Turkey’s Cultural Heritage Request: A Case Against Renewal

The Committee for Cultural Policy, Inc and Global Heritage Alliance, Inc submit this testimony to Cultural Property Advisory Committee Regarding the Renewal of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Government of the Republic of Türkiye and the United States of America Submitted September 8, 2025 to the U.S. Department of State

PRECIS

Turkey seeks a renewed U.S. cultural agreement while presiding over some of the most consequential heritage losses in modern times. The state has flooded, bulldozed, converted, or rebranded major monuments: Hasankeyf vanished beneath the Ilisu Dam; historic Sur/Diyarbakır was razed; Hagia Sophia and the Chora Church were shifted from museums to mosques; and Ani Cathedral—an emblem of Armenian Christianity—was rechristened the “Fethiye (Conquest) Mosque.” These actions exemplify a wider pattern of erasing or nationalizing the heritage of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Jews, and Kurds, even as Turkey claims ownership of their sacred objects.

Hagia Sophia. Visitor peels strips off a painted marble wall and collects it in a bag, spring 2022.

At home, looting is not hidden but promoted through a booming “treasure hunting” subculture (definecilik), amplified by influencers and metal-detector commerce that targets Orthodox Christian and Armenian sites. Abroad, Turkey frames itself as a protector while pressing museums and universities with coercive demands and politicized loan practices. President Erdoğan repeatedly turns monuments into political theater, invoking “cultural protection” to mobilize supporters during difficult elections.

Meanwhile, U.S. Designated Lists tied to the agreement have swollen into a sweeping embargo that covers millennia and includes ordinary trade goods—Byzantine and Ottoman textiles, coins, ceramics, and manuscripts long produced and circulated in large quantities. The result is diminished access for education and scholarship, impediments to U.S. museums fulfilling their missions, and harm to diaspora communities seeking to reconnect with their histories.

I. Introduction

This testimony addresses the central challenge facing the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC): the obligation to follow the law it was created to uphold. The CPIA does not permit CPAC to rubber-stamp requests from foreign governments; it requires careful, fact-driven analysis. The law demands that any import restrictions balance two imperatives: first, the protection of archaeological sites from looting, and second, the American public’s lawful right to access objects for education, for scholarship, for legitimate collecting, and for the fulfillment of U.S. museums’ mandates to preserve and display the art of the world.

Display of antiquities, Izmir Museum of History and Art, Turkey, Photo by Carole Raddato from Frankfurt, 1 April 2015, Germany, CCA-SA 2.0 Generic license.

Türkiye’s request for renewed import restrictions, like more than two dozen other deeply flawed but endlessly renewed agreements, fails this legal test. CPAC is required to scrutinize such requests in light of evidence, not rhetoric. And when the law and the facts do not match, the Committee has a duty to limit the scope of agreements or to recommend rejecting them entirely.

In Türkiye’s case, the evidence is clear: the state itself has destroyed or converted major World Heritage sites such as Hasankeyf, Sur/Diyarbakır, Hagia Sophia, Chora Church, and Ani Cathedral. It has erased the heritage of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Jews, and Kurds, while claiming ownership of their sacred objects under Law No. 2863. It has bullied U.S. and European museums with coercive demands for repatriation and withheld foreign loans of art to punish scholarly institutions.

Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has repeatedly invoked “cultural protection” to advance his party’s authoritarian policies – whenever he faces a difficult election he nationalizes or Islamizes the cultural institutions of Christian and Jewish minorities – including World Monuments considered holy to these communities. These are not measures consistent with the 1970 UNESCO Convention, nor are they grounds for U.S. embargoes under the CPIA.

Hittite Gold Pendant, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Norbert Schimmel Trust, 1989.

Although Turkey portrays itself abroad as a leader in combating antiquities trafficking, inside its borders looting is widespread, commercialized, and often tolerated. Looting in Turkey is not clandestine: thousands of websites openly promote definecilik (“treasure hunting”). While Turkey demands international import restrictions to protect antiquities, it simultaneously tolerates and profits from widespread domestic looting—especially at Armenian and Greek heritage sites.[1] This alone should eliminate any possibility of renewal of Türkiye’s MOU.

Meanwhile, the Designated Lists attached to U.S.–Türkiye agreements have grown into sweeping embargoes, extending to objects from 1.2 million years ago to A.D. 1770, and ethnological material dating from approximately the 1st century A.D. to A.D. 1923. This pattern of absurdly broad restrictions wholly unjustified under the statute — repeated in multiple U.S. cultural property agreements with other nations — is not really a means of protecting irreplaceable heritage. It is extending foreign, nationalizing cultural policy into U.S. law, depriving American citizens of access to art and scholarship, while strengthening regimes that suppress Christian, Jewish, and other minority religions at home.

The only law-abiding and truly American course is to enforce the CPIA as written. That means cutting back overbroad Designated Lists, refusing to legitimize nationalizing cultural claims, and, where the statutory criteria are not met — as in Türkiye’s case — backing away from agreements entirely.

II.  The Legal Framework

Tulip, Turkey, 1708-1709 CE/1120 A.H.  The Edwin Binney, 3rd, Collection of Turkish Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Copyright LACMA.

