“We All Knew What He Had Done”

Remembering a Forgotten Crime - A Family Testimony from Deyincek (Çarşamba, Samsun).

The following testimony was submitted by the great-grandchild of a witness and is based on oral family history passed down from witnesses and survivors. It is part of a broader effort to preserve and honor the memory of the Christian Greek communities of the Black Sea region. 

My great-grandmother was from the village Deyincek (formerly spelled Djencek) in the district of Çarşamba, near Samsun, in the Black Sea region. In the years leading up to the Greek deportations, Deyincek was a mixed village. While most residents were refugees from Trabzon, particularly the town of Of, there were also a few Kurdish families, already assimilated. Many families had converted to Islam generations earlier. Intermarriage was not uncommon, and it was said that nearly every family had a Greek grandmother somewhere in their lineage. Locals referred to the Christian Greeks as Urum.

One day, in the early 1920s, a Greek woman and her 17-year-old daughter went to do laundry at the pu’ar (su pınarı)—a village spring that still exists today, hidden between hazelnut trees. Everyone in the village, even today, knows the place and the story tied to it. That day, a man named Torun, around 20–25 years old, approached the women. He came from the Çakıroğulları family—refugees from Of—and had joined Topal Osman’s notorious chettes, known for atrocities against Greeks and Armenians.

Torun attacked the girl. Her mother tried to protect her, begging:

“Torun, we are neighbors! Kill me—but not my daughter!”

In the struggle, he tore the mother's clothes. She clutched her own collar and held her veil over her chest to preserve her dignity. Torun shot the girl in front of her mother—against a tree. Then he murdered the mother too. He buried them near the pu’ar, in a shallow grave, still wearing their clothes. Some Muslim villagers witnessed the crime. One of them, Pehlivan, later confronted Torun:

“If you ever step foot here again, I will kill you.”

Torun never returned to that part of the village.

He was feared elsewhere. He once shot a Greek farmer just for plowing his field. In Koldere, a neighboring village, he murdered a Muslim woman simply because he didn’t like how she served his food. From about 20 meters away, he turned around and shot her dead. He was widely known—not officially, but among the people—as a brutal, sadistic killer. Though Torun was never officially tried or convicted as a war criminal, people in the region saw him as one. He was remembered as a murderer and a sadist.

And yet, decades later, in the 1970s, during the Cyprus conflict, Torun—now an old man—spoke to my great-grandmother. He confessed:

“The worst thing I ever did… what I regret the most… was killing that girl and her mother.”

My mother was there. She witnessed the moment. My great-grandmother looked him in the eyes and replied:

“Yes. I know all too well. And now—how will you answer to God?”

Then she said:

“You dog.”

These were not words of hatred—but of moral truth.

The pu’ar in Deyincek still flows. The trees have grown tall. But the story has not faded. The people remember. My family remembers. And even the one who pulled the trigger—he remembered too.