Turkey Shows 100 Looted Antiquities Recovered From the US, Some Found With AI Help
Turkey has put 100 ancient objects that were returned from the United States on display in Istanbul, including bronze statues taken from the ancient city of Boubon. The presentation at the Istanbul Archaeological Museums opened an exhibition called "No Escape: Boubon", which shows Turkey's work against the illegal trade in cultural heritage, ArtNews reported.
Boubon sits in Burdur province in southwestern Turkey. It was illegally excavated in the 1960s, and its statues were dismantled and scattered among several countries. Digging at the site restarted in 2023 and is still going on.
The objects in the show include 44 terracotta architectural panels from Duver, also in Burdur, dating to 700 to 480 BCE. Another 40 come from the Horoztepe archaeological site in Tokat province. Four portraits of Roman emperors show the rulers whose statues once stood at Boubon's Sebasteion, a sanctuary built to honour the emperors.
Turkey's culture minister, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, and Manhattan District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos attended the event. Bogdanos set up the district attorney's Antiquities Trafficking Unit in 2017. The unit has recovered 6,452 looted antiquities, including 276 from Turkey.
The bronzes had reached American museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The trail started with an American auction house that listed Anatolian artifacts for sale. Turkey's Ministry of Culture and Tourism flagged them to the Manhattan District Attorney's office and to US Homeland Security Investigations, the federal agency that handles smuggling cases.
The Cleveland Museum of Art has agreed to surrender a statue believed to show Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor, for return to Turkey. In February 2025, the museum dropped a legal effort to block the seizure of the bronze, the New York Times reported. The museum said at the time that it and Turkish officials were considering a temporary display in Cleveland before the statue is moved to Türkiye.
Three methods helped recover the objects. Lead isotope geochemistry can show where ancient bronze was smelted, using the chemical fingerprint of the metal. Geometric mold-matching checks whether a sculpture once fitted a particular pedestal. The third is TraceART, an artificial intelligence platform that searches global auction sites and social media for trafficked Turkish objects. Turkey's ministry built TraceART and began using it in 2025. Experts review every item it flags before any claim is made.
The seized Boubon pieces are valued at almost US$80 million, according to ArtNews. Of the 15 antiquities the unit has taken from Boubon, 14 have been repatriated. Turkey brought back about 180 cultural artifacts in 2025 alone. Since 1980, the total returned is more than 26,700.