The Cultural Property Implementation Act (“CPIA”), enacted in 1983, strictly circumscribes when the United States may enter into bilateral agreements with other States Parties to the 1970 UNESCO Convention. Congress made clear that import restrictions may not be imposed simply because a foreign government requests them, or because of diplomatic considerations. Instead, CPAC and the State Department must apply four mandatory statutory determinations:

1. The cultural property on the proposed Designated List must be in jeopardy from pillage;
2. The requesting nation must have taken measures consistent with the 1970 UNESCO Convention to protect its cultural patrimony;
3. U.S. restrictions must be part of a concerted international response, and less drastic remedies must be unavailable; and
4. Restrictions must be consistent with the general interest of the international community in the interchange of cultural property among nations for scientific, cultural, and educational purposes.[2]

Congress also required that only two categories of material may be restricted: (1) archaeological material of “cultural significance” at least 250 years old, normally discovered by excavation; and (2) “ethnological objects” produced by non-industrial societies that are important to cultural heritage due to rarity or distinctiveness.[3]

Türkiye’s request, and the renewal now under consideration, do not satisfy these statutory requirements. The application is overbroad, political in purpose, and unsupported by factual evidence of looting or market demand in the United States.

III.  Türkiye Fails to Meet the CPIA DeterminationNo Evidence of Current Pillage or U.S. Market for Fresh Loot

Bowl, Turkey, 1550-1575, The Museum of Islamic Art, Qatar, Google Art Project.

Türkiye has provided no credible evidence that archaeological or ethnological materials recently looted within its borders are being imported into the United States. Instead, the request focuses on categories of artifacts that have been in circulation for decades or centuries: Byzantine coins, Ottoman textiles, ceramics, metalwork, and manuscripts openly traded in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar well into the twentieth century.[4] Likewise, claims have been made for objects held in well-known museum collections for decades, but these have nothing to do with the MOU at issue.[5]

By contrast, the actual seizures recorded in Türkiye in recent years overwhelmingly involve transit traffic of Syrian and Iraqi material, or minor domestic cases. A 2017 study by the European Commission noted 1,366 cases of attempted export of cultural goods since 2013 but found that most purchasers were in Gulf States or Europe, not the United States.[6] The two largest seizures in 2017 were not antiquities at all, but phonograph records.[7]The statutory requirement that restricted objects be “in jeopardy of pillage” is not satisfied. Nor is there evidence of a U.S. market sufficient to justify restrictions.

Failure of Self-Help – Destruction of Heritage

Hasankeyf in the process of being inundated, home to Kurds and other minorities, 23 May 2007, Photo Herbert Frank, CCA 2.0 Generic license.

The second requirement—that Türkiye itself must be taking measures consistent with the 1970 UNESCO Convention—is flatly contradicted by Türkiye’s record. The Turkish government has repeatedly destroyed or allowed the destruction of major heritage sites:

• Hasankeyf: The Ilisu Dam project, completed in 2020, flooded more than 300 archaeological sites, erasing a multi-ethnic heritage of Neolithic, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman civilizations.[8]
  • Sur/Diyarbakir: Beginning in 2016, Türkiye bulldozed large parts of this UNESCO World Heritage site, destroying Armenian, Syriac, and Jewish monuments along with Kurdish neighborhoods.[9]
  • ‘Ain Dara Temple: Turkish shelling in January 2018 destroyed 60% of this unique Syro-Hittite Iron Age monument just across the Syrian border.[10]
  • Göbekli Tepe: Heavy equipment and careless Ministry of Culture construction work caused irreparable damage to the world’s earliest known temple.[11]
  • Neglect of Topkapi, Ephesus, and the Temple of Artemis: Turkish press and international archaeologists have repeatedly criticized government failure to maintain basic conservation, leading to structural collapse risks and swamp-like conditions.[12]

In short, Türkiye is not protecting its minority cultural patrimony. It is actively destroying it and allowing it to crumble.

A Government Invitation to Loot

Screenshot of Turkish metal detecting website, with ‘instructional’ videos to explain the most likely locations in an Armenian or Greek house, as well as in an Armenian church.

Turkey does not allow export of antiquities but it is allowing looting to flourish at Armenian and Orthodox Greek sites. Turkish archaeologists fear that the country is facing a self-inflicted looting nightmare. Looting with metal detectors is not a fringe activity but a mainstream, state-tolerated phenomenon. Social media platforms and e-commerce businesses actively profit from it, while Armenian and Greek heritage sites remain the primary victims of this destructive “treasure hunting” culture.[13]

YouTube and Facebook have verified multiple Turkish “treasure hunting” influencers: Maceracı Defineci (479,000+ subscribers), Arkeolog (200,000+ subscribers), and Usta Defineci (190,000+ subscribers) are just some of these. These channels feature training videos with titles like “Armenian Treasure” and “Greek Treasure,” directly tied to looting sites connected with displaced or destroyed minority communities. Uğur Kulaç, owner of ugurelektronik.com, founded the Anatolia Treasure Hunters Training and Research Association, registered with the Turkish government. Metal detectors—key tools for looters—are marketed nationwide. A simple search for dedektör yields more than 200 businesses.[14]

Lack of Concerted International Response

The CPIA requires that restrictions be part of a “concerted international response.”[15]  No other major market nation imposes blanket restrictions on Turkish material as sweeping as those sought by Ankara. Without evidence of coordinated action, a unilateral U.S. embargo would have no impact on alleged looting and would fail to deter pillage.

