How did Martyr Air Pilot First Lieutenant M.Mustafa GÜLER's Short Life Pass?
He was impetuous. His father, who was just as impetuous as he was, did not refuse this young cadet's request, and who knows, maybe he wanted his son, who would pass away very soon, to live life to the fullest, so he bought him a Ford car as a gift when Mustafa least expected it.
Originally from Elazığ, M. Mustafa GÜLER and I studied together at Kuleli Military High School. Like his father Akif GÜLER, who retired from the Land Forces at the rank of Colonel, he entered Kuleli to become an officer. At that time, he was known for voluntarily taking on tasks that were not his duty. He was not very good with lessons. He considered it enough to study enough to pass his class, but he would always prefer to fail. I say he would have preferred it, because he had more than enough capacity to pass his class directly. But in that summer period, since he loved to stroll in the beautiful garden of Kulel and walk along the Bosphorus, he preferred not to be separated from the school. Thanks to his benevolent and friendly personality, there was almost no one he did not know at the school.
He loved taking photographs at Kuleli. He continued this hobby at the Air Force Academy where we studied together. In the meantime, his family settled in Ataköy, a neighbouring neighbourhood to Yeşilyurt, the location of the Air Cadets, and Mustafa, who did not find it enough to go home for the weekends, wanted to own a car as soon as he got his driving licence so that he could commute to his house, which was no more than a few hundred metres from the school. He was impetuous. His father, who was just as impetuous as he was, did not refuse this young cadet's request, and who knows, maybe he wanted his son, who would pass away in a very short time, to live life to the fullest, so he bought him a Ford car as a gift when Mustafa least expected it. We were as happy about this as Mustafa was, and at a young age we became a part of Mustafa's 'showing off' with his car on the streets of Yeşilköy and Bakırköy.
Mustafa became interested in shooting, especially shooting with a rifle instead of a pistol, and became the rifleman of the shooting team. When he started to do quite well, he became the regular rifleman of the team. By the way, Mustafa had started to lose his hair and go bald while he was still an Air Cadet. In this state, he would occasionally be part of our fun and sweet teasing, but he never got angry, on the contrary, he enjoyed making fun of himself.
In 1988, when he graduated as a lieutenant, he started his pilot training in Çiğli in order to reach the biggest goal of his life. Almost without any difficulty, as a good pilot, he managed to wear his pilot's badge on his left breast in 1989. By the way, our brother, who got married in Çiğli, was one of the first among us.
Subsequently, he received combat readiness training at the 3rd Main Jet Base Command/Konya, first in F-5 aircraft at the 133rd Squadron Command and then in F-4s at the 131st Squadron Command. His first assignment was to the 7th Main Jet Base Command/Erhaç (Malatya), 173rd Squadron Command. After serving here for 4 years, he returned to Konya. He was assigned as an instructor pilot at the 131st Squadron Command in the F-4 combat readiness squadron, where he was also trained. Unfortunately, this was his last duty station.
On 13 August 1997, Instructor Pilot First Lieutenant Mustafa Güler and Pilot Lieutenant Selçuk Bahtiyar, whose F-4 combat readiness training was continuing, were scheduled for a training flight together. The F-4 Phantom aircraft in which these two were travelling took off from Konya Air Base around noon. When the aircraft reached the skies over Kulu around 11.40 am, it started to lose altitude for an unknown reason. The aircraft hit the high voltage line passing near the village of Yazıçayır, 1.5 kilometres from Konya-Kulu Switch, severed the wires and crashed into the empty land with a great noise. When the aircraft hit the ground, it caught fire and started to burn. While the pieces of the exploded aircraft were scattered over an area of 1 kilometre in diameter, the pilots unfortunately could not find the time to get out of the plane alive and jump out. Both pilots lost their lives on the spot. The next day's newspapers reported that the martyred pilots had tried to parachute out of the plane at the last moment, but failed.
Immediately after the plane crash, a technical committee headed by Lieutenant General Özkan ÖKTÜ, Head of Supervision and Evaluation of the Air Forces Command, travelled to Konya to inspect the wreckage. The delegation travelled to the scene with a UH-1 type military helicopter and arrived at the crash site at 16.25 hours. However, due to unfavourable weather conditions, the helicopter had to make a hard landing and Lieutenant General ÖKTÜ, Staff Colonel Suphi ACAR and two officers were injured and were taken under treatment at Kulu State Hospital.
Air Pilot Lieutenant Selçuk BAHTİYAR, who was martyred together with Mustafa, graduated from the Air War College in 1995 as a lieutenant. On 31 March 1997, after completing his pilot training, he started F-4 combat readiness training at 131st Squadron Command. He was martyred on 13 August 1997 when he was about to complete his F-4 training.
