Yeni Şafak daily journalist Mustafa Cambaz was also on the streets on the night of the July 15 coup attempt. After learning of the coup attempt, Cambaz went to Çengelköy saying: “We are going to the streets on the order and request of Erdoğan the commander-in-chief,” where he was killed by putschist soldiers. Cambaz was shot in the chest and died a martyr’s death for the country he saw as his country even though he was not a Turkish citizen.
Cambaz was from Western Thrace in Greece. He refused to fulfill his military service in Greece and fled to Istanbul from the city of Komotini, saying: “If I’m going to be a soldier I will be a Turkish soldier”. He married his wife Semra in Istanbul and had a son, Alparslan. Cambaz, who loved taking photographs, Istanbul and cats, faced the most bloody coup attempt in Turkey’s history in the last 100 years while he was thinking about how to rearrange a room full of books in his new house in Çengelköy, one of the calmest districts of the Bosphorus area.
‘We are going into the streets on the order and request of Commander-in-Chief Erdoğan’
Cambaz had met and chatted with his friends at Çengelköy on the night of July 15. When he came home, his son Alparslan told him: “I saw on the news that they declared martial law.” His father did not take him seriously at first but he understood the seriousness of the situation after he called his friends. He told his friends: “They were having a coup right beside us and we didn’t know about it.”
One of the moments that changed the course of the night was President Erdoğan’s call for everyone to go into the streets.
Cambaz, was denaturalized because he refused to fulfill his military service in Greece where he was born, fleeing to Turkey to make it his home even though he could not be an official citizen. Despite this, he was one of the first to run to the streets
Cambaz did not listen to his wife, who told him not to go after she heard explosions and shots from outside. He told her: “You can’t keep me in the house while all of this is happening.” Before he left his house, Cambaz posted to his social media account: “Those who attempted [this coup] shall not sit down as they stood up. They should not be able to sit down at all. We are going to the streets with on order and request of commander-in-chief Erdoğan.” This was his last post and he invited everyone to the streets to defend the country.
‘Soldiers assaulted the police station, they are shooting at the people’
Cambaz went to Çengelköy Police Station, which putschist soldiers wanted to seize and where the most blood was spilled that night. Meanwhile, soldiers started shooting at civilians who came to defend the station. Cambaz called his son and said: “Soldiers assaulted the police station, they are shooting at the people.” His son Alparslan describes those moments: “My father called me 10 or 15 minutes later and said: ‘Soldiers assaulted the police station, they are shooting at the people.’ I was trying to grasp what was happening and hearing gunshots in the background. I asked him where he was. He answered: ‘I am right beside the wall.’ I said: ‘Don’t make any sudden movements.’ Those who know him know that he makes sudden movements, he is impulsive. The phone went dead after a while. I lost my mind, of course. I went in and performed ablution. I have a T-shirt with the verse ‘To God we belong, and to him is our return’ written on it. I wore that. If I had a gun at home, I would have taken that as well. I took a knife. What was I thinking?! A stick or a knife, whatever I had at that moment. I went to Çengelköy, it was impossible to move. There were shots every second. They were shouting: ‘Go from right, go from right!’ I looked to the left and to the right, people were getting shot, they were carrying the people who were shot. I was checking the people who were carried to see if any of them was my father.”
Two G3 bullets hit him in the chest
Two G3 bullets hit Cambaz in the chest. He was severely injured and taken to the hospital. Alparslan was not able to find his father despite all of his efforts and returned home. He kept calling his father’s phone at the same time. Eventually, someone answered his father’s phone and told Alparslan that his father was injured and taken to the hospital. They went straight to Numune Hospital in Ümraniye. Alpaslan described those moments: “We went to Ümraniye. We had a friend at Numune Hospital who I called and asked if he could look for my father. He was not able to reach my father. My father is not a citizen of any country. He does not have an ID card. He has been married for 30 years and he has a child who is 25 years old but he does not have an ID card. Nobody would believe me if I told them how he has lived so far. He died for his country, but he does not have a country. That was probably why I didn’t see his name on the list at the entrance of the hospital. I found out that someone was in the morgue and there were people in the intensive care. A friend of mine went to see the morgue. He told me it was not my father when he came back. But he couldn’t convince me. Nobody was saying anything definite. They were stalling us. But he was indeed not the person in the morgue. They took his lifeless body from intensive care around 5:30 a.m.”
After a short time, Yeni Şafak daily, where he worked for many years, received the devastating news. Everybody knew him. Even those who did not know his name knew his friendship with the cats around the building. There was sadness at the newspaper. The darkness of night went event darker with this news. In the early hours of the morning, his friends learned he died a martyr’s death.
We said goodbye to our martyr
The body of our colleague was brought to the Topkapı Albayrak Holding building and his colleagues said their goodbyes to him. Albayrak Holding Chairman of the Board Ahmet Albayrak, CEO Mustafa Albayrak, board members Nuri Muzaffer and Kazım Albayrak, and Group Executive Manager Ömer Bolat attended the ceremony. Yeni Şafak Editor-in-Chief İbrahim Karagül, writers Salih Tuna, Mehmet Şeker, Ayşe Böbürler, Fatma Barbarosoğlu, Özlem Albayrak and former Yeni Şafak editor-in-chief and Karar newspaper writer Mustafa Karaalioğlu attended the ceremony as well. Anadolu Agency Assistant Director Metin Mutanoğlu, Star daily writer Halime Kökçe, and Haberturk TV General Director Veyis Ateş were also among those who attended the ceremony.
Ahmet Albayrak said that the highest honor aside from being a prophet is martyrdom, and added: “There’s not much to say about this brother of ours. He has the honor of martyrdom, which is the highest honor. We will do everything we can.”
‘He never sulked in his life’
Mehmet Şeker, who is a writer at the newspaper, said: “You won’t find anybody talking negatively about Mustafa or saying Mustafa did something wrong to them. He came to study in Istanbul from Gümülcine [Komotini]. Mustafa did not want to be a soldier for Greece and lived in Turkey with a temporary [residence permit], but he took two bullets for this land he loved dearly and died a martyr’s death. He went to the land he loves dearly before any of us.”
Yeni Şafak News Director Recep Yeter said: “He was probably smiling while he was falling as a martyr. He never sulked in his life. Nobody saw him sulking. He always smiled and made people smile. There were two things he loved very much. One was cats and the other was taking photographs of mosques in Turkey’s 81 provinces. Those who tell stories about love and tolerance would see how much of a lie they are living with if they had known Mustafa”
After the farewell, Cambaz’s body were taken to the Marmara University Faculty of Theology Tatbikat Mosque. President Erdoğan, former President Abdullah Gül, ministers, members of Parliament, his colleagues, his close friends and many citizens attend the funeral. After the funeral, Cambaz’s body was buried at Çengelköy Graveyard.
He was the only artist who took photographs of all Turkey’s grand mosques
Cambaz was the only artist who took photographs of all of Turkey’s grand mosques for the Prime Ministry Atatürk Cultural Center. A photographer and history writer, Cambaz took photographs of every corner of all the grand mosques. He collected the photographs of the 118 grand mosques he visited and published them as an album one month before he was killed. Cambaz was given Turkish citizenship posthumously. The Istanbul Electricity, Tramway and Tunnel General Management (İETT) wanted to keep Cambaz’s memory alive and changed the name of the Topkapı Metrobus station near the Yeni Şafak building to Martyr Mustafa Cambaz.