Contrary to International Cultural Exchange

Beyhekim mosque mihrab, Museum of Islamic Art at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

Türkiye’s record of cultural cooperation is one of hostility and blackmail, not exchange. Successive Turkish governments have denied excavation permits to foreign universities and withheld museum loans to force repatriation of objects long in Western collections.[16]For example: In 2011, Germany was pressured to return a Hittite sphinx held since 1917, with threats to terminate major projects if it refused; subsequent loans were still withheld pending more returns.[17] In 2013, Culture Minister Ömer Çelik publicly insisted a Konya prayer niche should be “returned” despite acknowledging lawful export licenses, asserting that a Muslim mihrab’s presence in a foreign museum was improper as a matter of principle.[18] Such conduct undermines the CPIA’s purpose of fostering cultural interchange. Türkiye has not demonstrated a commitment to permitting exchange of archaeological and ethnological materials except on coercive terms.

After new research substantiated Turkish claims, a number of well-known and long exhibited objects in U.S. museums have been returned.[19] Museum research, not import restrictions, has been the determining factor to send these ancient artworks back to Türkiye.

The Philosopher, bronze, Hellenistic Greek or Roman, circa 150 BCE to 200 CE, formerly in the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Regrettably, Türkiye’s cultural policy is not characterized by cooperative investigation but of coercion directed at foreign museums.

Loan practices reinforce the coercive posture. When loans are granted to U.S. museums, Türkiye requires expensive, continuous state “representation” far beyond standard courier protocols; frequently, loans are denied or canceled altogether to advance diplomatic objectives.[20] This behavior is antithetical to the CPIA’s fourth determinant favoring interchange for scientific and educational purposes.

Further, there is no indication in the publication of the proposed extension in the Federal Register that the Turkish government actually requested the extension of the previous agreement.[21] If there was a request, publication of the fact that it was made is required under the law.[22]

IV.  State-Sanctioned Destruction of World Heritage

Türkiye’s cultural policies under President Erdoğan have moved beyond neglect to deliberate appropriation and destruction.

Turkey Kariye Camii The dome of the narthex of the Chora Church or Mami

Hagia Sophia (Istanbul): This World Monument venerated by multiple Christian sects as one of the most important sacred sites in the world, and open to all as a museum for many decades, was converted from a museum to a mosque on Erdoğan’s orders in 2020. Hagia Sophia now receives up to 40,000 Muslim worshippers daily without conservation controls. Security cameras and barriers are ignored. Visitors have been documented peeling paint and vandalizing doors. In 2022, reports documented shattered marble floors from heavy cleaning equipment and worshippers removing fragments of the Emperor’s Gate door to eat them as relics.[23]

Chora Church (Kariye Museum): A Byzantine jewel with some of the world’s finest mosaics, was converted to a mosque in 2020. Display of figural art is imperiled under mosque use.[24]

Two people sitting inside the Cathedral of Ani in Ani, Turkey, just a hundred meters from the Armenia border. Now claimed to be Muslim mosque. Photo Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, 9 August 2009, CCA-SA 3.0 Unported.

Ani Cathedral (Kars Province): In 2025, as restoration of this world famous ancient Christian cathedral was being completed by a joint World Heritage Fund and Turkish team, the Turkish government announced that the restored 11th-century Armenian cathedral would reopen as the “Fethiye (Conquest) Mosque,” erasing its Christian Armenian identity.[25]

These actions contravene Türkiye’s obligations under the UNESCO World Heritage Convention and the 1970 Convention’s Article 12 mandate to “respect the cultural heritage within the territories of which [States] are responsible.” They also reveal the fundamentally political purpose of Türkiye’s MOU request: not to preserve shared human heritage, but to strengthen the hand of a politician determined to consolidate a nationalist Islamist narrative and erase the pluralist history of Anatolia.

V.  Systematic Erasure of Minority Heritage — Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians/Syriacs, Jews, and Kurds; the Legal Framework of Law No. 2863; Vakıf Property Disputes; Continuing Cultural Dispossession

Türkiye’s application for expansive U.S. import restrictions must be evaluated against the demonstrable reality that the Turkish state has long pursued a policy of suppressing, appropriating, or erasing the religious and cultural heritage of minority communities within its borders. That policy is incompatible with the CPIA’s second determination (self-help) and fourth determination (interchange of cultural property). It would be perverse to reward it with a U.S. embargo purporting to “protect” from pillage what the state itself is dismantling.

Armenians

The Armenian presence in eastern Anatolia extended over millennia until the Turkish government’s organized deportations and massacres beginning in 1915 destroyed the community, with mass killings, starvation, expropriation of lands, churches, manuscripts, and sacred objects, followed by denial and state seizure of remaining ecclesiastical property.[26] The afterlife of this dispossession is visible today in the state’s appropriation or instrumentalization of Armenian heritage sites (e.g., the Cathedral of Ani) under Islamizing narratives or as touristic backdrops absent recognition of Armenian identity or custodial rights.[27] The July 2025 announcement that the restored Cathedral of Ani (Surp Asdvadzadzin) will reopen as the “Fethiye (Conquest) Mosque,” scrubbed of reference to its Christian Armenian origins, starkly illustrates this policy of erasure in the midst of restoration.[28]

Of course, a great many Turkish people do not support the Erdoğan government’s anti-minority policies.

