Heritage Under Siege: The Politics of Art Repatriation in Turkey Emma Hurt and Emily Nichol April 26, 2013
Orpheus Mosaic on Display in the Istanbul Archaeological Museums, February 2013
Created for Global Urban Lab Rice University: School of Social Sciences & Kinder Institute for Urban Research
Table of Contents Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................................... 1 Executive Summary....................................................................................................................................... 2 Report ........................................................................................................................................................... 3 I. The Issue ............................................................................................................................................ 3 A. The Dallas Museum's Response………………………………………………………………………………………………4 B. Turkey’s Protective Methods of Repatriation……………………………………………………………….…………5 C. Perceptions of Art in Turkey…………………………………………………………………………………………………..5 II. The Research ..................................................................................................................................... 6 III. The Findings ..................................................................................................................................... 6 IV. The Implications ............................................................................................................................. 10 Acknowledgements..................................................................................................................................... 12 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................ 13
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Executive Summary A typical overview of international relations does not often involve studying art, antiquities, or how different countries handle them transnationally. However, the phenomenon of art repatriation, or the return of stolen ancient art or cultural heritage, exposes a distinctive dimension of foreign affairs. Turkey, a relatively young, democratic, and secular republic has been the site of three major Empires and some 8,000 years of documented history. Generally speaking, protecting cultural heritage has not served as a major concern of a developing Republic with other economic priorities. Yet in the past decade, the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism has significantly prioritized the restitution of antiquities that it claims were illegally taken beyond its borders. Such objects are scattered across museums in the Western world, and have become a point of contention between these institutions and the Turkish government. The Ministry’s consolidated control of all Turkish antiquities, public museums, and archaeological regulation provides valuable leverage to actively demand these objects’ return. Using the Orpheus Mosaic as a case study, this report seeks to provide an overview of how art repatriation functions in the nation today, how foreign institutions are responding, and what the broader implications for Turkish international relations are.
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Report I. The Issue: Turkey's recent aggressive art repatriation campaign On December 6, 2012, a valuable antique work of art was unloaded from a Turkish Airways flight in Istanbul by a team from the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The work, known as the Orpheus Mosaic, was originally part of the floor decoration in a Roman house in Edessa (present-day Şanlıurfa province) in southeastern Turkey. Mythological representation adorns the mosaic, depicting the legendary Greek poet and musician taming wild animals with his lyre. It is thought to be one of the oldest known mosaics from Edessa, dating to A.D. 194, and one of the most meaningful given its Syriac inscriptions including the artist’s name, a detail almost unheard of in ancient art (“Minister Presents Orpheus”). The mosaic, preserved in nearly perfect condition, is treated as one of Turkey’s prized artifacts, and its recovery was greatly facilitated by the Şanlıurfa province’s Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism (“Minister Presents Orpheus”). Ordinarily, this mosaic’s travel would not cause commotion; however, as one of Turkey’s increasing number of recent art repatriations, its arrival was monumental. Despite the mosaic’s cultural significance, it has only been exhibited in two shows: in All the World’s a Stage (Aug. 2009 – Feb. 2010) and Passion for Art: 100 Treasures, 100 years (Oct. 2003 – March 2004), both at the Dallas Museum of Art. It was otherwise on display in the Dallas Museum’s permanent collection gallery, after the museum purchased the work on December 9, 1999 (“Orpheus Taming Wild Animals”). While the museum acquired the artwork legally through Christie’s New York for $85,000 (Antiquities Sale, Sale Code: Achilles-9260, Lot 388), the work was deaccessioned from the Texas institution in 2012 on grounds for restitution (“Turkey Recovers Orpheus Mosaic from Dallas”). After various expert reports detailed the stylistic and iconographic similarities to works also found in the region, the emergence of a compelling photograph of the work in situ led leaders at the Dallas Museum to act quickly (“Orpheus Taming Wild Animals”). The photo proved the mosaic’s true provenance: it showed the mosaic’s borders, which were missing upon it’s arrival to Dallas (presumably removed by looters), and included a canister of a Turkish brand of glue used primarily by looters (not archaeologists) to make on-site repairs (“Orpheus Orpheus Taming Wild Animals, Eastern Roman Taming Wild Animals”). Authorities thought the Empire, near Edessa, A.D. 194. Marble, mosaic, mosaic was smuggled out of Şanlıurfa in 1998, 64 3/4 x 60 in. (Photo courtesy of Dallas Museum and Turkish officials had been seeking it for some of Art) time (“Turkey Recovers Orpheus Mosaic”). 3|Page
