|
 Damascus and Ankara have been at odds since the start of a
rebellion against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, with
Turkey supporting armed groups fighting Assad's government.
More recently, Islamic State militants have declared a caliphate in
territory they hold across Syria and Iraq and have destroyed
monuments they consider pagan and sacrilegious.
One museum at the 2,000-year-old Roman city of Palmyra, a UNESCO
World Heritage site the jihadi militants took over in May, has been
turned into an Islamic State prison and courtroom, Syria's
antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim told Reuters.
Even more destructive for Syria's archaeological heritage are
illicit excavations at sites such as Palmyra and the even older site
of Mari, near the Iraqi border, he said.
Abdulkarim said more than 2,000 objects looted from these sites had
been seized in Turkey, which in contrast to other countries
neighboring Syria refuses to cooperate with the Syrian authorities
on documenting and returning the artifacts.
"The Turkish government refuses to register (the seized objects).
There is no information, no pictures. It's not transparent,"
Abdulkarim told Reuters in an interview in Vienna.
"They should change their approach. They told us, we cannot (do
this) because our law (prohibits) us from declaring what we have,"
he said.
A Turkish Culture Ministry spokesman said Abdulkarim's allegations
were "baseless".
"Some Syrian antiquities may have been smuggled to Turkey ... We are
doing our best to prevent such smuggling," he said.
"Whenever we seize such antiquities we return them to the related
country's institutions. We trained our border police on the issue
very recently. I think those allegations are politically motivated,"
the Turkish official said. PERMITS ISSUED BY ISLAMIC STATE
The 2,000 objects seized in Turkey compare with 6,500 recovered by
Syrian authorities from smugglers, 300 seized by Jordanian
authorities and 90 returned to Syria from Lebanon since the
beginning of the war, according to Abdulkarim.
[to top of second column] |
He said that the absence of relations between Syria and Israel meant
no information about looted objects found there was reaching him
either.
Abdulkarim described permits issued to looters by Islamic State,
also known as Daesh, in exchange for a cut of their profits.
Equipped with these documents, looters could trawl sites such as
Mari or nearby Dura Europos with bulldozers in search of artifacts
to smuggle to Turkey.
"Last month we received these documents (that say) 'State of Daesh',
the Department for Archeology gives this person the permission to do
whatever excavation he wants at this site," Abdulkarim said.
Looting began on a large scale in 2013, and nothing has changed on
the ground since a United Nations resolution protecting Syrian and
Iraqi heritage sites passed in February, he said.
"We need European countries, the United States, Japan (and others)
to convince those who buy our artifacts to refuse them," Abdulkarim
said.
Buyers of such objects live in Britain, the United States, Arab Gulf
countries, China, France, Germany and Switzerland, he said. "If you
buy our artifacts, you support Daesh."
(Additional reporting by Ercan Gurses in Ankara; editing by Estelle
Shirbon)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
