Antiphonitis monastery church

The Byzantine monastery church of Antiphonitis lies lonely but strategically in the hills on the north side, not far from Sourp Magar (see blog Heritage (1). It has a special and beautiful architecture. Inside it has frescoes dating from the 12th to 15th century. Part of the frescoes have been looted, but others are still there.
Greek Cypriots have heavily blamed Turkish Cypriots for the looting, even suggesting that this was part of a bigger plan of the Turkish army to make all Greek signs disappear from their point of the island. Indeed there was a proven case of a Turkish art robber, cooperating with a Dutch one (see: http://www.cyprus44.com/kyrenia/antiphonitis-church.asp. But concerning the harm done to frescoes by visitors, I found hundreds of Greek writings on unique frescoes. Many of them seem to date from before the conflicts on the island, at least the dates that people marked in (!) the frescoes are all before 1975, dates like 1910, 1929 and 1960. This suggests that the Greek Cypriots didn’t care so much or protect this heritage themselves. Just a few pictures to show the serious damage done:
     
There is nothing Turkish there…  it is too easy to blame ‘the enemy’, it is beside the facts and rather paranoid to blame the Turks for a deliberate appraoch in this destruction.

Read also these blogs:
Apostolos Andreas Monastery – Northern Cyprus heritage (21)
Maronites – Northern Cyprus Heritage (11)
Minorities in Gaziantep