Cultural property protection

The German-Turkish Lawyers Association in cooperation with Koç University in Istanbul convened the conference „Protection of National and Private Cultural Properties“ in Istanbul from June 21 - 23, 2004 in order to deal with the urgent problems of protecting cultural property in Turkey and in other countries. Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer stresses the importance of context and of provenance in modern archaeology. If the context is missing and nobody knows the provenance of an archaeological object, historical facts are lost and the object deprived of any archaeological importance. Assoc. Prof. Sibel Özel, explains about the legal protection of cultural property in Turkey, points out the present legal situation, stresses the shortcomings of the old statutes and urges new legislation. Spyridon Vrellis, professor of law of the University of Athens, presents the recent Greek Statute No. 3028 of 28 June 2002 on the Protection of Antiquities and the Cultural Heritage in General. Lawrence Kaye, attorney-at-law in New York City writes about „Cultural Property Disputes in Foreign Courts“ and gives a lively picture of the difficulties of recovery proceedings brought by source states in order to recover illegally exported art objects, especially archaeological finds. Kurt Siehr, formerly professor of law at the University of Zürich deals with the recent legal developments concerning art law in Europe.