Aydın Dikmen and the Church Art of the Occupied North

Aydın Dikmen was a Turkish dealer from Konya who lived in Munich from the 1960s until the late 1990s, and through whose hands passed most of the church art from the occupied north of Cyprus that has since been recovered: the frescoes of the chapel near Lysi, four fragments of the Kanakaria apse mosaic, the cut-up paintings of Christ Antiphonitis, and the icons, frescoes and mosaics found in his Munich flats in 1997. His part in each case is known from an American court record, a German civil judgment, police reports and the statements of the Church of Cyprus. Turkish reporting of 1989 called him the "international boss" of the network that stripped the churches; that is the newspaper's description. Dikmen was never convicted of anything, anywhere. The case that settled the fate of his Cypriot stock was a civil action over ownership, decided in Munich in 2010, and the objects came back to Cyprus in three batches in 2013, 2015 and 2024. Almost everything he is documented as handling from Cyprus was church art; the antiquities on record are a small batch in the last two returns. The photograph at the head of this page shows two fourteenth-century icons of the Evangelists Matthew and Mark from the church at Asinou, stolen from the Metropolis palace in Kyrenia after the Turkish invasion and returned to Cyprus from Britain; they are not recorded as having passed through his hands (photo: Holy Metropolis of Morphou).

Konya and the record before Cyprus

Dikmen was born in about 1937: Archaeology gave his age as 60 when he was arrested in Munich in October 1997 [5], and the reference date usually cited is 15 October 1937 [13]. His home was in Konya, in central Anatolia. On 18 October 1966 the police raided it and seized 296 cultural objects, together with what a Turkish newspaper account of 1989 called "some forged documents that related to the sale of ancient objects"; the arrest concerned looting at the Neolithic sites of Çatalhöyük and Hacılar [4, p. 127]. In 1977 suitcases of antiquities found on a bus in Munich were traced to two men detained in Yugoslavia on their way from Turkey, and two Istanbul dealers questioned on Interpol information named Dikmen as the owner; he and his wife, in the Turkish report's words, "escaped the hands of the police" [4, p. 128]. These are records of arrests and investigations in Turkey. No conviction followed from either.

In May 1982 the Turkish Cypriot weekly Olay, at the end of a four-part series on the plunder of the north, reported that "last week a citizen of the Turkish Republic, Aydin Dikmen, was arrested in Kyrenia by security officials. He was on the list of antique smugglers whom the police are looking for" [12, p. 152]. He was released soon afterwards. A Turkish Cypriot newspaper reported in June 1982 that his wife had deposited a large sum in a judge's bank account; the Indiana court that heard the Kanakaria case in 1989 paraphrased that report, which remains a newspaper's allegation [1; 4, p. 128]. In 1989 the Turkish Cypriot administration of the occupied north gave him citizenship [4, p. 129]. In the Turkish Cypriot assembly in 1997 a deputy said he had been convicted "many times in Turkey"; his lawyer stated in 2010 that he had "not been convicted of antiquities smuggling either abroad or in his [home] country" [4, p. 127]. No record of any conviction has been published. The Turkish Cypriot accounts that name him are set out in Turkish Cypriot accounts.

The Lysi frescoes and the Kanakaria sale, 1983 to 1988

The two earliest recoveries both began in a flat in Munich. In 1983 a London dealer brought the Menil Foundation of Houston to see frescoes there; the seller was Dikmen, who said a contractor in southern Anatolia had found them under rubble in a derelict church, and who showed freehand drawings of a church and a forged Turkish export permit [3, pp. 305–306]. The paintings were the thirteenth-century dome and apse of the chapel of Ayios Themonianos near Lysi. With the consent of the Department of Antiquities and the Church of Cyprus, the Foundation bought them in 1983 and 1984 for a price Fincham puts "near $520,000", to hold and show them before returning them, which it did in 2012 [3, p. 307]. Fincham describes the payment plainly as a payment to "the head of this looting network" [3, p. 307]. The purchase and its reasons are on the Lysi frescoes.

On the same visit the dealer saw a mosaic in the flat that he came to suspect was part of the Kanakaria apse, and according to depositions summarised by the Indiana court he persuaded Dikmen to hand over what he had of it; four pieces reached Cyprus, two of which the Republic found were not genuine [1]. The holder's name was withheld from the Cypriot officials [1].

The apse mosaic of the Panagia Kanakaria at Lythrankomi in the Karpas had been cut from its wall between August 1976 and October 1979 [1]. How it came to Dikmen is not recorded in any judgment, and no court ever named the thief. What the court record does show is the sale. In July 1988 four fragments (Christ, an archangel, and the apostles Matthew and James) were offered through the Dutch dealer Michel van Rijn and two American associates to an Indianapolis art dealer, who was told that the seller had found them in the rubble of an "extinct" church in northern Cyprus while working as "an archaeologist from Turkey assigned to northern Cyprus" [1]. On 7 July 1988, in the free port of Geneva airport, she handed over $1,080,000, and Dikmen gave her a bill of sale for $1.2 million [1]. The Seventh Circuit recorded that van Rijn's lawyer had already contracted, as his agent, to buy the mosaics from Dikmen for $350,000 [2]. That was Dikmen's share: about a third of the price paid in Geneva, and less than the $580,000 the two intermediaries took in commission [1]. The Indiana court held in 1989 that a thief obtains no title under Indiana law and ordered the fragments returned to the Church; the appeal court affirmed in 1990 [1; 2]. The case and the full division of the money are on the Kanakaria mosaics.

