Ruined Armenian city in Turkey becomes World Heritage

ISTANBUL: The UN´s cultural agency on Friday added a ruined Armenian city inside Turkey´s closed border with the ex-Soviet state to its World Heritage list, as it elevated eight other sites across the world to the list ranking.

The site of Ani, which lies outside the Turkish city of Kars, was the capital of an Armenian kingdom around the end of the first millenium, before its conquest in 1064 by Seljuk forces hastened a decline then completed by the Mongol conquest and an earthquake.

In another sensitive inscription, UNESCO elevated to World Heritage status caves once inhabited by Neanderthals in Britain´s overseas territory of Gibraltar, which is claimed by Spain.

They joined seven other sites including in Iran, India, China, Micronesia and Spain in being added to the World Heritage list at the meeting of UNESCO in Istanbul.

The ruined churches and secular buildings of Ani are a hugely sensitive site, lying directly on the other side of Turkey´s completely closed border with Armenia.

Ankara has no relations with Yerevan with the two countries mired in a dispute over the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces during World War I which Armenians and several Western parliaments regards as genocide.

For years an official permit was required to visit the Ani site but this has now been dropped and the Kars authorities are keen to promote its haunting beauty to boost visitor numbers.

It remains to be seen if Ani´s new status could help reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia, with a normalisation process currently stalled and Yerevan occasionally accusing Ankara of failing to protect Armenian heritage in the country.