Ekrem Akurgal

Ekrem Akurgal (1911 to 2002) was a professor of archaeology at the University of Ankara³. His excavation work was in Anatolia: with John Cook he headed the Old Smyrna dig from 1949 to 1952². In 1978 he edited the proceedings of the Xth International Congress of Classical Archaeology, held at Ankara and Izmir in September 1973, which include a paper by Vassos Karageorghis on the tomb architecture of Anatolia and Cyprus^4,5.

His part in Cypriot affairs comes after the war of 1974. Lâtife Summerer writes that once the ceasefire of 16 August took hold, Ankara sent a delegation of high-level archaeologists from the Turkish universities, headed by Akurgal, to inspect sites, monuments and museums in the north and to draw up proposals. A second delegation, of museologists, followed in October¹.

Karageorghis's memoirs, as Summerer reports them, record that the Turkish embassy in Nicosia arranged a meeting with Akurgal at the Saray Hotel and that it did not take place. Karageorghis blamed the risk of crossing the lines; Summerer reads it as a civil servant's fear of cooperating with a colleague across the division¹. In 1989, retired, Karageorghis wrote to propose a joint inspection under the umbrella of UNESCO of monuments, sites, museums and private collections. He says the letter went unanswered because Akurgal was no longer in power, and Summerer adds that Akurgal was by then almost eighty¹. His student and successor at Ankara, Çoşkun Özgünel, later directed the Ankara University excavations at Salamis¹.