Protests in Istanbul during the funeral of murdered journalist Hrant Dink where more than 100,000 people marched.[58] Protesters hold banners saying “We are all Hrant, we are all Armenians”. (panorama from Halaskargazi Boulevard in Şişli district) Photo Kerem Özcan. 23 January 2007. Copyright free.

The Greek Orthodox population in Türkiye fell from roughly 100,000–120,000 at the time of the 1923 Lausanne population exchange to only a few thousand after the September 6–7, 1955 pogrom in Istanbul and subsequent waves of intimidation, confiscations, and expulsions.[29] Churches, schools, and cemeteries were seized as “nonfunctional” or transferred from community vakıfs to state control, while property claims by the Ecumenical Patriarchate remain tightly circumscribed.[30] The conversion of Hagia Sophia and Chora (Kariye) from museums to mosques since 2020 has effectively revoked their civic, universal status and placed their Byzantine mosaics and fabric in conservation jeopardy amid mass unsupervised use for worship.[31]

Assyrians/Syriacs

Assyrian/Syriac communities, victims of the Seyfo genocide (1914–1920), continued to suffer expropriation in the late 20th and early 21st centuries through land registries and administrative maneuvers in Mardin province, with monasteries and church lands “reclassified” and transferred to the state treasury or the Directorate of Religious Affairs.[32] Even where partial property returns have occurred, legal insecurity persists, and the denial of legal standing to many non-Muslim communities renders them unable to defend or alienate ecclesiastical cultural property.[33]

Jewish Community

Sign at St. Giragos Armenian Church in Diyarbakır, Author Nevit Dilmen, 25 August 2012, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, Wikimedia Commons. Expropriated by government of Turkey, 2016.

Once numbering around 200,000 in the early Republic, Türkiye’s Jewish population has dwindled to fewer than 20,000 due to discriminatory taxes (e.g., the Varlık Vergisi of 1942), periodic violence, antisemitic propaganda, and sustained pressure on community institutions.[34] The Erdoğan government’s tolerance of hate speech and failure to protect Jewish heritage sites has coincided with the broader policy of privileging Islamic “Holy Relics” while treating non-Muslim ritual objects as museum property of the state without export pathways even to the diaspora communities that created and used them.[35]

Kurds and Multi-Religious Sur (Diyarbakır)

In Sur, Diyarbakır, a UNESCO World Heritage site, the state’s 2016–2017 “urban renewal” bulldozed historic neighborhoods, flattening registered monuments and sacred sites, including venerated sites of the Armenian, Syriac, and Jewish communities.[36] Debris from cultural monuments was reportedly dumped into the Tigris; expropriation orders followed, and critical local officials who objected to the destruction were arrested.[37] This is not heritage protection; it was state-driven obliteration of plural memory in a Kurdish-majority district.

VI.  Law No. 2863 and the Architecture of Control

Türkiye’s principal cultural property law, Law No. 2863 on the Protection of Cultural and Natural Assets (1983), defines “cultural property” so broadly as to encompass virtually any movable or immovable object “before and after recorded history,” and then vests decisive control in the state.[38] Notably:

Religious heritage objects are categorized as cultural property under state ownership; Islamic “Kutsal Emanetler” (Holy Relics) are celebrated and circulated among state museums, whereas non-Muslim ritual objects (church icons, Torahs, synagogue records) are retained in museum storage and denied export to descendants in the diaspora.[39]
No national, public registry of movable cultural property exists; museum registries are atomized and opaque.[40]
Türkiye’s ethnographic property regulations (1988) nominally allow domestic trade in objects “not complementary” to museum collections and lacking “documentary value,” but export is disallowed for broad, ill-defined classes of objects “symbolizing traditions and religious beliefs,” with determinations made by local museums that also compete to retain material.[41]

The legal framework thus makes diaspora reclamation impossible: sacred objects belonging to communities that no longer exist in Türkiye are deemed state property with no export mechanism. This is not consistent with the CPIA’s goal of balancing protection with lawful circulation.

Vakıf (Foundation) Property Disputes and Partial Restitutions

Non-Muslim communities must act through community foundations (vakıflar), yet many such foundations were dissolved over the 20th century for being “nonfunctional,” enabling the state to seize their properties. The 2011 Restitution Decree promised returns or compensation. However, a few isolated returns (e.g., Mor Gabriel monastery properties in 2018; some Bozcaada Greek Orthodox buildings announced in 2014) are offset by continued refusals and reversals (e.g., Sanasaryan Han was seized in 1936; the state retained title after a 2019 cassation ruling).[42] Without stable legal personhood and equal standing under the law, minority communities remain vulnerable to dispossession, including of their ritual and archival heritage.

 These facts negate any finding that Türkiye is meeting the 1970 Convention’s obligations or the CPIA’s second and fourth determinants. The state cannot simultaneously erase minority heritage and claim a U.S. embargo to “protect” it.

VII. The Commercial and Industrial Nature of Most Turkish “Designated List” Categories — Ineligible Under the CPIA

‘Lotto’ Carpet, late 16th century, Turkey, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

Congress limited CPIA coverage to (a) archaeological material of cultural significance (more than 250 years old, normally excavated) and (b) ethnological material from non-industrial societies whose importance arises from distinctive characteristics or rarity.[43] Türkiye’s application, by contrast, sweeps in mass-produced trade goods that have circulated globally for centuries.

