THE ISTANBUL FRIENDS

This has now been formally set up as formal and legal association under the energetic leadership of Resit Ergener. The officers and main members are Belkis Balpinar, Nezih Basgelen, Murat Küpçü, Nur Mardin, Ceylan Orhun, Oguz Öztuzcu, Kazim Uzunoglu. Perhaps the most significant coup of the Friends so far has been to encourage Meptur, a travel company in Istanbul, to sponsor a visit of about 40 top journalists and television companies on a visit to the wall paintings in Ankara Museum and to the excavations on September 1995. This trip was incredibly successful and led to a very large amount of media coverage in the days and weeks that followed. We are very grateful to Tomruk and Birgül Özden for their support of this trip.

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