Antalya Clock Tower’s original clock stolen, plastic one placed: Officials
ANTALYA
The ongoing restoration works on the historical clock tower in the southern province of Antalya have revealed that the original clock inserted on the outer surface of the tower at the beginning of the 20th century was stolen and a plastic clock was put instead.
“Besides, the iron frame in which the plastic clock was fit also caused cracks on the historical tower,” Demirören News Agency reported on June 6.
The clock tower, one of the landmarks of Antalya, is a part of the city walls built in the Hellenistic period. At the beginning of the 1900s, the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II converted the place into a clock tower.
Highlighting that the clock tower was not maintained since 1985, the agency reported that local officials started renovation work in February.
It did not take much time to figure out that the clock seen on the tower was a plastic one and not the original one put in the 1900s.
An investigation has been opened and without giving details. Officials uttered that the original clock may have been stolen in 1988.
Recep Gürgen, who is 75 years old now, was the last person in 1985 who conducted the maintenance of the clock.
“It was a French-made machine that kept the clock working, and there was no glass on it or a frame around. Someone has placed this frame and plastic clock,” he said. “I don’t know where the original parts of the clock have gone. I even said at that time to officials to protect the original clock.”
“The tower must have been maintained some times more after me, but I have no information. I really cannot understand how someone took the mechanical parts out and put a plastic one in,” Gürgen noted.
“Works to engineer a clock similar to the original mechanical one have already started,” said Cemil Karabayram, the head of the Department of Cultural Properties of the governor’s office of Antalya.
Once it will be finished, the new mechanical clock, similar to the original one, will work by itself without any human touch for years, just like the İzmir Clock Tower and the one in Istanbul’s Galataport.