These include Byzantine and Ottoman textiles, garments, and raw cloth: The Cairo Geniza records a Mediterranean economy of staggering textile commerce from the 10th–12th centuries onward, with detailed trousseaux and estate inventories specifying Byzantine brocades, silks, and household metalwork held in ordinary homes.[44]

Holbein carpet with large medallions, 16th c., Central Anatolia, Turkey.

Bursa silk industry and Anatolian weaving centers: Travel accounts and tax registers describe industrial-scale textile production in Bursa and elsewhere, exporting to Italy and beyond; by the 15th century, “countless” silk workshops produced satin, gold- and silver-thread cloths, and camelot, later expanding into raw-silk supply for nearby regions.[45]

Ceramics and metalware: Iznik ceramics, copper/brass ware, and candlesticks were made in vast quantities for regional and European demand.

Byzantine/Ottoman coinage: Huge hoards of gold coins were discovered during construction projects in Istanbul in the 20th century; after Turkish museums selected the ones they wanted, the remaining coins circulated freely or were melted as bullion.[46]

These objects are industrial outputs, not ethnographic survivals of “non-industrial” societies. Congress did not intend to embargo ordinary commercial categories that exist by the tens of thousands — or millions — and that

Turkish ‘towel’, embroidered. Honolulu Museum of Art.

circulated lawfully for centuries. Nor does the CPIA contemplate embargoing objects like post-1700 Ottoman decorative arts with well-documented global trade histories.

Moreover, even late 20th-century practice in Türkiye permitted significant exports of “common” antiquities after museum review. Export controls were episodic and inconsistent, with no standardized permit trail provided to exporters — a fact that today could be used to trap U.S. importers who cannot produce paperwork that Türkiye itself never issued.[47]

VIII. Consequences for U.S. Communities, Museums, Scholars, and Small Businesses

Torah case belonging to Abraham of Camondo, head of the Jewish community of Constantinople, 1860, Musee d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaism, Paris.

Diaspora Harm and Viewpoint Discrimination
Armenian-, Greek-, Assyrian-, Kurdish-, and Jewish-American communities would be denied access to the objects of family, religious, and civic identity — even where their ancestors were forcibly expelled and their properties seized. Türkiye’s assertion of state ownership over non-Muslim religious heritage, combined with a U.S. embargo, would lock diaspora communities out of their hidden patrimony, while Islamic “Holy Relics” circulate among Turkey’s state museums. This disparity is religious discrimination masquerading as heritage protection.

Museums and Scholarship
Embargoes impede bequests and donations, complicate provenance research (by shifting evidentiary burdens where no Turkish documentation exists), and chill loans. Türkiye’s willingness to cancel loans to obtain concessions undermines joint exhibitions, comparative research, and cataloging projects that the CPIA was supposed to enable.

Lawful Trade: Small Businesses
Design and material-culture businesses such as carpet and textile dealers, numismatists, manuscript and calligraphy specialists are typically very small, family businesses. They already operate under enhanced due diligence norms adopted since the early twenty first century and routinely include provenance vetting for conflict-period materials.[48] A broad Turkish embargo would function as a de facto ban on major collecting categories that pose negligible AML risk, as noted in the U.S. Treasury’s 2022 findings.[49]

Process and Enforcement Harms
Customs and Border Protection’s inconsistent evidentiary demands under overbroad Designated Lists create unpredictable seizures and forfeitures even for objects with long European and other foreign ownership outside of Türkiye. Where the source state never issued export permits, U.S. importers cannot produce what does not exist, and the effective embargo created by the MOU criminalizes otherwise lawful circulation.

IX. The CPIA Determinations and Their Application to Türkiye

Dish with Sailing-ship Design, ca. 1600, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

In Jeopardy from Pillage (19 U.S.C. § 2602(a)(1)(A)) — Not Met
Türkiye presents no credible evidence of current, serious pillage within its borders supplying the U.S. market. Data cited in EU studies emphasize transit traffic and non-U.S. buyers (Gulf, Europe).[50] The high-visibility 2017 “cultural seizures” were modern phonograph records undeclared at the Turkish border, not antiquities.[51] Without proof of current pillage aimed at the U.S., the first determinant fails.

Self-Help Measures Consistent with 1970 Convention (19 U.S.C. § 2602(a)(1)(B)) — Not Met
Türkiye’s own actions destroyed or endangered Hasankeyf, Sur/Diyarbakır, ‘Ain Dara, Göbekli Tepe, and multiple sites facing neglect (Topkapı, Ephesus, Temple of Artemis).[52] Conversion of Hagia Sophia and the Chora Church from museums to mosques and the rebranding of Ani Cathedral are just a few examples of Turkish actions that violate Article 12’s command to “respect the cultural heritage” of territories under a state’s responsibility. This is anti-self-help.

Concerted International Response; No Less-Drastic Remedies (19 U.S.C. § 2602(a)(1)(C)) — Not Met
There is no comparable suite of restrictions adopted by other major market nations on the majority of circulating Turkish objects. EU 2019/990 restrictions on antiquities do not apply to the majority of Ottoman artworks wither because they are of late date or low value. Unilateral U.S. embargoes simply displace trade and produce negligible benefit. Less-drastic remedies abound  including targeted border enforcement against conflict-zone trafficking, open publication of seizure databases, and diaspora-heritage pathways for non-Muslim religious property.