The Munich operation of 1997 and the German judgment

In 1997 the Church of Cyprus paid for a recovery operation through van Rijn, who had sold Kanakaria fragments for Dikmen in 1988 and now worked for the recoverers. In September he bought frescoes from Dikmen through intermediaries, 25 on 6 September and seven larger ones the next day, for $124,000 in all; they were the paintings of Christ Antiphonitis, among them parts of the Tree of Jesse and the Last Judgement, and with the Kanakaria medallion of St Thaddeus they were back in Cyprus on 22 December 1997 [5]. The purchases and the Church's payments are set out in the Munich seizure of 1997.

On 9 and 10 October 1997 the Bavarian police moved. Dikmen was videotaped selling stolen goods and was arrested; two flats were raided and fourteen cases and packages taken, with icons, frescoes and the Kanakaria medallion of St Thomas [5]. On 26 November documents found on him led the police to a third flat, rented under a false name [5]. In February 1998 nine icons bought from him were seized from another Munich dealer's home [5]. The police estimated the frescoes, mosaics and icons in his flats at more than $40 million [5]. That is a police valuation, not a price.

The criminal side ended without a trial: the offences were found to be time-barred under German law [6]. The Republic and the Church sued him in Munich in 2004 [9]. On 23 September 2010 the Landgericht München I ruled that about 240 sacred objects, valued at about €30 million, were to go back to the Orthodox, Maronite and Armenian churches of Cyprus [6]. Dikmen, then 73 and described as an "archaeologist, manager and restorer", maintained that he had acquired the works lawfully [6]. He appealed. The Oberlandesgericht München largely rejected the appeal in March 2013 [7], and 173 objects, shown by the Church to come from 51 churches in the north, came home in July 2013 [8; 9]. In March 2015 the court ordered the return of 34 more and found that the Republic had not proved its ownership of 49 others, which it held to be Dikmen's [8]. The last 60 objects came back under an agreement signed in Munich in June 2024 and were shown in Nicosia on 22 July 2024 [9; 10]. Later press accounts give 85 rather than 34 for the 2015 return [9; 10]; this page follows the court's order, as reported at the time [8].

The Antiphonitis paintings and the other churches

Antiphonitis is the church whose losses passed most completely through his stock. Its iconostasis icons had gone and its later paintings had been cut from the walls within a few years of the Turkish invasion; most of the fragments came back through the 1997 purchases, the October raid and the German returns of 2013 and 2015, which are followed piece by piece on Christ Antiphonitis. A later account linked him to four Antiphonitis icons in the Netherlands, but the Rotterdam court's published findings name a different seller, and the Dutch icons sets out what is and is not established.

Samuel Hardy, drawing on the Turkish press of 1989, the Turkish Cypriot assembly record and Church of Cyprus sources, lists the works attributed to the network around Dikmen from at least fifty churches and institutions in the north: wall paintings from the Armenian church in Nicosia, Panagia Pergaminiotissa at Akanthou, Ayios Yeorgios at Kalo Chorio Kapouti, Antiphonitis, Ayia Solomoni at Koma tou Yialou, Lysi and Panagia Apsidiotissa at Synchari; the Kanakaria mosaics; icons from Ayios Chrysostomos at Koutsovendis, Paleosofos, Trikomo and Kyrenia Castle; and icons, a Bible and human remains from Ayios Mamas at Morphou [4, pp. 128–129]. Every entry is a church, a monastery or the icon store at Kyrenia Castle, apart from a sword from the Selimiye mosque; none is an archaeological site. The attribution is Hardy's and his sources'; the court record covers only the objects found in Munich and those sold in Geneva. The wall paintings of Kalo Chorio are on Ayios Yeorgios, Kalo Chorio.

The organisation chart of 1989 and the separate Munich dealers

The description of Dikmen as a boss comes from a series in the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet in May 1989, which drew on an inquiry of the Turkish Cypriot assembly and on the Turkish Cypriot press. It set out a hierarchy with Turkish role-names: an "International Boss" (Dikmen, in Munich), a "Local Boss" in Nicosia (the former paramilitary and intelligence agent Mehmet Ali İlkman, who died in 2012), and below them a "Director", a "Remover" and a "Lookout" [4, p. 129]. The assembly debated a motion for an inquiry on 2 June 1989, and the newspaper's phrase about İlkman as "Denktaş's right arm" entered its record [4, p. 129]. Hardy adopted the scheme in 2021. It is the reporter's reconstruction, attributed to sources that are themselves press accounts and parliamentary speeches; no court has tested it, and no court has found that Dikmen directed anyone. The period in which the scheme places the removals is on organised looting, 1977 to 1982.

