The destruction of
Cyprus' 9.000 year old civilisation constitutes
one of the tragic and unfortunately
irreversible consequences of the Turkish
invasion and occupation of the island.
Ever since the
Turkish invasion and occupation of almost 36%
of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus,
archaeological sites, religious treasures and
many private collections situated in the
occupied area, were left at the mercy of the
invaders.
Churches,
constituting the most obvious and recognisable
symbols of the cultural identity of a region,
have been subjected to the most violent and
systematic destruction. Dr Athanasios
Papageorgiou, a former director of the Cyprus
Antiquities Department, who is now serving as
Byzantine expert to the Cyprus Church, said in
a recent interview that "all but five of the
500 churches in the north have been
looted".
"The five are
shown to visitors. Ten have been demolished,
the rest are used as toilets, storehouses,
clubs and cinemas. . . all have been
desecrated. Silver and gold are sold as metal.
Only the hand remains of a mosaic of the
Archangel Gabriel. UNESCO has done nothing. . .
A mission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the
Council of Europe paid a three-day visit
several years ago but it only went to a few of
the most well known churches." Even its report
did nothing to stop the trade in looted
art.
Unfortunately
UNESCO's 1970 convention "on the means for
prohibiting and preventing the illegal
importation and transport of ownership of
cultural property" has been treated
contemptuously by Turkey who continues its
systematic destruction of Cyprus' cultural
heritage.
The methodical
destruction of archaeological sites, cultural
monuments, churches and historical artefacts,
are part of a premeditated policy of
eradicating every trace of Cypriot history and
culture and transforming the occupied region
into yet another Turkish province in an attempt
to make it totally Turkish.
British
journalist J. Fielding had ascertained as early
as 1976, after a visit to the occupied area,
that:
"The
vandalism and desecration are so
methodical
and so
widespread that they amount to
institutionalised obliteration of
everything sacred to a Greek."
("The Rape of
Northern Cyprus", The Guardian
6.5.1976).
This is further
corroborated by both the arbitrary replacement
of ancient Greek place names with Turkish ones
that are entirely unrelated to the history of
the place, as well as the settlement in the
occupied area of over 115.000 Turks from
Turkey.
Over the years
information has emerged that historic and
religious monuments in various regions in the
occupied area are being destroyed, looted and
vandalised. Illegal excavations have been
carried out and artefacts have been stolen from
museums, archaeological sites and private
collections, smuggled out and sold
abroad.
The Kanakaria
mosaics
One of the most
widely publicised cases of examples of Cypriot
art treasures being stolen and sold on the
international black art market was that of the
Kanakaria mosaics.
It occurred in
1989 when the government of Cyprus took an
American art dealer to court for the return of
four rare 6th century Byzantine mosaics. The
mosaics, each measuring about two square feet
and composed of hundreds of jewel-like bits of
glass, marble and stone, are unique specimen
that survived an edict by the Emperor of
Byzantium, imposing the destruction of all
images of sacred figures. They depict Christ as
a young boy, the apostles Matthew and James and
an archangel and are part of a larger mosaic
from the apse of the church of Panayia
Kanakaria in the village of
Lythrangomi.
Cyprus discover
the fate of the mosaics ten years after they
were ripped from the apse of the church in
around 1976, when an Indianapolis art dealer,
Peg Goldberg, offered them to the J. Paul Getty
museum in Malibu, California, for $20 million.
The museum's curator contacted the authorities
in Cyprus. The Republic of Cyprus and the
Autocephalous Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus
sued Goldberg and her art dealer, to recover
the mosaics.
The trial, which
began on 30 May 1989 attracted widespread
international attention. Cyprus won the case.
US District Judge James E. Noland ruled that
the mosaics were the property of the Church of
Cyprus and that Goldberg must return them, a
decision hailed at the time as opening the way
for recovering stolen archaeological treasures
world-wide. The mosaics were eventually
repatriated.
Ms Goldberg had
bought the mosaics from a Turk living in
Germany, called Aydin Dikmen, who claimed he
was a former archaeologist for the
self-proclaimed "Turkish Republic of Northern
Cyprus". Dikmen is believed to have been
selling stolen artefacts from Cyprus on the
black market for years and the Cyprus
government has been keeping an eye on his
activities for a long time.
Recovery of
Cypriot mosaics, frescoes and
icons
In October 1997
Dikmen was finally arrested in Germany in a
police raid that was the culmination of an
eight-month operation in collaboration with
Cypriot security forces. Several boxes and
suitcases filled with stolen Cypriot works of
art were found hidden in fake walls, ceilings
and floors of two Munich apartments belonging
to Dikmen. The stash consisted of mosaics,
frescoes and icons dating back to the 6th, 12th
and 15th centuries worth over 50 million
dollars.
The mosaics,
depicting Saints Thaddeus and Thomas, are two
more sections from the apse of the Kanakaria
Church, while the frescoes, including the Last
Judgement and the Tree of Jesse, were taken off
the north and south walls of the Monastery of
Antiphonitis, built between the 12th and 15th
centuries.
Dikmen was also
responsible for selling frescoes stolen from
the chapel of Ayios Themonianos in the village
of Lysi, to a wealthy American patron of the
arts, Ms Dominique de Menil. After an agreement
was reached with the Church of Cyprus, Ms de
Menil was allowed to keep the frescoes on loan,
although ownership of them was turned over to
the Church. She had them restored and housed in
a specially built chapel museum in Houston,
Texas, where they will be displayed for a
period of time as their original chapel is
under Turkish occupation.
Dr Papageorgiou
said that Mr Dikmen supplied galleries in
Britain, Germany, Holland, Austria and
Switzerland with stolen art from round the
world.
"The Cypriot
artefacts he handled were looted soon after the
Turkish invasion and stored in Kyrenia castle
from where they were shipped to Munich for sale
- with the collusion of the archaeologists
responsible and the authorities. ...There is
only one entrance to the castle which is under
Turkish army control. ... All those who
co-operated with Dikmen became millionaires,"
observed Dr Papageorghiou. "Unfortunately the
most important icons have not been found. They
have been sold and are now in private
collections where they cannot be traced and
recovered."
For Cyprus these
cases are just two instances among many in its
fight to recover the many archaeological and
cultural treasures that have disappeared from
the occupied part of Cyprus, ever since Turkey
invaded the island in 1974. On the rare
occasions that these have resurfaced as stolen
goods on the international market in
antiquities, the Cyprus government has found
itself on numerous occasions in the position of
having to buy back its own national
heritage.
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