BARE RUINED CHOIRS TURKEY’S WAR ON THE CULTURAL HERITAGE OF CYPRUS
BY Katherine Eastland
Hellenic News of America
Jan 25, 2010
When churches fall completely out of use
What shall we turn them into?
–Philip Larkin, Church Going
Nicosia
Soon after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, the roof of St.
Andronikos church in Kythrea caved in and fell into its sanctuary. No
one came by to clear the rubble, so there is a heap of ruins on the
ground covered with tangled greenery. From where I stand, on top of
that heap, I can see that the walls, once known for their frescoes,
have been stripped white and are now marked with black and neon
graffiti. In some places there remain a few painted figures, including
ones of Saints Peter and Paul, but their faces are chiseled out and
their bodies have been pockmarked by bullets. Cars roll by every so
often, but the one persistent sound is the hum of bees coming from
a smashed clerestory window.
I came across this church off a road near the Agios Dimitrios crossing
point on the Green Line, the boundary running through the island and
keeping it cloven in two radically disparate parts: the Republic of
Cyprus, and the upper third of the island Turkey seized in 1974.
Turkey has since held that part under illegal military occupation,
and turned it into a rogue breakaway "state" called the Turkish
Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), recognized by Turkey only.
Dilapidated churches like St. Andro- nikos are a common sight here. As
the journalist Michael Jansen observes, the north, full of 12,000 years
of history at a key crossroads in the Mediterranean, now looks like a
"cultural wasteland."
During and soon after the invasion, museums in the north and
private collections were plundered, artworks were burned in pyres,
stolen, or illegally exported, 21 major archaeological sites were
captured–including the ancient city kingdoms of Salamis, Soli, and
Engomi–along with more than a hundred places that had been inspected
or were being excavated, four castles, and over 500 churches, chapels,
and monasteries, most of them dating to the Byzantine period (4th-15th
centuries). From the interiors were removed several major icons,
mosaics, frescoes, Bibles, wood carvings, reliquaries, silver and gold
vessels, and more. Sixteen thousand icons alone are reported missing.
The Church of Cyprus and the Republic of Cyprus have worked to
repatriate, with some major successes, several of these works through
local, foreign, and international courts. But the list of damaged
items and places keeps growing. As the occupation continues, so does
destruction–whether by intent or neglect, or lack of adequate funds.
While much of the damage that took place in the north cannot be
visited–most of the art hangs in other countries, was destroyed, or
has been secreted away–the 500 religious buildings are still standing,
at least for now. They remain as solid memories of a past that is
flickering out as a new, and decidedly Turkish, culture develops
in the north. The rise of that culture is quickened by the heavy
influx of Turkish settlers, who currently outnumber the indigenous
Turkish-Cypriot population by two-to-one. This cultural shift is
apparent even in the cafés, where the drink of choice is black tea
in tulip-shaped glass cups, the sort you can buy in twelve-packs in
Istanbul. Town names are now Turkish, and the twin red-and-white flags
of Turkey and the TRNC are everywhere–from mountain slopes to the rear
windows of vans. Another part of this shift is seen in the churches
which, with their ravaged cemeteries, are arguably the elements of
Greek Cypriot culture that have suffered the most in the occupation.
Divorced from their original use as houses of Christian worship,
they are now in ruins or used for other purposes.
Most of the 500 buildings belong to the island�s Greek Orthodox
Church, one of the world�s earliest, founded by St. Barnabas in 46
A.D. and decreed autocephalous in 431. Others are Catholic, Maronite,
Armenian Apostolic, and Anglican; a few are synagogues. Nearly all of
them can be visited; but about 50 are inaccessible since they stand
within the U.N.-moderated buffer zone or Turkish military camps,
where they are used as barracks, hospitals, cafeterias, and warehouses.
Over a fifth of the northern churches, like roofless St. Andronikos,
have been skinned of their art and left to the elements and foraging
animals. About 80 other churches still have a religious use as
mosques. Some of them are modest, with creaky mihrabs and sheets
thrown over what remains of the iconostasis (a gilt wall where icons
once hung). Others are rich, with big-branched chandeliers of glass.
In St. Paraskeve in Morphou the gilt bishop�s throne and epistyle
have been reassembled into a mihrab and mimbar. Some mosques that
were formerly churches have been abandoned.
