illicit antiquities trading in economic crisis, organised crime and political violence
According to a wide range of opinion within the country and internationally, Turkey has reached a ‘new low’, its civil society has been ‘officially and completely silenced’, through the detention of Osman Kavala, the police’s search of his foundation, Anadolu Kültür (Anatolian Culture), and the police’s seizure of his and his secretary’s computers. I met him a few times when I was last in Turkey and he was always friendly, thoughtful, diligent, keen for socially beneficial work.
In a documentary next week, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR)/Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (ARD) will explain ‘how looted Syrian antiquities are sold in Germany [Wie syrische Raubkunst in Deutschland verkauft wird]’. It looks like it will hit a range of key points.
State financing and assassination in the Cold War
As I noted on my doctoral research blog on Cultural Heritage in Conflict (and as Peter Campbell found elsewhere), there is secure evidence of conflict antiquities trafficking by Communist Bulgaria (the People’s Republic of Bulgaria) during the Cold War. There is also secure evidence of connections between state criminals who trafficked arms from Bulgaria and deep state criminals who trafficked drugs (heroin) from Turkey, at a time when drug traffickers from Turkey also trafficked antiquities.
I’m delighted to say that I was able to make a small contribution to Key Concepts in Public Archaeology (PDF DOI), which explores ‘practice and scholarship where archaeology meets the world’. Realising an ideal of public archaeology, it’s published by UCL Press, under a Creative Commons 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0) for open access. It’s ‘dedicated to Tim Schadla-Hall who has… inspired and supported a generation of public archaeologists’, including me.
conflict antiquities 