A total of 28,811 cultural assets that had been smuggled abroad have been returned to Türkiye through the efforts of teams combating the illicit trafficking of cultural property under the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage and Museums of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, which have been tracking them since 1980.
The ministry continues its efforts to recover artifacts illicitly removed from Anatolia, an open-air museum home to the remains of numerous civilizations, and return them to their country of origin. Since 1980, teams specializing in the fight against cultural property smuggling have conducted 176 recovery operations across 20 countries to trace and repatriate historical artifacts.
According to data from the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums on artifacts repatriated from abroad, 28,811 historical artifacts and cultural objects have been returned to Türkiye over the past 46 years.
The largest number of returned artifacts came from Germany, Croatia, Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, the United States and Serbia. The ministry recovered 8,670 artifacts from Germany, 4,147 from Croatia, 3,750 from the United Kingdom, 3,061 from Bulgaria, 2,747 from the United States and 1,865 from Serbia.
The ministry's repatriation efforts continued uninterrupted in 2026.
Among the latest returns was a marble sculptural head identified as originating from excavations at the Smyrna Agora, which was voluntarily returned from the United States this year. Tiles stolen from Adana Ulu Mosque in 2002 and 2003 were repatriated from Spain, while an Iznik tile determined to have been stolen from Istanbul's Sultanahmet Mosque and Rüstem Paşa Mosque was returned from the United Kingdom. A mosaic panel originating from the ancient city of Zeugma was also brought back from the United States.