Most of the churches have been cast in new, secular roles as garages,
luxury hotels, granaries, storage rooms for furniture or potatoes or
hay, classrooms, bars, cafés, and art studios. One is a morgue. A
few, such as the St. Barnabas Monastery in the Karpass peninsula,
have been set up as icon galleries with whitewashed walls, but the
works on view are not native to the buildings and are young and
relatively worthless, dating from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Of the Christian buildings in the occupied north, three are kept, at
least in appearance, as churches. But restrictions on their use and
maintenance prevent Christians living in the north from worshiping
in them regularly without interruption by Turkish officials.
The history of converting churches into mosques and mosques into
churches, and of reappropriating buildings of any faith for secular
purpose, is long and well documented. But the argument that Cyprus�s
occupied religious buildings, and the art within them, are legitimate
spoils of war does not hold. In today�s Europe, cultural property is
seen as subsisting in a special niche that should be protected. Under
the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC),
destruction of cultural heritage is considered a war crime.
Furthermore, the European Union itself has several directives on
cultural property–which Turkey would have to follow should it
enter the EU. (Notably, one of the preconditions the EU has set for
Turkey�s admission is a settlement to the Cyprus problem; i.e.,
the island�s reunification.)
This past summer in Washington the U.S. Helsinki Commission (CSCE),
which monitors compliance between and among member states on the
Helsinki accords, issued a 50-page report for Congress on the state
of Cyprus�s cultural and religious heritage, saying that it was
"in peril" and that "under conventional and customary law, Turkey,
as an occupying power, bears responsibility for acts against cultural
property." It also numbers the various ways Turkey has violated
international humanitarian law, as set forth in post-World War II
treaties that Ankara has signed.
While there is a promising, but perhaps fatally slow-going, effort
to reunify Cyprus by diplomatic means, the Church of Cyprus–which
has remained independent through every vicissitude of political
rule–believes it has a special, natural obligation to its religious
heritage. But this heritage, especially if it�s already in shambles,
fades in importance when urgent matters such as governance and property
distribution are being addressed by the diplomats drafting a political
settlement for Cyprus. The churches themselves simply don�t get
much attention. But the Church, headed by Archbishop Chrysostomos II,
is taking significant measures to try to save its property, usurped
by the TRNC. And the Church reminds the EU that Turkey still has a
long way to go before it conforms with EU policies.
Around Easter last year Chrysostomos opened an office in Brussels next
to EU headquarters. When I met with him here in Nicosia–in his long
office, featuring an icon of Christ in judgment on the wall behind his
desk–he cheerfully said that at the new office there will always be
a bishop to welcome EU parliamentarians and "present and promote our
efforts." By doing this, Chrysostomos hopes to "exert some pressure
with the hope that we will manage to restore all the monuments if
possible before it�s too late." Thirty-eight are near collapse.
"Of course, it goes without saying that I can see the huge
difficulties associated with such a task, not to say its impossible
nature. Unfortunately," he continues, "it seems to me that Europe
does not know the real dimensions of the problem."
Chrysostomos is frank about meddling in politics:
I know that the government might be reacting to such an idea [direct
involvement of the Church] especially at this time, but we will
continue our efforts. We invited [Cypriot] President Christofias to
come and inaugurate our offices with us in Brussels, but he didn�t.
To further publicize the churches–and prepare as much as possible for
their pending restoration–the Church has underwritten, through the
Kykkos Monastery, the work of a young Byzantinist at the Hellenic Open
University in Patras, Greece, to catalog all accessible religious
monuments in the north. Professor Charalampos G. Chotzakoglou
started work on the project with a team of archaeologists and other
Byzantinists in 2003, when the Green Line was partially opened by the
TRNC government, allowing people to cross the line freely for the first
time since 1974. The Helsinki Commission consulted Chotzakoglou�s
detailed account when it drafted its report for Congress last summer.
Incomplete reports had been made before Chotzakoglou�s, such as
those by foreign journalists visiting the area, and by Turkish-Cypriot
journalists such as Mehmet Yasin, who wrote some of the most eloquent
testimonies. But the first report, UNESCO�s in 1975, was shelved
because UNESCO feared it was too damning! (It has only recently become
available, and on a strictly limited basis.) The man who submitted
this report–Jacques Dalibard of Canada, who was specially appointed by
UNESCO to assess the state of cultural heritage after the 1974 war–was
not even allowed access to some of the most damaged churches. Still,
he wrote that the whole island of Cyprus should be "regarded as one
huge monument," and that a team of specialists be dispatched solely
to protect the remnants of Greek heritage in the north.