On 28 January 2018, Syria’s antiquities department and the SOHR, said that Turkish shelling had seriously damaged the ancient temple of Ain Dara at Afrin.

Consistency with International Interchange (19 U.S.C. § 2602(a)(1)(D)) — Not Met

Türkiye undermines interchange through blackmail of museums and archaeologists and by converting shared World Monuments into exclusive religious sites, curtailing conservation access. This is the paradigmatic case where restrictions would harm scientific and educational exchange.

If CPAC seeks to reduce incentives for looting and improve stewardship, it should recommend targeted, verifiable measures rather than a country-wide embargo that rewards Turkish state misconduct. Such measures could include:

Conflict-Zone Targeting and Border Control: Joint U.S.–EU–Interpol tasking on Syrian/Iraqi conflict objects transiting Türkiye, with transparent seizure publication and photographic archives.

Open Registries: Condition any cooperation on Türkiye’s creation of a public, searchable registry of movable museum holdings and seizures, with dated entries and image standards to enable bona fide due diligence.

Temple at Ain Dara, after bombing by Turkish forces, Syrian Human Rights Observatory.

Diaspora Religious-Heritage Pathway: A bilateral export-for-diaspora channel for non-Muslim ritual and archival objects demonstrably tied to communities no longer present, with community institutions abroad recognized as legitimate custodians.

Scholarly Safe Harbor: Immunity for temporary scholarly loans to U.S. museums and labs, with standard courier protocols, not inflated costs for politicized “representatives.”

Site-Protection Grants: Redirect U.S. assistance to on-the-ground conservation at vulnerable mixed-heritage sites (Sur, Mor Gabriel environs, Ani) administered with international oversight, not by Turkish political ministries.

Narrow, Object-Specific Notices: If — and only if — Türkiye supplies object-level evidence (site, date, photographic documentation) for recent looting, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security can issue narrowly tailored import alerts, avoiding a general embargo.

X.  If CPAC Nonetheless Recommends Renewal: Mandatory Narrowing, Carve-Outs, and Procedural Safeguards

To mitigate foreseeable harm if the State Department proceeds despite the record, CPAC should:

Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, photo E Wilson, 13 January 2022, CCA-SA 4.0 International license.

Impose Tight Definitions: Limit scope to archaeological material meeting the CPIA’s excavation nexus (more than 250 years old; normally excavated) and to ethnological material strictly meeting the statutory non-industrial test; exclude Ottoman and Republican-era industrial trade goods (textiles, carpets, metalware, Iznik-style revival wares, mass-minted coins).

Make Criteria Date-Certain and Place-Certain: Restrict only objects first discovered within Türkiye and exported after the effective date of the regulations; exclude all items documented outside Türkiye for ten years before import according to the CPIA statute.

Create a Diaspora Exemption: Expressly exclude non-Muslim religious and communal property alienated by state confiscations or community dissolution, including icons, Torahs, church/synagogue records, and family religious objects, upon credible statements of origin by diaspora communities.

Exclude Coins: Exclude widely circulated Byzantine and Ottoman coinage that lacks site-specific provenance and exists in commercial quantities; include only site-linked numismatic material documented to illicit excavation post-effective date.

Apply Burden of Proof and Evidentiary Standards: Require object-level evidence for detention; prohibit CBP from demanding source-state export permits where the source state historically never issued them; accept long-standing European or U.S. ownership documentation.

Impose Sunset and Require Reporting: Impose a strict 5-year sunset with annual public reporting by Türkiye on measurable self-help (site protection, minority-heritage legal reforms, loan reciprocity, open registries).

Add Loan Reciprocity Clause: Condition enforcement on a standing loan-facilitation MOU with U.S. museums, using standard international courier norms.

Türkiye fails every CPIA determination. Its government has not demonstrated current pillage supplying the U.S. market; it has destroyed and appropriated heritage at home; there is no concerted international response; and it undermines cultural interchange through coercion. A U.S. embargo would reward authoritarian nationalism, consolidate the state’s claims over dispossessed minority heritage, and inflict predictable harm on American communities, museums, scholars, and small businesses. The Committee should recommend rejection. If the Department nonetheless proceeds, it must adopt the narrowest possible Designated List with the mandatory carve-outs and safeguards above to avoid turning U.S. law into an instrument for cultural erasure.

Respectfully,

Kate Fitz Gibbon, Executive Director, Committee for Cultural Policy, Inc.
Elias Gerasoulis, Executive Director, Global Heritage Alliance, Inc.

[1] Simon Maghakyan, Turkey's Fight Against Cultural Looting Should Start at Home, NEWSWEEK (July 19, 2021, 6:00 AM EDT), https://www.newsweek.com/turkeys-fight-against-cultural-looting-should-start-home-opinion-1606162.

[2] 19 U.S.C. § 2602(a)(1).

[3] 19 U.S.C. § 2601(2).

