one of those guys you see on TV saying, “My legs are gone, but long live the country.” He would wish that his legs were fine and that he would go and finish his military service. This nurse in the picture was sent to Diyarbakir and was very happy about this assignment. Now she is crying, “Come and get me out of here!”