Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy on Monday presented 100 cultural artefacts returned to Türkiye from the United States at the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, Hibya news agency and İhlas News Agency (İHA) reported. At the same event he opened an exhibition titled "Kaçış Yok: Boubon" (No Escape: Boubon), which brings together works from the ancient city of Boubon that are held in different collections.
Matthew Bogdanos of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in New York attended the presentation, according to both agencies.
Auction sale halted
According to the reports, Anatolian artefacts were offered for sale by a US auction house in May 2026. The ministry shared scientific data and documents with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the US Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit, and the sale was stopped.
Ersoy said the aim was not simply to move the works from one display case to another, but to reassess them in their cultural context, the agencies reported.
Horoztepe, Düver and Aphrodisias
The returned group includes 40 objects from Horoztepe in the Erbaa district of Tokat, dated to around 2300-2000 BC, among them ceremonial musical instruments, weapons and metal vessels. The claim drew on research by the archaeologist Prof. Tahsin Özgüç and on records of illegal excavations at the site in 1953.
Also returned are 44 terracotta architectural plaques from Düver in Burdur province, dated to the 6th century BC, recovered from the J. Paul Getty Museum. Other Düver pieces were returned earlier from the US in 2022, from Denmark in 2024 and from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 2025.
A portrait from the ancient city of Aphrodisias was returned partly on the basis of a 1976 prosecutor’s crime-scene report, which recorded that other pieces had also been stolen, according to the reports.
The Boubon bronzes
Bronze statues from Boubon, near Gölhisar in Burdur, were broken up during illegal digging in the 1960s and taken abroad. The new exhibition reunites Boubon works, and the agencies said the link between a statue of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and Boubon was confirmed by a comparison of the statue’s feet with foot moulds and by lead isotope analysis. Excavations at Boubon resumed in 2023.
Ersoy thanked the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, HSI, the Foreign Ministry and Türkiye’s Consulate General in New York, and said Turkish Airlines had carried the works to Türkiye free of charge.
For museum visitors, see our reports on museum entry fees for 2027 and the five new museums at Topkapı Palace.
Sources
- Ersoy: Anadolu’dan kaçırılan eserleri ait oldukları topraklara kazandırmaya devam edeceğiz (Hibya)
- Horoztepe’nin 40 eseri yaklaşık 70 yıl sonra tanıtılan 100 eser arasında yer aldı (Son Dakika / İHA)
Photo: Satdeep Gill / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
