Ahmet Coşkun Özgünel

Professor Özgünel of the University of Ankara directed the Ankara University excavations at Salamis, in the part of Cyprus north of the 1974 dividing line, from 1998 to 2013¹. Lâtife Summerer calls him "student and successor" of Ekrem Akurgal at Ankara¹.

A note in the Cahiers du Centre d'Études Chypriotes for 1999, forwarded by Vassos Karageorghis and headed "Illegal Turkish excavations at Salamis", describes the start of the work. According to it, Turkish archaeologists had approached several European universities for collaboration and been refused, and the dig began in August 1998 under "a certain Professor Özgünel" with students and a young German archaeologist from Tübingen. The team used the dig-houses of the Department of Antiquities (1952-74) and of the Lyon mission (1964-74), which still held material, plans, photographs and books. Visitors reported work at the Agora near the temple of Zeus and near the Campanopetra basilica; Karageorghis passed photographs and a plan to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, through the Permanent Mission, to UNESCO². The note gives the position of the Republic of Cyprus; Summerer says only that the excavations were "controversially discussed from legal and ethical perspectives"¹.

By Summerer's account, the work uncovered a colonnaded road, Roman baths, private buildings and a peristyle building tentatively read as a fish market, and it was finalized in 2013. Five marble statues found in the baths in 2011 are shown in the Iskele/Trikomo Archaeological Museum. A final publication is awaited¹.