Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy presented 100 cultural artefacts returned to Türkiye from the United States at the Istanbul Archaeological Museums. The same event saw the opening of “Kaçış Yok: Boubon” (No Escape: Boubon), an exhibition reuniting works from Boubon that had been dispersed across different countries and collections. Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos also attended.
Ersoy said that after a US-based auction house offered Anatolian artefacts for sale in May 2026, the ministry shared scientific data and documentation with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), leading to the sale being halted and the works returned.
Among the returned works are 40 objects from Horoztepe in Tokat’s Erbaa district, dated to 2300–2000 BC, which have come back after some 70 years. Forty-four Archaic terracotta architectural plaques from the village of Düver in Burdur, dating to the 6th century BC, were recovered from the J. Paul Getty Museum, while a 1976 crime-scene report proved decisive in the return of a portrait from the ancient city of Aphrodisias. Theatre masks and goddess figurines are also among the returned pieces.
Curated by Ministry specialist Egemen Batu Varol, “Kaçış Yok: Boubon” tells the story of the bronze statues from the Sebasteion of the ancient city of Boubon in Burdur’s Gölhisar district, which were broken up in illegal excavations in the 1960s and smuggled abroad. The Boubon pieces returned to Türkiye include works depicting Lucius Verus, Septimius Severus, Caracalla and Marcus Aurelius.
“Our aim is not to take the works from one display case and put them in another, but to be able to reconsider them within their stories and the cultural whole to which they belong,” Ersoy said.
