Aydın Dikmen

Aydın Dikmen (born October 15, 1937) is a Turkish art dealer who was arrested in 1998 for trying to sell Eastern Orthodox art that had been looted from Cyprus during the 1974 invasion.

During the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus in 1974, some of the churches and monasteries in the area were looted for art treasures. Greek Cypriot authorities now suspect that Dikmen had a major part of stripping the churches of their treasures or at least selling them.

Dikmen sold thirteenth-century frescoes from the St. Evphemianos church near Lysi, Cyprus to the Menil Foundation in Houston, Texas in 1984. The Cypriot church approved the deal providing that the frescoes would be returned to Cyprus eventually.

In 1988 Dikmen, Dutch art dealer Michel van Rijn and associate Robert Fitzgerald sold four Kanakaria church mosaics to US dealer Peg Goldberg for $1 million. When she tried to sell them to the J. Paul Getty Museum in California, the museum curator contacted Greek Cypriot authorities. After a 1989 trial a federal court in Indianapolis ordered them to be returned to the Greek Orthodox Church in Cyprus. They currently reside in the Byzantine Museum in Cyprus.

Dikmen

Dikmen is a town and district of Sinop Province in the Black Sea region of Turkey.

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Dikmen (surname)

The surname Dikmen may refer to:

Dikmen (disambiguation)

Dikmen is a town and district of Sinop Province, Turkey.

Dikmen (Turkish: a conical hill) may refer to:

People

Places