[4] Burton Y. Berry, Out of the Past: The Istanbul Grand Bazaar (New York: Arco, 1977); see also Kate Fitz Gibbon, “Turkey Claims All Art and Artifacts: Centuries of Multicultural History and Trade Denied,” Cultural Property News (Jan. 7, 2020), https://culturalpropertynews.org/turkey-claims-all-art-and-artifacts-centuries-of-multicultural-history-and-trade-denied/

[5] Kate Fitz Gibbon, Cleveland Museum’s High Tech Sleuthing Identifies Bubon Statue, Cultural Property News, April 11, 2025, https://culturalpropertynews.org/cleveland-museum-study-identifies-bubon-philosopher/.

[6] European Commission, Fighting Illicit Trafficking in Cultural Goods: Analysis of Customs Issues in the EU (Final Report, 2017), 108. https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/fadd3791-aa40-11e7-837e-01aa75ed71a1/language-en

[7] Leonard Cohen, Anyone? Reporting on Illicit Cultural Objects is Deceptive,” Cultural Property News (July 31, 2019), https://culturalpropertynews.org/leonard-cohen-anyone-reporting-on-illicit-cultural-objects-is-deceptive/

[8] Oya Armutçu, “Ancient Town of Hasankeyf One Step Closer to Destruction,” Hürriyet Daily News (Jan. 17, 2018), https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ancient-town-of-hasankeyf-one-step-closer-to-destruction-after-top-courts-decision-125872

[9] World Heritage Watch, “Report on the Destruction of Sur” (2017), https://anfenglishmobile.com/culture/world-heritage-watch-report-on-the-destruction-of-sur-20373; Leela Jacinto, “Destruction of Kurdish sites continues as Turkey hosts UNESCO,” France 24 (July 14, 2016), https://www.france24.com/en/20160714-turkey-unesco-heritage-sites-damage-kurdish-diyarbakir-sur

[10] Clare Voon, Iron Age Temple in Syria Devastated by Turkish Air Raids, January 29, 2018, https://hyperallergic.com/423867/ain-dara-temple-destroyed/ , see also Syrian Antiquities Directorate press release, Jan. 28, 2018.

[11] Merve Stolzman, “Turkey Rules: Cultural Heritage Protection Efforts Explained,” Center for Art Law (Mar. 26, 2018), https://itsartlaw.org/cultural-heritage/turkey-rules-cultural-heritage-protection-efforts-explained/.

[12] Barçın Yinanç, “Topkapı Palace Risk of Collapse,” Hürriyet Daily News (Oct. 3, 2016), https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/topkapi-palace-risk-of-collapse-the-result-of-years-of-neglect-of-historical-heritage-104509; Omer Erbil, “Temple of Artemis Turns into Swamp,” Hürriyet Daily News (Feb. 19, 2017), https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/temple-of-artemis-turns-into-swamp-due-to-neglect-109909.

[13] Simon Maghakyan, supra note 3.

[14] Id.

[15] 19 U.S.C. § 2602(a)(1)(C).

[16] Dan Bilefsky, “Seeking Return of Art, Türkiye Jolts Museums,” New York Times (Sept. 30, 2012), https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/01/arts/design/turkeys-efforts-to-repatriate-art-alarm-museums.html

[17] Id.

[18] Museum Wars: Ankara Demands Artifacts from Berlin,” Interview with Ömer Çelik, Der Spiegel (Mar. 14, 2013). https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/dispute-heats-up-between-germany-and-turkey-over-contested-artifacts-a-888398.html.

[19] Kate Fitz Gibbon, Cleveland Museum’s High Tech Sleuthing Identifies Bubon Statue, Cultural Property News, April 11, 2025, https://culturalpropertynews.org/cleveland-museum-study-identifies-bubon-philosopher/.

[20] Kelvin D Collado, A Step Back for Turkey, Two Steps Forward in the Repatriation Efforts of Its Cultural

Property, 5 JOURNAL OF LAW, TECHNOLOGY AND THE INTERNET 24, 15–16 (2014). CCP testimony (Jan. 7, 2020).

[21] Proposal to Extend the Cultural Property Agreement Between the United States and Türkiye, Federal Register, 90 FR 38194, 08/07/2025, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/08/07/2025-15021/proposal-to-extend-the-cultural-property-agreement-between-the-united-states-and-trkiye

[22] 19 USC § 2602(e-f)

[23] Kate Fitz Gibbon, “Hagia Sophia Suffers Serious Damage,” Cultural Property News (July 1, 2022), https://culturalpropertynews.org/hagia-sophia-suffers-serious-damage/.

[24] Robert G. Ousterhout, “The Preservation and Reconversion of Kariye Camii,” Cultural Property News (Sept. 27, 2020), https://culturalpropertynews.org/interview-robert-g-ousterhout-the-preservation-and-reconversion-of-kariye-camii/.

[25] Kate Fitz Gibbon, “Turkey Declares Ancient Armenian Cathedral of Ani is Mosque,” Cultural Property News (July 10, 2025), https://culturalpropertynews.org/turkey_declares_armenian_cathedral_mosque/.

[26] Richard G. Hovannisian, ed., The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies (Transaction, 2009), https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Armenian_Genocide/CB4Bh0-zrgoC?hl=en,  see also Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act (Metropolitan, 2006), https://www.amazon.com/Shameful-Act-Armenian-Genocide-Responsibility/dp/0805079327.

[27] See CCP & GHA, “Turkey Claims All Art and Artifacts: Centuries of Multicultural History and Trade Denied,” testimony to CPAC (Jan. 7, 2020).

[28] Kate Fitz Gibbon, supra note 27.

