Turkey says a total of 180 artifacts were repatriated in 2025
An ancient bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius, repatriated from the United States, was among the year's most notable returns.
Government and Cultural Heritage
Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy announced last week that a total of 180 cultural artifacts were repatriated to the country in 2025.
Ersoy said in a post on Instagram that the repatriations were a “result of a long-term and determined struggle.”
“The number of cultural assets returned to our country between 2018 and 2025 reached 9,133, while the total number of works returned between 2002 and 2025 reached 13,448,” he said.
Ersoy said that an ancient bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius repatriated from the United States was among the most notable returns of the year. It is currently on display as part of the “Golden Age of Archaeology” exhibition at Turkey’s Presidential National Library.
That repatriation had been announced last February by the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, which said it was “surrendered” by the Cleveland Museum of Art after a criminal investigation into a global smuggling network that looted artifacts from the ancient city of Bubon in south-central Turkey.
Two traffickers, George Zakos and Robert Hecht, illegally removed antiquities from Turkey and moved them through Switzerland or the U.K. before sending them on to other European countries and the United States.
Once in the United States, New York dealers including Royal-Athena Galleries and the Merrin Gallery placed the looted Bubon bronzes into museum shows and scholarly publications, creating false ownership histories that made the objects appear legitimate.
The United States also repatriated a Urartu bronze belt, bull-headed helmets, a Lydian silver phiale, an armored emperor statue from the Roman Empire period and 83 bronze coins from Anatolian mints, Ersoy said.
Last month, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced the return of 41 ancient polychrome terracotta relief fragments to Turkey after an investigation.
Bragg had called it an “exceptional group” of plaques and said they were looted from a 2,500-year-old Phrygian temple near Düver.
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Ersoy noted that seven artifacts were also seized in Switzerland’s Canton of St. Gallen and returned, while Bahran returned Ibn Berrecân’s manuscript “Kitab Şerhu'l-Esma” dating to the year 1268. It was delivered to the Konya Yusuf Ağa Manuscript Library in July.
“In 2025, we demonstrated our determination to protect our cultural heritage with concrete results,” Ersoy said. “We continued to identify cultural assets illegally taken out of the country through scientific, legal, and diplomatic efforts, and repatriate them to our homeland.”
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