Türkiye Recovers New Artifacts From the US, Minister Says

Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy says new artifacts have reached Türkiye from the United States this week. He spoke to journalists on 31 October 2026 at the Antalya Culture Road Festival and said an official announcement will follow. The ministry has not yet said which objects arrived or where they came from.

The remark was brief, but it fits a long-running effort to bring home cultural property that was smuggled out of the country. Ersoy said Türkiye is also working with several other states on the same issue.

What Ersoy said about the returned artifacts

Ersoy said the ministry is running many operations at the same time and cannot discuss their details. He did confirm that new pieces came from the US this week. He added that the ministry would make a formal statement about them.

He named the US, Switzerland, Japan, Uzbekistan, Greece, Denmark and China as countries where work is under way. In his words, the years that have passed since an object was smuggled are no reason to give up the search. The ministry says it will keep tracing such items and return them to the land where they originated.

How Türkiye tracks stolen cultural property

The minister said the number of countries with which Türkiye has made agreements on returning cultural property has risen to 14. He also said the ministry’s anti-smuggling unit has been raised to the level of a department.

To prove where an object came from, officials use archive records, excavation documents, old photographs and scientific analysis. According to Ersoy, the ministry now has experience at every stage: identifying an item abroad, stopping its sale and formally requesting its return. He said experts from other countries now visit Türkiye for training in this field.

Why returned antiquities matter to readers

For readers of Turkish history and culture, repatriation is more than a legal matter. Objects that leave an excavation site without records lose much of their scientific value. When they return with documents, researchers can place them in the right site, period and museum collection.

Many viewers of historical dramas meet this heritage only on screen. Real objects, manuscripts and architecture are the evidence historians use, and television only interprets them. If you follow historical series such as Kuruluş Osman, recovered artifacts are a reminder that the period’s physical record is still being traced and protected.

What remains unconfirmed

Ersoy gave no number, type, age or origin for the objects from the US. Until the ministry publishes its statement, those details remain unknown. The same event also covered tourism figures, the Hagia Sophia restoration and other projects, but the announcement on the new US artifacts is the one still to come.

Source: TRT Haber
Featured image: Joe Wallace / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0