Here is an English version in the same structure and tone:
Documentary narrative: Süreyya Beach, the Virgins’ Monument, and pandemic drills
In the 1940s, Süreyya Beach on the Maltepe shoreline emerged after Süreyya İlmen Pasha decided to convert his coastal property into a beach and recreational area.[1] Work began in 1939, and despite delays caused by the Second World War, it was completed in 1946 and opened for public use.[1] For its time, the beach was considered modern, with its facilities, piers extending into the sea, and diving platforms, and it became known as a new living space in Istanbul with a strong relationship to the sea.[1]
In the 1950s, a new monument was designed that would become the symbol of the beach, and over time the circular, columned structure built some 50–60 meters into the sea came to be known as the “Virgins’ Monument,” or in popular language, the “Virgins’ Temple.”[1] This roughly three‑meter‑wide monument also inspired the logo of the Maltepe Municipality and the architecture of the Türkan Saylan Cultural Center.[1] According to a popular narrative that developed around the monument, young unmarried women seeking marriage would swim out to it and pray there, and in this way the “virgins’ temple” legend became a settled image in both local culture and popular media.[1]
In later years, coastal road and land‑reclamation projects made this structure, once located out in the water, appear to have been “pulled” toward the shore.[1] In old photographs and videos it is seen as a structure out in the sea; after the shoreline was filled in, without demolishing it, the monument came to be perceived as a land‑based memorial amid the present‑day coastal park and the surrounding commercial area.[1] Thus, an element that had originally been part of a modern beach facility underwent a transformation over time in both its physical position and its meaning: it shifted from a symbol associated with sport and entertainment to a “temple” image wrapped in mystique and legend.[1]
In the field of biological threats and pandemics, by the 21st century states, universities, and health institutions had begun organizing various simulations and drills. On 22 June 2001, a high‑level exercise called “Dark Winter,” based on a scenario of smallpox being used as a biological weapon, was conducted in the United States.[1] This exercise has been cited as one of the turning points in preparing for biological attacks and epidemic scenarios.[1] In the 2010s, numerous pandemic‑preparedness drills were held around the world under different names; among the most discussed was “Event 201,” a tabletop exercise run on 18 October 2019 by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in cooperation with partners such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, based on a fictional coronavirus pandemic scenario.[1] The simulation modeled the global spread of a respiratory coronavirus and its impact on health systems, the economy, and politics, and aimed to highlight preparedness gaps in countries’ responses.[1]
It should be noted that exercises such as Dark Winter and Event 201 are officially described as “preparedness and scenario work”; there is no academically proven evidence that they were designed to plan or trigger real pandemics.[1] Nonetheless, the timing between these exercises and the emergence of Covid‑19 has provided fertile ground for intense public speculation and conspiracy theories; this area belongs less to scientific certainty and more to critical commentary and political interpretation.[1]
Personal testimony (Fehim Calgav)
Fehim Calgav states that his connection to Maltepe’s Süreyya Beach is not limited to historical information: during his childhood and youth he swam there with his father, Yaşar Calgav, at a time when the structure was known as a diving platform, not as a temple, and functioned as a place for fun and sport.[1] According to his account, in those years the structure was experienced not as a mystical monument but as a platform from which people joyfully dived into the sea; in his personal memory it is therefore associated with freedom, vitality, and social joy.[1] The same person feels that, in later years, the popularization of the name “Virgins’ Temple” and the way the structure appeared isolated on land after shoreline reclamation symbolically transformed and partly suppressed that original spirit of freedom and modernity.[1]
Looking at the historical chronology, Fehim Calgav interprets the completion and opening of the beach and its diving structure in 1946—a period when the United Nations was initiating efforts to define genocide as a crime—as a symbolic overlap.[1] In his reading, this era was charged with themes of “survival, rebirth, and the protection of humanity,” and he emphasizes that Süreyya Beach could be seen, on a local scale, as a kind of “living space” and symbol of emancipation.[1] In the present day, he views the digital tracking systems used during the Covid‑19 pandemic, such as QR‑style health codes, and the global control mechanisms surrounding an airborne disease as raising the question of whether these might be a biological‑technological continuation of past methods of genocide and oppression; this is an individual assessment based not on official documents but on his own political and philosophical interpretation.[1]
Within this personal framework, Fehim Calgav sees the transformation of a structure once used with joy and movement in the middle of the sea into a land‑locked, solitary monument surrounded by the “Virgins’ Temple” legend as a symbol of a change in society’s perception of freedom.[1] Likewise, he reads the sequence from exercises such as Dark Winter and Event 201 to the Covid‑19 experience—independently of official narratives—as a process that might, at least potentially, function as a form of biopolitics affecting certain communities and “lineages”; these interpretations can be understood as a space of personal testimony and commentary in which his life experience, his reading of history, and the meanings he assigns to current events come together.[1]
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