Ertuğrul Günay, Turkey’s Culture Minister, believes that the museums of the west are now panicking because of his country’s intensive focus during the last year on the recovery of looted artefacts from their collections.

From:
Hurriyet Daily News

Turkey’s artifacts move panics West museums
Barçın Yinanç
December/24/2012

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News
Western museums appear to be panicking as Turkey continues to facilitate the return of many stolen artifacts, says Culture Minister Ertuğrul Günay

Turkey remains committed to repatriating all the artifacts that have been stolen from its soil over the years, Culture and Tourism Minister Ertuğrul Günay has said while expressing hopes that regional neighbors will also receive back their ancient treasures.
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For some months now, Turkey has been increasing their efforts to retrieve disputed artefacts held by foreign museums. Now, their Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay is requesting a dialogue with the Louvre over the return of various artefacts held by the French Museum.

From:
Art Daily

Turkey’s Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay wants talks with France on ‘stolen’ antiques
Friday, November 23, 2012

PARIS (AFP).- Turkey wants to start a “dialogue” with French authorities for the return of tiles and other antiquities on display at the Louvre museum in Paris, Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay said Thursday.

Saying the artefacts “were stolen at the end of the 19th century”, Gunay said: “We want talks to start between French authorities and the board controlling Turkish museums to work on the issue and take stock.
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Turkey has been very active in pursuing foreign museums that it claims are illegally holding Turkish artefacts in recent months. Now, there are claims that tiles on display in the Louvre formed part of a mosaic illegally removed from a Turkish Mosque, although it is unclear how & when the pieces were removed from their original setting.

From:
France 24

Latest update: 02/11/2012
Louvre – Paris
Louvre denies Turkish tiles ‘stolen’ from historic mosque

Paris’s world famous Louvre museum denied accusations on Friday that it was exhibiting tiles stolen from Turkey hundreds of years ago, following claims made in a Turkish daily that the tiles were pilfered from a historic mosque.

The Louvre museum in Paris on Friday said there had been no official demand from Ankara to return tiles that a Turkish daily claims were stolen from a historic mosque, adding they had been acquired legally.
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Despite little sign of success so far, Turkey is continuing their policy of aggressively lobbying foreign museums who currently hold Turkish artefacts, where the ownership is disputed.

From:
Sofia Globe

Turkey lobbies museums around world to return artifacts
Posted Sep 3 2012 by Dorian Jones of VOANews

Turkey is following an increasingly aggressive policy of getting top museums around the world to return its heritage. Minister of Culture and Tourism Ertugrul Gunay says that in the last decade, more than 4,000 artifacts had been brought back to Turkey from world museums and collections.

Turkey’s minister of culture recently opened a new archeological museum in the western city of Izmir. Ertugrul Gunay is the architect of a museum revolution in the country aiming to harness Turkey’s rich heritage.
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Following the demise of Zahi Hawass’s restitution campaigns after the Arab Spring & the fall of Mubarak in Egypt, Turkey has recently made restitution requests for a large number of artefacts located in foreign museums around the world. Apparently, this is just the tip of the iceberg though – there are many more items on their list of requests than have been revealed so far.

Quite why they are aspiring to – or even using the term Encyclopaedic Museum (also known as a Universal Museum) is unclear though – as this is the justification regularly put forward for retention of the artefacts that they want returned by the museums that currently hold them, I’d have thought that they would be desperate to steer as far away from that term as possible.

From:
The Economist

Turkey’s cultural ambitions
Of marbles and men
Turkey gets tough with foreign museums and launches a new culture war
May 19th 2012

IN THE spring of 1887 a Lebanese villager named Mohammed Sherif discovered a well near Sidon that led to two underground chambers. These turned out to be a royal tomb containing 18 magnificent marble sarcophagi dating back to the fifth century BC. The Ottoman sultan, Abdul Hamid II, ordered the sarcophagi exhumed, placed on rails and carried down to the Mediterranean coast, where they were sent by ship to Istanbul. The largest sarcophagus was believed to contain the remains of Alexander the Great. The coffin is not Turkish and Sidon is now in Lebanon, but the sarcophagus is regarded as Istanbul’s grandest treasure, as important to the archaeology museum there as the “Mona Lisa” is to the Louvre.

The mildly Islamist government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, led by the Justice and Development (AK) party, likes to think of itself as the heir of the Ottoman sultans. The Turkish authorities have recently launched a wave of cultural expansionism, building new museums, repairing Ottoman remains, licensing fresh archaeological excavations and spending more on the arts. A grand museum in the capital, Ankara, is due to open in time for the centenary of the Turkish republic in 2023. “It will be the biggest museum in Turkey, one of the largest in Europe; an encyclopedic museum like the Metropolitan or the British Museum (BM),” boasts an aide to Ertugrul Gunay, the culture and tourism minister. “It’s his baby, his most precious project.”
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