Turkey’s Fight Against Cultural Looting Should Start at Home

“Treasure hunting” in Turkey is a byproduct of genocide. Germany-based social anthropologist Alice von Bieberstein, who has conducted field research in formerly-Armenian Mush, now populated by Kurds, argued that while “poverty and global fetishization of underground resources” are factors, local “treasure hunting” is related to the “foundational state violence” and dispossession that was the Armenian genocide.

While crowdsourced, this looting is state-sponsored. As the authors of The Spirit of the Laws: The Plunder of Wealth in the Armenian Genocide have shown, despite Turkey’s Civil Code requirement for a title deed database, Armenian genocide-related property records remain top secret. The Turkish state regulates “treasure hunts” in churches, graveyards, old homes and even remote rural caves so methodically that anthropologist and looting researcher Önder Çelik described Turkey’s treasure-hunting bureaucracy as “an alternative archive for the study of the Armenian genocide.”

Ironically, the recent U.S. ban on illicit Turkish artifacts leaves out a top-looted item connected to Armenian history. Conspicuously missing from the import list are the heavily-looted coins of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, dated from the 11th to 14th centuries. While some bronze Cilician Armenian coins are sold in Western markets for as little as $10 a piece, scarce specimens like bilingual silver coins, which memorialize a short-lived Armenian-Seljuk alliance before the Mongol conquests, can surpass $1,000 in excellent condition. Ancient coins are considered “the smoking guns” of archaeological sites. Their looting, especially when unreported, can thwart new discoveries.

Shutting down the destructive “treasure hunting” industrial complex would be a critical step for cultural preservation in Turkey and beyond.

“Turkey’s near-half-century occupation of the northern part of Cyprus has created the permissive conditions for looting of the local Christian heritage sites, so the U.S. government and heritage community know full well that the presence of the Turkish military in places like Libya, northern Syria and indirectly in Nagorno-Karabakh places at extreme risk both the movable and immovable heritage of local communities,” noted Prodromou.

In October, Turkish forces reportedly oversaw its junior ally Azerbaijan’s intense air offensive against Nagorno-Karabakh (known to Armenians as Artsakh) that included a dual strike on Shushi’s Holy Savior Cathedral. With Turkey’s help, Azerbaijan now controls much of the region, where reports of Armenian monuments’ ongoing erasure, particularly in light of Azerbaijan’s destructive record, have stakeholder communities concerned.

If it chose to support cultural preservation beyond its borders, Turkey could advise Azerbaijan to treat Armenian monuments not as a source of hatred, but as a key to peace, through actions such as granting Armenian pilgrimage access to ancient sacred sites like Dadivank, Tsitsernavank and Vankasar, churches featured in a newly-launched Museum of the Bible online exhibit that have recently come under Azerbaijan’s control. Turkey’s influence on Azerbaijan cannot be overstated: The latter recently formalized the Turkish government’s model of effectively appointing religious minority leaders.

Cultural preservation and destruction are political choices. A well-meaning Turkey could choose to return to its Greek, Assyrian and Armenian communities their respective confiscated properties. It could encourage pilgrimages to those sites by descendants of displaced communities by eliminating visitation barriers like visa fees. Turkey could invite specialists from Armenia and Greece to jointly excavate with local archaeologists not only Christian monuments but also archaeological sites like Amida Höyük and Arzan, candidates for the long-lost imperial Hellenistic Armenian capital Tigranocerta. Doing the latter could serve as a positive model for Azerbaijan, which otherwise denies even the existence of a similar archaeological site, Tigranakert of Artsakh, in its recently acquired territories.

Turkey has already taken positive steps by nominating in recent years the Christian monumental complexes Aghtamar, Ani and Midyat as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Building on that, Turkey should dismantle its looting industrial complex.

(Simon Maghakyan is a Tufts University visiting scholar and University of Colorado Denver lecturer. Research for his writing has been made possible by a grant from the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU). This commentary originally appeared on newsweek.com on July 5.)