A separate group of Turkish dealers in Munich, rooted in south-eastern Anatolia and known for hoards smuggled out of Turkey in the 1960s and 1980s, is often merged with Dikmen's network into a single "Munich mafia". No Cypriot object is documented as passing through their hands. Two things link them to him, and both are reported, not proved: Turkish press described them and Dikmen as "dear friends" [4, p. 152], and one of them told two journalists in 1990 that "Dikmen makes the best fakes" [14]. Their business was Anatolian antiquities. They have no place in the record of the churches of Cyprus.

After his death: Selçuk University, Aliağa and the heirs

Dikmen could not get a collector's permit in Turkey; his wife held one. In 2008 the objects that remained in his possession were imported into Turkey in her name and donated to the museum of Selçuk University in Konya [4, p. 128]. Turkish press later reported that a museum there was to have carried his name [11]. That deposit lies outside the reach of any court that has heard a Cypriot claim, and nothing in it has been identified in public as Cypriot.

He died in Turkey in 2020. Two dates are given: 5 May 2020 in Turkish press reporting [11], and 8 April 2020 in other reference accounts [13]. About a year after his death, Turkish officers raided a house and a warehouse at Aliağa, near İzmir, that had belonged to him, and seized, as reported, some 356 objects of different periods with 27 oil paintings and icons of the eighteenth century and four shrunken heads from South America; the report says the tip came from his heirs [11]. The origin of the icons was not stated, and no Cypriot object has been reported among them.

At the Nicosia ceremony of 22 July 2024 for the last Munich return, the Bishop of Karpasia, speaking for the Archbishop, said that although Dikmen had died in 2020, "his heirs unfortunately still possess, and traffic stolen cultural goods from Cyprus" [10]. That is the Bishop's statement. No heir has been named in any public source, and no case against an heir has been reported. The record of the north after the Munich seizure is on the decline after 1997.

What he handled: church art, and the antiquities on record

Every Cypriot case in which Dikmen appears by name concerns church art: the Lysi frescoes, the Kanakaria mosaic, the Antiphonitis paintings, and the icons, frescoes and mosaics of the Munich flats. His Munich stock as a whole held far more besides, most of it not Cypriot: Cyprus claimed about 300 of several thousand objects [8], and the rest included pre-Columbian pottery, coins, Bibles and paintings from other countries [5]. The Cypriot antiquities that are documented are in the last two returns.

On these figures, 46 of the 267 objects returned through the courts and the final agreement were antiquities rather than church art, about one in six. The Church's statement of June 2024 described the 36 as coming from "occupied archaeological sites and private collections" [9], and Reuters reported the batch as including Chalcolithic and Bronze Age objects [15]. No site, tomb or collection has been named, and no list of the 36 has been published. The 2015 and 2024 batches both give 24 ecclesiastical objects; the reports do not say whether any object was counted in both.

The evidence against keeping church art and antiquities apart

The strongest evidence against this section's separation of the two trades is Dikmen's own stock. The same man, and in 1997 the same flats, held Cypriot icons and Cypriot prehistoric antiquities, and 36 of the 60 objects in the final return were archaeology [9]. His early record in Konya was in Anatolian antiquities, not icons [4, p. 127], and the Turkish Cypriot press of 1982 described a smuggling world in which tomb robbing, the theft of museum figurines and the theft of icons ran side by side [12, pp. 139, 143]. The money, too, was large: about $520,000 for Lysi and $350,000 to him for four Kanakaria fragments [2; 3, p. 307]. Read on its own, his story makes the north look like a place where everything old was taken by one organisation for high prices.

The record limits that reading in three ways. The objects named in every court and police document about him are church art, which could be matched to a published church, photographed before 1974, and sold for six or seven figures because each piece was unique. The antiquities are a minority even of his returned Cypriot stock, and not one of them has been tied to a named site. And his Munich stock was mostly not Cypriot at all [8]. The overlap was in the hands at the top of the trade, not in the objects or the buyers. The wider argument is on church art and antiquities and the prices on the economics of looting.

What the record means for an object on the market today

Dikmen's Cypriot stock was taken into police storage in 1997 and has since been divided by the German courts and the 2024 agreement, apart from 49 objects the court held to be his [8]. An icon, fresco fragment or mosaic from a church in the north that comes on the market today without a documented history before 1974 belongs to the class of objects that Cyprus has recovered in courts in the United States and Germany, and such a piece will be claimed. For Cypriot pottery and other antiquities the Dikmen record is thin: one batch of 36 unnamed pieces, and ten more in 2015. In the same decades that his stock was being assembled, antiquities registered on the island before 1974 were still leaving the Republic lawfully under licence, until the law of 1996 closed the channel (licensed export, 1974 to 1996), and much of the northern-type pottery abroad had left Cyprus decades before the invasion (northern types with lawful histories). An undocumented Cypriot pot is far more likely to descend from those channels than from his flats, and its owner can show which by its papers; the steps are on documenting a lawful history. He is also recorded in the site's people register.