North-Press Agency
Rustum Abdo
The Turkish regime continues to ignore the international laws and agreements concerned with the protection of the global, cultural and natural heritage, through its repeated violations of cultural property, even though it is a member of the most important institutions concerned with heritage and culture, as well as signing most of the agreements that call for respecting and protecting these properties, beside not targeting such property wherever it is and not destroying it or even seizing it.
The Turkish tribes that came to Asia Minor which has ancient historical authenticity, in the thirteenth century AD and established an empire and then a state for them there, worked systematically – after the establishment of the Turkish Republic in the first quarter of the twentieth century AD – to neglect most of the cultural property belonging to ancient civilizations in Anatolia and North Mesopotamia, such as Hittite, Hurri, Orate, Assyrian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Ayyubid. Those civilizations had left behind thousands of sites and landmarks spread today in most Turkish territories, including sites registered on the UNESCO regulations For the world heritage. Most disturbingly, the developed Turkish Republic has worked to obliterate, remove and distort the history of most of these civilizations, as well as sabotaging and destroying many of its landmarks, such as those in southeast Anatolia, in accordance with its policy, interests and plans, while we find that it attaches all Its capabilities and energies to the preservation of the Ottoman architecture.
Furthermore, the policy of building the 22 dams which Turkey has been working on since the 1930s on both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southeast Anatolia, has clear political reasons and motives more than economic as claimed by the Turkish regime, as it aims at destroying the cultural heritage of the indigenous Mesopotamia peoples, removing their identities and the displacing of its residents.
Turkish dam construction projects, which were called the "Cape Project," were rejected by many Turkish and international associations and organizations, since they would lead to dumping many archaeological and historical sites located south-east of Anatolia, and thus, UNESCO was called for intervention to stop projects related to the construction of dams and coal mines implemented by the Turkish state, which threaten to eliminate a complete human heritage, and they also demanded those supervising authorities not to underestimate its cultural heritage, which represents a huge stock.
An estimated 780 sites were threatened of inundation in south-east of Anatolia, in addition to 1,800 historical buildings. Among these sites are the Zyukma site which contains landmarks dating back to the Hittite, Greek and Roman periods in Gaziantep, and sites belonging to Komosh Kaya in Adiyaman, and the site of Halfeti in Sanilurfa, which contains burial sites, caves, rocky settlements and castles, as well as Diyarbakir castle and its black walls recorded in the UNESCO regulations, beside Hasankeyf site in Batman.
At a time when the Turkish state is working to sink Hasankeyf site, which includes about 4,000 caves, 300 landmarks date back to the Middle Ages and 83 archaeological sites to complete its project, it is working simultaneously to save what can be saved from the Ottoman monuments there; they moved the Artuklu Bath, the Zainal Beck Mausoleum and the minaret of the Sulayman Khan Mosque –all of which belonged to the Ottoman culture.
The complex of the Turkish state and its crimes against the human heritage in the East, which has no connection to its recent history, has extended to include other archaeological sites outside its country's borders. In late 2016, it changed the course of the Tigris River in order to immerse Ein-Dewar archaeological bridge.
Likewise, during its invasion of the Syrian region of Afrin in 2018, it targeted many archaeological sites there, such as Ein Dara Temple, the landmarks of Barad and the site of Nabi-Hori (Cyrrhus), and infringements of most of its sites are still ongoing until this moment by civilians and military personnel supported by the Turkish regime, as many reports indicated to the violations occurred in the site of Nabi-Hori, such as excavating, bulldozing, stealing and looting with the Turkish acknowledge and instigation, but at the same time we find that there are efforts for the restoration of a mosque belonging to the Ottoman period, located in the mentioned site.
This duality and the policy followed regarding dealing with the human heritage by the Turkish regime in relation to preserving the antiquities of the Ottomans at the expense of neglecting and destroying other civilizations, is clear to those who follow the history of the East and the region, and the parties concerned with human heritage, even if the majority of them are observant and silent.