Christodoulides and Erhurman agree to proceed with an exchange of cultural artefacts

President Nikos Christodoulides and the Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman agreed on Tuesday 20 October to proceed with an exchange of cultural artefacts, the United Nations said in a statement after they met under UN auspices in the UN-protected area of Nicosia. Which objects the exchange will cover has not been announced.

The two leaders also intend to meet the bicommunal Technical Committee on Cultural Heritage before Maria Angela Holguin, the UN Secretary-General's personal envoy, arrives in Cyprus on 29 October.

That committee dates from April 2008, when Demetris Christofias, then President of the Republic, and Mehmet Ali Talat formed it among the technical committees set up ahead of direct talks. Its mandate is the island's immovable heritage. By 2015 some 20 monuments, most of them churches and mosques, had been structurally supported, protected or restored, or were under restoration, in a programme the European Commission has funded since 2012 [1, pp. 134–135].

Movable objects taken from the area occupied by Turkey since the 1974 invasion have come back by other routes, among them the church art and antiquities seized in Munich in 1997 and returned in three batches; the last 60 objects, 24 of them church pieces and 36 antiquities, came back in 2024 under an agreement signed in Munich.