Since its move back across the Atlantic, the work has been housed in a temporary exhibition room in the basement of Istanbul’s famed Archaeological Museums, located steps away from the Hagia Sophia and Topkapı Palace. The mosaic stands alone on display in the center of the room, apart from a blank television screen planned for use to display information about the work, framed information about the mosaic printed in both Turkish and English, and a single security guard. Throughout the rest of the museum, hallways and niches are brimming with its impressive collection of hundreds of ancient objects, from overwhelming friezes to tiny archaic coins; this room’s focus on a single object is striking in comparison. The mosaic’s return to Turkey was heralded with applause; after at least 15 years, it was finally being returned to its home country; as the museum’s label information explains, “on the intervention of the Ministry of Culture.” The streets of Istanbul’s historic Sultanahmet Istanbul Archaeological Museums’ poster advertising the mosaic’s return district and the Archaeological Museums’ entrance (Photo courtesy of E. Hurt) prominently feature posters and signs proclaiming the object’s return to the “lands where it belongs to” in both English and Turkish. The Minister of Culture and Tourism at the time, Ertuğrul Günay, unveiled the mosaic in a ceremony at the museum on December 8th, 2012. He rejoiced in the attention the return of this object has received, and noted that this was just one of the many important stolen artifacts that Turkey has been pursuing in the hopes of similarly triumphant returns (“Turkey Recovers Orpheus Mosaic from Dallas”). A. The Dallas Museum’s Response The repatriation of the Orpheus Mosaic marked the first initiative of the Dallas Museum’s new Art Exchange program (DMX), which was announced just prior to the December 3 memorandum of understanding between DMA and Turkish Director General for Cultural Heritage and Museums O. Murat Süslü that officially returned the mosaic to Turkey. This program was created to form “new models of cooperation among institutions” internationally, in order to deal with the “problems of illegal excavation and the illicit import of cultural property” (“Dallas Museum of Art Exchange Program”). Primarily, the program is devoted to implementing rigorous research regarding foreign acquisitions and establishing a searchable object registry to promote transparency. Founded by Maxwell L. Anderson, who became Director of the Dallas Museum of Art in January 2012, this program has functioned as a preemptive way to volunteer stolen and looted antiquities in the museum’s collection, honoring the return of illegally exported antiquities while avoiding claims (and often lawsuits) from foreign countries. Continuing the program after the Orpheus’ return, five other antique objects with questionable provenance were returned to Italy from the Texas museum, and many of their dealers are now facing criminal charges. However, the DMA’s swift return of the mosaic had clear implications for the institution’s unusual relationship with Turkey in particular. The DMA itself took the initiative to return the Orpheus Mosaic. Upon the discovery of images on the 4|Page
Turkish Ministry of Culture’s website of a series of Orpheus Mosaics from Edessa that were illegally excavated beginning in 1950, the museum notified the Ministry (Granberry). According to Anderson, the last thing he wanted was “to be the recipient of a claim by Turkey and be unprepared, seeing all of that evidence. So, [he] wrote to the embassy, saying if you have any information about this mosaic, please let us know. [He] didn’t have any specific information, but it seemed circumstantially that it was very likely that it was removed from that site.” When Turkey responded with the photograph of the work in situ, Dallas started organizing the transfer (Granberry). Turkish officials consider “the voluntary return of the mosaic a sign of good faith, and both parties will undertake to continue their collaboration with museological education, conservation, symposia and important loan exhibitions,” an understanding which most museums are not party to (Granberry). B. Turkey’s Protective Methods of Repatriation According to former Minister Günay, in the last ten years “a total of 4,113 artifacts were returned to Turkey, 3,697 of which have been recovered since 2007” (“Turkey Recovers Orpheus Mosaic from Dallas”). The last five years have marked a notably aggressive campaign to recover artifacts