I wish God's mercy to both of our martyrs, may their souls rest in peace.
Captain Pilot Kemal ENGÜREL, one of Mustafa GÜLER's close friends during his school days, shared with me a memory of a school fling he had with the deceased. I am passing it on to you from his own mouth:
"Mustafa was a jet fighter. He really lived very fast and passed away at a very young age, my dear brother Mustafa GÜLER. I used to share a room with the deceased at the Air Force Academy. One weekend, we were both in school on disciplinary detention for some reason, and although both of our homes were in Istanbul, we could not go to our families that weekend due to the disciplinary punishment. Those who were grounded at the school on weekends had to go to the duty officer's office at certain intervals and sign in. In the gaps in between, we were either doing sports or trying to spend time in our dormitory rooms, the school casino or the library in a melancholy state. We were bored. I remember thinking that if we had a bow and arrow set, we could invite one or two of our friends to play bow and arrow in our dormitory room. Since there was no bow and arrow set in the school (it was forbidden anyway!), we had to go out of school, buy one from somewhere and return to school. Of course, we had to do this without missing the time to sign in for the duty officer so that our absence would not be noticed. With this in mind, we decided to go out during the lunch break, which was about 3 hours long. We were going to make this quick getaway in Mustafa's car.
As per the plan, Mustafa was going to take his car and pull up to the back exit door of the New Regiment building where we were staying, and I was going to take our overcoats from our room on the top floor and throw them to Mustafa from above. We thought that if we left the building with our overcoats in our hands, it would be understood that we were going out.
So I went up to the room, took our overcoats, bent my head down to throw them out of the window between the stairs on the middle floor, opened the window under the horizontal beam, stuck my head out and threw the overcoats to Mustafa who was waiting below. I remember I was very excited so that no one would see us and the duty officer would not know. After throwing the overcoats down, I was going to go down quickly to Mustafa. While I was going back quickly, I forgot about the beam I had passed through by bending down. At the moment of exit, I hit my head on the beam with that turn. I was stunned, but I was conscious. I put my hand to my forehead. My forehead was slightly split, it was bleeding. I put a paper napkin on my forehead and went downstairs to Mustafa as if nothing had happened. The deceased was waiting for me at the wheel, his foot on the accelerator, like a driver ready to kidnap bank robbers. I opened the right door and barely got myself inside. Mustafa said, "OK, my son, I'm accelerating and we're going." He was surprised at first, but when he saw the cloth and blood, he immediately drove to the infirmary. They called the doctor on duty and stitched my head.
Then Mustafa said, "Devrem, let's go to the room, get some rest." I couldn't bring myself to be a spoilsport, so I said, "No, we'll go out and get the okey set and come back as we planned." Mustafa was surprised, but he just said, "OK, let's do that!". We had made a plan and we were going to follow it.
It occurred to us that instead of paying for the okey set, we could buy it at home. We went to Seyrantepe Police Lodgings, where we were living at that time due to my father's profession. We went from Yeşilyurt to Seyrantepe, and we had overdone this escapade. On the way back, we stopped by Sirkeci. We parked the car near the big post office. We took our purchases and got in the car, but we couldn't start the car at first. There was no ignition. After trying a few times, smoke started coming out of the engine. We got out, opened the bonnet, looked left and right as if we understood a lot. We waited for the engine to cool down a bit, then we got lucky. We tried again, the engine started. We got to the front of the school without any problems.
Just as we entered the entrance, the car stalled again. Today, bad luck was haunting us. We didn't know what to do because there was a high probability that we would be caught by the officer on duty while we were working on the car at the school's entrance. We realised we couldn't do it. We decided to start the car by pushing it. With Mustafa at the wheel and me pushing from behind, we crossed the guard station. On the second attempt, we managed to start the car by getting it hit. Thus, we got in without being recognised as deserters. Meanwhile, we had missed the last signature roll call at the duty officer's office. We went and saw the duty officer. When the commander saw my bandaged head, he didn't even question why we had missed the roll call. He told me to take care of myself.
I have many memories of the late Mustafa, but I wanted to share the most childish one with you. We were very close to each other, we met in our families and we loved each other very much. After the Air Force Academy, our friendship continued in Çiğli and then for a while in Malatya. He was a very kind, honest, gentlemanly, young man with a restless heart, always energetic and full of life. He always liked to move quickly. He loved friendship, friendship, sharing and spending time together. He left us very early. As the saying goes, "He lived fast and died young!" His life was a bit like that. May his soul rest in peace.
