LOOTERS OR LANDLORDS?
Opinion | October 3, 2012 3:39 pm
Edmond Y. Azadian
Since Fatih Sultan Mohammed occupied Constantinople in 1453, the
Ottoman rulers have been destroying and desecrating churches, castles,
architectural monuments of Hittites, Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and
other nationalities who had been the indigenous people of Asia Minor,
occupied and ruled through blood and sword.
Now, all of a sudden, the destroyers of all these cultures presume
to be landlords, claiming treasures originated in Asia Minor to be
returned to the present government of Turkey. Those artifacts and
treasures which have been preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, the Getty Museum, the Louvre and Pergamon Museum have been
saved from the Turks themselves, becoming part of the legacy of
human civilization. Had they been left in the hands of the Turks,
they would have been doomed to suffer the same fate as the 2,000
Armenian churches, monasteries and architectural monuments which
were systematically destroyed and rendered into ashes. After 200,000
Armenians escaped from Van in 1915, the Turkish Army burned tens
of thousands of illuminated manuscripts and Bibles on the island
monastery of Leem in Lake Akhtamar.
All that barbarism was tolerated and permitted by the Western powers
because of political expediency, fueling the arrogance of the Turks,
in turn, to get back at the West, which had saved antiquities from
Turkish-Ottoman plundering hands in the first place.
The latest example was the destruction of thousands of khachkars in
Jugha, Nakhichevan, now an exclave ruled by Azerbaijan, by the Azeri
Turks in broad daylight; not one finger was raised by the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) or
other agencies or governments despite protests by Armenia’s government.
Also, in a cynical condescension towards small nations, the British
Museum and other museums stubbornly keep mislabeling Kutahya tiles
or the head of Diana (Anahid, “The Satala Aphrodite,”) as Seljuk art
or any other label in the name of academic propriety, rather than
ascribing it to the Armenian talents and skills which are the true
creators of those treasures.
As late as this year, UNESCO refused to label Armenian architectural
monuments in Europe their true name during an exhibition, giving in
to Turkish threats. That policy today has opened up the major museums
in the West to Turkish threats and lawsuits.
In a front-page article on October 1, the New York Times covers
Turkish arrogance under the title “Turkey Demands Return of Art,
Alarming World’s Museums.” Museum curators consider Turkey’s newfound
aggressiveness “cultural blackmail.”
At issue are many art treasures originating in the countries occupied
by Ottoman rulers. Mr. Murat Suslu, director-general of cultural
heritage and museums, says, “we only want back what is rightfully
ours.”
“The Turks are engaging in polemics and nasty politics,” answers
Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage
Foundation, which oversees the Pergamon in Berlin. “They should be
careful about making moral claims when their museums are full of
looted treasures.”
One example of such looted treasures is a sarcophagus named after
Alexander the Great, which was discovered in Sidon, Lebanon, in 1887,
and is now in Istanbul’s Archeological Museum. According to Mr. Suslu
the sarcophagus was legally Turkey’s because it had been excavated
on territory that belonged to Turkey at the time.
With the same warped logic, Turkey can claim all the Armenian churches
and art treasures in Jerusalem, because at one time Jerusalem was
under Ottoman rule.
There are no firm international laws that govern the ownership of art
treasures originating from different parts of the world which are now
preserved in museums in the West. There is a UNESCO convention that
allows museums to acquire objects that were outside their countries
of origin before 1970.
Turkey wants its cake and to eat it. Although it has ratified the
convention in 1981, it still cites a 1906 Ottoman law to claim any
object removed after that date as its own.
Since Turkey selectively wishes to use its Ottoman heritage, than it
has to recognize the Ottoman Genocide against the Armenians, which
not only destroyed millions of human lives but also the cultural
heritage of that subject nation.
Turkey, using its double standard, has been successfully suing Western
museums and retrieving major pieces of art for its own museums.
For example, in 2011, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston returned the
top half of an 1,800-year-old statute, “Weary Herakles,” which is an
example of Greek cultural heritage.
Throughout history, the Turks have not been known as creators in
the fields of art and culture; they are rather known as destroyers
of culture, valuing militarism and brute force. But since they have
realized belatedly that art and culture have some monetary value in
the form of tourism in their country, they are aggressively going
after treasures originating in the land they presently occupy.
This is a dangerous precedent. If it is not stopped in its track,
the Turks may go after all Armenian treasures around the world,
claiming by the same logic and citing the Ottoman law that those
works had originated in territories under Ottoman rule.
Especially in Turkey’s case, UNESCO and the UN have to declare the
universal ownership of treasures created by Armenians and other
nationalities but occupied or looted by the Turks. Turkey must be
held accountable for the destruction of Armenian cultural monuments on
its occupied soil which to this day are kept in ruins. Those ancient
churches and monuments that belong to the Armenians must be declared
part of human civilization and thus warrant some protection from
further damage.
Otherwise, looters and plunderers will present themselves as owners
of a cultural heritage, which does not belong to them and which has
been abused by them for centuries.
The irony is that the looters have become landlords under the
tolerant gaze of the civilized world which is delinquent in its duty
of preserving universal treasures of humanity.
http://www.mirrorspectator.com/2012/10/03/looters-or-landlords/