removed from Turkey’s rich ancient heritage. In 2012 alone, the Turkish Ministry has accused American museums, from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, of displaying hundreds of stolen artifacts, laying claim to a law written in 1884 (updated in 1906) that gives the state ownership of any antiquities found on Turkish land, under Turkish ground, or in Turkish water (Felch). With these claims, Turkey threatened to “halt all loans of art to those institutions” until the museums cooperated; in fact, the nation has already begun denying loan requests to the Met (Felch). The issue has received a deluge of news coverage from The New York Times to The Guardian. In addition to shrinking the global distribution of ancient art, the political fallout from this issue has undeniably impacted the study of archaeology in Turkey. This is particularly due to the fact that the umbrella of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism inextricably intertwines the bureaucracies of archaeology and public museology. The regulations on international excavation licensing have grown dramatically more rigid; in addition to barring loans to uncooperative museums, Turkey is making it more difficult for archaeologists from those countries to access Turkish excavation sites. As of 2010 the Ministry of Culture and Tourism required a Turkish codirector of all existing and future foreign-run excavation projects (Atakuman 123). It is also extremely challenging for private Turkish museums and individual agents to lend antiquities internationally thanks to cumbersome regulations on the works by the government that claims the right to decisions regarding their whereabouts (Law 2863, Article 26). Furthermore, without any centralized coordination between nationally and foreign-directed excavation, this primarily bureaucratic control creates tension with academic archaeologists and anthropologists, who need complete, consolidated excavation reports to properly analyze the historical data. Collectively, the increasing strains have had a distinct affect on international cultural diplomacy. C. Perception of Art in Turkey Meanwhile, in Turkey perceptions of art are shifting quickly. During the Ottoman Period, when the law establishing patrimony and prohibiting antiquities from crossing borders was written, art and archaeology were not highly regarded; the law was poorly enforced by a 5|Page
crumbling empire and an uninformed public. Museums were nonexistent or underfunded, and art frequently went missing from museum storage (Atakuman 111). Today however, Turkey is the home to almost 300 museums ranging from military museums to private museums and art galleries (Baraldi, et. al 13). The concentration of art and heritage museums in Istanbul continues to grow significantly more than in the rest of Turkey (Baraldi, et. al 12). Its newly developing art scene features about one third of the country’s private museums. With the degree of international attention and tourism in Istanbul particularly, the state museums and cultural heritage sites have developed public relations campaigns. Repatriations are branded as big name attractions; last summer, the Boğazköy Sphinx, which had been held at Berlin’s Pergamon museum (one of the most heavily targeted museums in Turkey’s campaign) since 1917, was finally flown back to Turkey in the private plane of Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan. II. The Research The topic of Turkish cultural heritage policy has been documented from many angles, from domestic and international politics, archaeology, and museology to the broader art world. Our methods of research began by studying the topic across these various fields. After tracing the repatriation of specific artifacts to Turkey and comparing methods with other historically rich countries, the question became how to best approach such a nuanced subject in our research project. It soon was clear that a case study of one instance of Turkish repatriation would prove most effective, and we quite literally stumbled upon this case at the Istanbul Archaeological Museums in the form of the Orpheus Mosaic and the posters proclaiming its return to Turkey. The chance for such on site analysis provided a vital dimension to our research, and the subsequent interviews with Turkish museum employees, professors, and graduate students studying cultural heritage management vindicated the relevance of a topic we had been following from America. In fact, it broadened the scope of our case study into Turkey’s history with antiquity repatriation and the art policies used in the present day. We began studying the translations of the Turkish legislation regulating “cultural and natural property,” and looking in more detail at the historiography of the work of art we chose to base the paper on. The Dallas Museum’s repatriation method emerged as unique and similar programs have been implemented at other American and European museums to acknowledge stolen works and cooperate with their rightful owners. With the study of this transfer to the Istanbul Archaeological Museums, a need to understand how the Ministry of Culture and Tourism functions in its role as protecting Turkish heritage developed. In our interviews and studies of Turkish museum statistics and trends of viewership in relation to certain objects being repatriated, we worked to gauge whether the rhetoric that weaves throughout cultural heritage policy actually reflects any of the general Turkish population’s thoughts on the situation. While it is next to impossible to determine the “consensus” of an entire population in order to gain a sense of the discussion, we read editorial articles, blog posts, and much other opinion-based writing on the topic. III. The Findings While Turkish art repatriation is not a new phenomenon, the manner and extent of recent repatriations differs dramatically from the country’s past methods. As recently as the 1980s, Turkey methodologically located and sued museums for art restitution. One of the typical 6|Page