His suggestions were not followed.
Chotzakoglou�s findings were published in a book in 2008 (Religious
Monuments in Turkish-Occupied Cyprus: Evidence and Acts of Continuous
Destruction; Lefkosia) and will soon be available in an online public
database. He has also been tending to a similar project with Greek and
Turkish Cypriots on all religious monuments on the island (Muslim and
Christian), cyprustemples.com. It is a valuable site, but needs to be
updated: Some of the recent destruction, such as the bulldozing of St.
Catherine Church in Gerani in the summer of 2008, and its cannibalizing
for buildings in the nearby village of Trikomo, has not been noted.
Incidentally, the razing of St. Catherine is not an isolated case:
In the past five years 15 churches have been leveled. That such
destruction still occurs is especially disappointing because,
since 2007, there has been a special government-appointed technical
committee of Greek and Turkish Cypriots dedicated to the maintenance
and restoration of heritage on both sides of the island. (To be sure,
these committees are destined to do only some good as long as Cyprus
remains divided: Their success depends on the good faith of both sides
to honor promises to restore the other side�s damaged buildings.)
Destruction did occur to Muslim monuments south of the Green Line,
mostly in the years leading up to the war, when both communities
were fighting and the Turkish Cypriots, in the minority, bore the
brunt of the violence. But the Church and the republic have worked to
restore those buildings–no doubt hoping for a gesture of goodwill
in return–and since 1989 the government has spent over $600,000
in the effort. So far, 17 historic mosques damaged and looted by
Greek Cypriots have been restored. In 2000 the project to restore
and protect all Muslim sites in the south began; the Department of
Antiquities has recorded all their names and will guard them until they
are renovated. This project should be completed sometime this year.
In a recent meeting proposed by the EU, the archbishop met with the
mufti of northern Cyprus and said that he would welcome him as his
guest in the south to inspect the Muslim sites. If the mufti did not
find a site well preserved, he said, then "we as the Church of Cyprus
would be willing to take full financial responsibility to restore it."
In exchange, he told the mufti that he wanted him to "facilitate our
crossing to the Turkish-occupied area in order to begin restoring
our churches with our money. And we will bear any and all costs."
The mufti declined the offer, and suggested that one church in the
north be restored for every mosque restored in the south. Deeming the
mufti�s proposal a "worthless gift"–there are far fewer mosques
in the south than churches in the north, and it would take, at best,
500 years to renovate the north�s 500 churches and "in 500 years
there will be nothing for us to restore"–Chrysostomos rejected the
counteroffer.
The north�s "real policy," he believes, "is to procrastinate so
the monuments themselves might be destroyed in time."
On the morning before I visited some of the northern churches, I
walked through the Archbishop�s Palace museum and looked at the
art on view. In one room, I stopped by seven small wooden boxes,
each with a glass top and containing a head of a saint, archangel,
or Christ rendered in tesserae. The heads rested on white tissue
paper that ran around their heads like second halos or bandages.
The master smuggler Aydin Dikmen had raggedly cut these exceptional
late fifth/early sixth-century works–some of the few to have survived
the rampant iconoclasm of the eighth century–from the walls of the
Church of PanagÃa Kanakariá at LythrankomÃ. Efforts at restoration
and rocky international flights had weakened them further, causing them
to crack. At one point, Dikmen tried to repair the loose tesserae–some
with sockets of silver imported from Bethlehem–with Elmer�s glue.
While they once reminded a visitor of heaven and immaterial gain, they
are now symbols of earth and material loss. Which is painful precisely
because, as Chrysostomos says, "these are not just art objects for us."
The case for the restoration of these churches, and the art within
them, is compelling–and the loss to art history and to Cypriot culture
is immense and immeasurable. Until the island is one again–which could
happen in four months or four decades–its two sides will continue to
diverge, becoming more lopsided, with a Turkish culture taking root
in the north amid the continuing collapse of its Hellenic heritage.
Whatever happens to Cyprus, there remains an eloquent, otherworldly
hope, as expressed by Paul in a letter to the Christians at Corinth at
about the same time the Church of Cyprus was founded by his coworker
Barna-bas: "For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is
destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens." Paul�s thought is especially poignant when
you�re standing inside a church in early ruin, or looking at a torn
mosaic–things that were made, at one time, as if to last.
Katherine Eastland is an assistant editor at The Weekly Standard.