Bariş and Ilknur Atabay’s grief for their baby daughter, whom they buried last month, only grew when they learned Friday that her gravestone had been removed at a North Park cemetery.
They were among dozens of families shocked to find that their loved ones’ headstones had been taken from burial sites and left by a dumpster earlier this month at Bohemian National Cemetery, 5255 N. Pulaski Road.
The Atabays, with their other children — boys 3 and 7 years old — fled Turkey and came to Chicago in February 2023 seeking asylum. A third child, a girl, died at birth last month.
“It’s very painful that this happened unannounced and that there are so many unmarked plots,” Ilknur Atabay, 32, said Saturday through a translator. of her baby’s grave. “Yes, she is dead, but she’s a part of me and always will be.”
She and her husband visited the cemetery Saturday but could not locate their daughter’s grave.
The Muslim Community Center of Chicago owns the portion of the cemetery where the gravestones were removed. After learning of that, the organization said it found out that the upright gravestones were uprooted because they did not lie flat on the ground — a design intended to be uniform across the cemetery.
“These markers were moved for storage elsewhere so that they can be retrieved at a later time for reinstallation with the appropriate concrete base” and at an additional cost, the Muslim Community Center’s leaders said. “We regret the distress or hurt this may have caused to the beloved members of our community.”
The organization is planning meeting at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at its community center, 4380 N. Elston Ave., to discuss the removal and answer questions from families.
The Atabays don’t plan on attending because they do not speak English. But their friend Margaret Kuzma, a volunteer with the organization RefugeeOne, will be there on their behalf.
“They are still devastated by the loss of their daughter and have no energy to go to such a forum to express how this has compounded their grief,” Kuzma said.
Ilknur Atabay told Kuzma to tell the organization’s leaders that they should “respect other people’s pain a little,” Kuzma said.
Bariş Atabay, 33, was frustrated by the lack of communication from the Muslim Community Center before the gravestones were removed. He said he wasn’t aware that the headstones were supposed to be of a certain design.
“We made our tombstone and put it there more than a month ago,” he said through a translator. “Why did they wait so long” to remove it? “Or why didn’t they tell us that they were going to do this? They had all our contact information.”
Kuzma said the Atabays are especially hurt because they trusted Muslim Community Center.
“This is a community that is one of the most vulnerable communities when it’s immigrants, and this is an organization that they trusted, so it just makes it all even more painful for them,” Kuzma said.
Representatives of the Muslim Community Center couldn’t be reached Saturday.
The organization started managing the grave markers in 2023. For years beore that, the cemetery handled them. Many noncompliant grave markers already had been installed without the cemetery’s knowledge, according to the Muslim Community Center.
This led to some of the grave markers having the incorrect type of base, causing them to come loose, according to the center. The cemetery’s grounds crew was tasked with removing the loose headstones.
But some families say their loved ones’ gravestones weren’t damaged even after they found them strewn near the dumpster.
Representatives of the Muslim Community Center will work with the families to have the grave markers properly reinstalled, the organization said. It had previously said it’s “committed to supporting families who may face financial difficulties in this process, and will consider supporting the families on a case-by-case basis.”
Contributing: Jake Wittich