Turkiye recovers 1,149 smuggled artifacts from the US, Greece, France, UK

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Turkiye has successfully recovered 1,149 smuggled artifacts with historical significance from various countries, according to the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

The Directorate General of Cultural Heritage and Museums, in collaboration with the Ministries of Interior, Justice, and Foreign Affairs, led the operation, which forms part of the ongoing effort to repatriate cultural treasures.

Since 2002, Turkiye has retrieved 13,268 artifacts.

This year, significant items were returned from the United States, Greece, France, and the United Kingdom.

In the United States, 41 artifacts, including Roman-era sculptures, terracotta figurines, bronze objects, and 22 idol heads from the Late Chalcolithic period, were repatriated.

These items, dating from the 7th century BCE to the 7th century CE, were handed over at the New York Consulate on December 5 and are now displayed at the New York Turkish House.

They will be transferred to museums in Turkiye. Additionally, a 2,500-year-old bronze chair and a 2,700-year-old necklace from Manisa were returned from the J. Paul Getty Museum.

In Greece, authorities returned 1,055 Lydian coins, minted between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE. These coins, confiscated from smugglers, were handed over in Athens during a ceremony on December 19.

Photo: AA

Another significant recovery involved a marble bust of Alexander the Great from the Hellenistic period, which was identified by the heirs of its previous owner and returned after experts confirmed its Anatolian origins.

In France, two bronze coins, one from the Byzantine Emperor Justin I's reign (518–527) and another from the Artuqid dynasty (1200–1239), were voluntarily returned by a private individual in January. These coins are now part of the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations' collection.

In the United Kingdom, a Quran written by Mustafa Dede, the son of Ottoman calligrapher Sheikh Hamdullah, was intercepted and returned. The manuscript, part of Sultan Abdulhamid II's collection, is now housed at the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in Istanbul.

Additionally, the head of a statue of Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, originally from the ancient city of Boubon in Burdur, was returned after being removed by smugglers in the 1960s.

The statue head had been in Denmark's Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum for nearly six decades.

Photo: Photo via Ministry of Culture

Turkish Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy praised the efforts, highlighting that the return of these artifacts strengthens the connection to Turkiye's cultural heritage.