site.btaBulgaria Returns Coins, Statue and Antiquities to Turkiye after Stopping Border Smuggling

Antique coins, a second-century marble statue and Anatolian metal figures are among the cultural assets Bulgaria has returned to Turkiye following illegal trafficking attempts since 2011, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkiye said on Thursday.

The Turkish Ministry published information about the repatriated artefacts in a public register on its website. The return of the statue of Marcus Aurelius from the United States to Turkey after 65 years has brought the issue of cultural property trafficking to the forefront.

In an interview with BTA’s Ayshe Sali, Zeynep Boz, head of the Anti-Smuggling Department at the Directorate for Cultural Heritage and Museums, said Bulgaria is among the countries Turkiye works with most effectively in preventing the trafficking of artefacts and returning them to their country of origin.

“When a cultural asset is found at the entrance or exit of either country, or during an operation in Bulgaria or Turkiye, and it is identified as originating from the other state, it is returned. I want to note that although certain deadlines apply, the procedures and document checks linked to the Legal Assistance Agreement move extremely quickly,” Boz said, adding that provenance documents are applied, after which items are handed over to the prosecution service.

In 2023, Bulgaria’s most recent and notable repatriation of immovable cultural property to Turkey took place. That year, Bulgaria transferred 2,940 coins that had been confiscated in 2018 when a Turkish-registered lorry crossed the border. The provenance and details of the coins were determined through joint cooperation. Experts from the Museum in Odesa and the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul carried out the analysis in Haskovo.

The analysis showed that a large proportion of the coins date to the time of King Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus (120-63 BCE), who began minting coins in the manner of Alexander the Great. The coins originate from the cities of Pontus and Paphlagonia (now the Turkish Black Sea coast). Most likely, the bronze coins served as payments for soldiers. They were found by treasure hunters, who attempted to smuggle them illegally out of Turkiye.

The coin trafficker was sentenced to five years in prison and fined, and the coins were handed over to the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul.

A female statue of Mediterranean marble, 97 centimetres high and dating to the second century, was also among the objects illegally trafficked across the Bulgarian-Turkish border. The 2011 case was detected at the Lesovo border checkpoint. The statue, along with 19 other artefacts, had been concealed in a Turkish-registered lorry transporting textiles. Bulgarian authorities handed the artefacts over to the management of the Museum in Edirne.

In 2019, Bulgaria returned cultural property to Turkey on two occasions after it had been unlawfully exported.

The first case involved 38 items seized in 2007 at the Kapitan Andreevo border crossing, where there had been an attempt to illegally export them to Germany.

These included a clay deity figure, a stone axe, part of a stone sceptre, bronze axes, clay and bronze vessels, a bronze hairpin, an oil lamp, and a vase. Some date from the Chalcolithic period of the Eastern Roman Empire.

In the second 2019 case, Turkish authorities became aware after Bulgarian media coverage of the seizure of 56 coins and seven metal figures transported in a Bulgarian-registered vehicle. Once their origin was confirmed, the coins and metal figures were transferred to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara.

Among the countries that have returned the largest numbers of illegally exported cultural assets to Turkiye are the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. According to experts, the reason is that these countries have established markets for such artefacts.