[29] Speros Vryonis, Jr., The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6–7, 1955 (Greekworks, 2005); population figures summarized therein, https://www.amazon.com/Mechanism-Catastrophe-September-Destruction-Community/dp/0974766038.

[30] European Commission for Democracy Through Law (Venice Commission), Opinion No. 535/2009, “On the Legal Status of Religious Communities in Turkey and the Right of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Istanbul to use the adjective “Ecumenical” (2010), European Commission for Democracy Through Law (Venice Commission), Opinion No. 535/2009, “On the Legal Status of Religious Communities in Turkey, https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents.

[31] Ayla Jean Yackley, “Court ruling converting Turkish museum to mosque could set precedent for Hagia Sophia,” The Art Newspaper (Dec. 3, 2019) https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2019/12/03/court-ruling-converting-turkish-museum-to-mosque-could-set-precedent-for-hagia-sophia; Kate Fitz Gibbon, “Hagia Sophia Suffers Serious Damage,” supra note 25.

[32] David Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors (Gorgias, 2006), https://www.amazon.com/Massacres-Resistance-Protectors-Muslim-Christian-Relations/dp/1593333013.

[33] Ibid.; see also Nicolas Bauer, ECHR: Turkey Illegally Expropriated a Monastery Built in the 4^th century, European Centre for Law and Justice, October 6, 2023, https://eclj.org/religious-autonomy/echr/cedh–la-turquie-a-exproprie-illegalement-un-monastere-edifie-au-ive-siecle?lng=en.

[34] Rıfat N. Bali, A Scapegoat for All Seasons (ISIS Press, 2010) https://jewishstudies.ceu.edu/sites/jewishstudies.ceu.edu/files/attachment/basicpage/73/bali.pdf; Ayhan Aktar, Varlık Vergisi ve “Türkleştirme” Politikaları (İletişim, 2000), file:///Users/katefitzgibbon/Downloads/JSEBSSBookReviewFinalDraft-Grigoriadis.pdf

[35] White & Case LLP, “Turkey,” in Global Art & Heritage Law Series (Committee for Cultural Policy / TrustLaw, 2020).

[36] World Heritage Watch, “Report on the Destruction of Sur” (2017), https://anfenglishmobile.com/culture/world-heritage-watch-report-on-the-destruction-of-sur-20373; Leela Jacinto, “Destruction of Kurdish sites continues as Turkey hosts UNESCO,” France 24 (July 14, 2016), https://www.france24.com/en/20160714-turkey-unesco-heritage-sites-damage-kurdish-diyarbakir-sur

[37] Ercan Ayboğa, “SUR: The Turkish State’s Systematic Destruction,” Komun Academy (2019), https://globalrights.info/2019/03/sur-the-turkish-states-systematic-destruction-and-commercialization-of-a-world-heritage-site/

[38] Law No. 2863 (1983), arts. 3, 23; The Constitution of the Republic of Türkiye (1982), art. 63.

[39] White & Case (2020), supra note 37.

[40] Id.

[41] Regulation on Ethnographic Cultural Property (May 3, 1988). https://media.unesco.org/sites/default/files/webform/mhm001/turkey_regulationmovableculturalpropertyethnographicquality_5_turorof.pdf

[42] Christopher Sheklian, “The Armenian Patriarchate and the Sanasaryan Han,” Public Orthodoxy (2019), https://publicorthodoxy.org/2019/03/28/armenian-property-in-turkey/.

[43] 19 U.S.C. § 2601(2), § 2602(a).

[44] S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society (UC Press, 1967–1993).

[45] Heath W. Lowry, Ottoman Bursa in Travel Accounts (Indiana Univ., 2003).

[46] Burton Y. Berry, Out of the Past: The Istanbul Grand Bazaar (Arco, 1977).

[47] White & Case (2020), supra note 37.

[48] White & Case (2020), supra note 37.

[49] U.S. Department of the Treasury, Study of the Facilitation of Money Laundering and Terror Finance Through the Trade in Works of Art (Feb. 2022), https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Treasury_Study_WoA.pdf

[50] European Commission, Fighting Illicit Trafficking in Cultural Goods (2017), 108, https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/fadd3791-aa40-11e7-837e-01aa75ed71a1/language-en.

[51] Leonard Cohen, Anyone? Reporting on Illicit Cultural Objects is Deceptive,” Cultural Property News (July 31, 2019), https://culturalpropertynews.org/leonard-cohen-anyone-reporting-on-illicit-cultural-objects-is-deceptive/

[52] Oya Armutçu, “Ancient Town of Hasankeyf One Step Closer to Destruction,” Hürriyet Daily News (2018) Oya Armutçu, “Ancient Town of Hasankeyf One Step Closer to Destruction,” Hürriyet Daily News (Jan. 17, 2018), https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ancient-town-of-hasankeyf-one-step-closer-to-destruction-after-top-courts-decision-125872; Barçın Yinanç, “Topkapı Palace Risk of Collapse,” Hürriyet Daily News (2016) https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/topkapi-palace-risk-of-collapse-the-result-of-years-of-neglect-of-historical-heritage-104509; Omer Erbil, “Temple of Artemis Turns into Swamp,” Hürriyet Daily News (2017), https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/temple-of-artemis-turns-into-swamp-due-to-neglect-109909.