110 smuggled artifacts returned to Türkiye this year

ISTANBUL

Türkiye secured the return of 110 historical artifacts in 2025, bringing the total number of cultural properties repatriated since 1980 to 26,761, according to the Culture and Tourism Ministry.

Culture and Tourism Ministry teams working to combat the smuggling of cultural property continue to track down artifacts taken abroad from Anatolia, a vast open-air museum shaped by countless civilizations. Since 1980, authorities have carried out 169 efforts in 19 countries to locate, document and recover items of historical value.

Germany tops the repatriation list

According to ministry data on “Repatriated Artifacts From Abroad,” Germany ranks first among countries returning the highest number of items, followed by Croatia, Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, the United States and Serbia. Germany has returned 8,670 artifacts, Croatia 4,147, the U.K. 3,748, Bulgaria 3,061, the U.S. 2,701 and Serbia 1,865.

Rare 16th-century İznik tile recovered

The ministry continued its efforts uninterrupted this year, securing the repatriation of 110 artifacts. Among them were an Anatolian jug, two lamps, two terracotta vessels and an armlet inherited by a Canadian resident from his father, all of which are now held at the Anatolian Civilizations Museum in Ankara.

The U.S. also returned a sarcophagus once used to hold the bones or ashes of an adult in ancient Anatolia. A six-sided İznik tile, known to have been stolen from Adana’s Ulu Mosque in 2003 and spotted at a British auction house, was also brought back and is now preserved at Ankara Ethnography Museum.

757-year-old manuscript arrives home

The U.S. voluntarily returned a Byzantine-era pottery piece with a reddish slip and double-lug handle, which was also placed in the Anatolian Civilizations Museum.

A manuscript dated 1268, titled Kitab Şerhu’l-Esma and stolen from the Yusuf Ağa Manuscript Library in 2000, was donated to the Konya Regional Manuscript Library by Nizam Muhammed Salih Yakubi, chair of the Sharia Board of Bahrain’s International Investment Bank.

Other major repatriations include a bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius from Boubon Ancient City in Burdur and İznik tiles stolen from a 1541 mosque built during the Ramazanoğlu Beylik period in Adana.

The U.S. also returned 83 coins minted during the reigns of Emperor Maximianus (A.D. 286–305), Constantine I (306–337), Constantius II (341–346) and Arcadius (383–408).

Votive figurines, ancient jewelry from Switzerland

Switzerland returned a group of Bronze Age votive figurines of a man and woman with gilded facial and belt details, a pair of granulation gold earrings, a blown-glass perfume bottle, a miniature amphora used for cosmetics and multibranched oil holders belonging to a polykandelon from the Early Middle Ages.

These items are now on display at the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology.