Demircioğlu, speaking to the Anatolia news agency, said he is blind and that he had no opportunity to attend school because of the situation in his village. Demircioğlu was trained to be a telephone operator at a center run by the Ministry of Health. Following his training, he started working at the İzmit Municipality when he was 19 years old. “When I first began in the business, I heard of a phone operator who was also blind, and he was not successful at his job. So people believed that I wouldn’t be able to succeed, either. However, I am very ambitious. I tried for about two years. Then everybody said, ‘You’re the best person to have done this job,’ and I became the first person to have worked for the municipality for 21 years,” he noted.
Sarıkamış operation commemorated
Kars A ceremony was yesterday held to commemorate the 95th year anniversary of the Sarıkamış operation, in which 75,000 Turkish soldiers were lost mostly through freezing and without any contact with the Russian enemy lines, in Kars’s Sarıkamış district. The ceremony was attended high state officials including Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül, Parliament Deputy Speaker Nevzat Pakdil and Kars governor Ahmet Kara. The ceremony also marked the end of a walk, which was held as part of the Sarıkamış commemoration ceremony. While expressing that thousands of young people sacrificed their lives in order to fulfill the duty given to them, Gönül added, “I commemorate our soldiers, public who sacrificed themselves in the past and who do not refrain from sacrificing themselves for development of this country and people who see all kinds of sacrifices for this country as duty with gratitude.”
Subway bridge parts arrive
İSTANBUL A ship carrying 11 piles of the 50 that will be used in the construction of the Golden Horn subway bridge, one of the most important sections of the İstanbul subway, arrived in İstanbul on Friday at midnight. The Galata Bridge was closed to both pedestrian and vehicle traffic to allow the 120-meter-long Norjan, carrying the piles, to pass through. The piles are 1.8-2.5 meters wide and 65-85 meters long. They are an integral part of a subway bridge that will allow the Maslak-Yenikapı line to cross the Golden Horn. Thirteen piles that will also be used in the construction of the bridge were brought to the Golden Horn last week. More piles will arrive by the end of January, and construction on the bridge is scheduled to begin in February.
Milas traffic accident leaves 4 dead
MİLAS Four people died in a traffic accident in Muğla’s Milas district on Sunday when driver Salih Kayacan lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a bridge on the Milas-Söke road. Kayacan and passengers Ayser (47), Ercüment (28) and Günser Kayacan (60) all perished in the accident. It took Milas Fire Department teams and emergency personnel two hours to extract the bodies of the four victims.
