Year 1963..
Location was Gaziantep Islahiye Town.
My father Mahmut Yaşar Bey was acting as Prefect during those years.
The Prefect’s lodging was to the west outbound of the city and far from the city center.
Islahiye is a security-sensitive town as it is located very close to the Syrian border.
There was frequent smuggling activity in those years. We would have heard clashes between security forces and smugglers across the border when it happened almost every night.
My father would often have gone to the border with Gendarmerie Commander to run the operation together.
Naturally, we’d get a lot of denunciations and threats from different sources. We would have paid close attention to our every move, we wouldn’t have gone to mass venues unless needed.
Our mother was trying to prevent a possible assassination by changing our bedroom every two days at the latest..
Then, a few weeks later, after midnight, we jumped out of our beds with a big explosion.
Our house was attacked with dynamite targeting our family. We were saved because the dynamite- thrown room was our previous bedroom,which my mother had replaced the day before.The window was iron railing, dynamite delight was placed on the window edge of that previous bedroom. There was substantial damage at its wall,Fortunately, room was empty at that night when it exploded, Thanks God that nothing happened to us sleeping in the other room. If this explosion happened the night before, maybe we wouldn’t be alive today.
Then , police and gendarmerie troops came to investigate the assassination. For days, investigations were carried out and eventually the perpetrators were put in jail.. We,as twin brothers, met for the first time in our lives through the corridors of police stations and courts.
I can never forget those days when we said hello back to life as whole family.