examples of more diplomatic repatriation is the 1987 case of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s refusal to return the Lydian Treasure, a hoard of 219 Anatolian gold and silver objects dating from the sixth or early fifth century B.C. (Glueck). When Turkey alleged that the objects had been illegally exported in the 1960s, the Met filed a motion to dismiss the accusation. Turkey sued the museum in district court, spending reportedly over £25 million on a decade-long legal battle, which Turkey won (Letsch). This case marked a turning point in how the Turkish government handles its antiquities. Some reporters claim that the discovery in 2006 that one of the pieces in this collection was a fake replica sparked the shift towards Turkey’s antagonistic approach to art repatriation (Letsch). The international art world has noticed, prompting leading museum directors to describe Turkey’s methods as “blackmail,” and American publications to dub the campaign “cultural war,” in its attempts to deliberately shame Western museums (“Turkey’s Cultural Ambitions”). The 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property was designed to provide a framework for international cooperation to reduce the incentive for pillaging archaeological and ethnological material. Over 115 countries signed an agreement outlining the protocol for international cultural property relations, to avoid lawsuits and similar diplomatic problems previously resulting from cross-border smuggling and importing. Turkey signed the document, and actually ratified the convention in 1981. The convention stipulates that if a cultural object left the country in which it was produced before the year 1970, it is free to circulate. However, the convention, so pivotal for other nations, has had little effect in Turkey because its government now upholds a century-old Ottoman law requiring the return of the stolen antiquities, regardless of their exit date (Farago). The country does not currently have a single bilateral agreement with another nation to facilitate the import restrictions on stolen culture; the USA has such agreements with 16 other nations including Italy, Greece, and Cyprus (“Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs”). As described by a cultural heritage management specialist, Turkey does not believe its cultural objects should ever have left the country in the first place. Therefore, the government will not enter a bilateral agreement to diplomatically return work that it feels was stolen. In terms of international law, Turkey is not alone in upholding its own policy that supersedes the UNESCO agreements. In many cases, the distinction between theft and illegal export is easily blurred, and without a clear, proven state ownership, cultural heritage objects may not be subjected to the same terms internationally. The distinguished art lawyer John Merryman outlines one method that countries can use to ensure their repatriation claims are seen in court: if the state declares itself “owner of all cultural property of the kind that it wishes to retain…the state, as owner, can then claim standing to sue for the return of subsequently ‘exported’ ‘cultural property’” (Merryman 30). Even as signer of the UNESCO convention, Turkey is a country with many cultural “exports” – i.e. illegally removed works – which has needed to develop a program to unequivocally prove its connection with stolen objects and prevent “importing” countries’ legal loopholes that might allow them to retain them. The government body originally tasked with administrating this responsibility, the Ministry of Culture, was established in 1973. It merged with the Ministry of Tourism in 2003 to become the department it is today, which had a budget of 1 billion Turkish Lira in 2009. In line with Turkey’s unitary government and tradition of centralized power structures, this Ministry of Culture and Tourism is broadly in charge of anything involving culture, the arts, and tourism in the country. This includes overseeing 98 regional museum directorates in charge of protecting 7|Page
listed heritage sites, conducting and monitoring excavations, and directly managing the 118 state museums and 129 ruins open to the public (Baraldi et. al 3). Due to Turkey’s rich history and high popularity in terms of international tourism, the government is also tasked with regulating the sources of the majority of its tourism revenues: archaeological ruins, national palaces, and heritage museums. In 1983, the Turkish Parliament passed legislation specifically mandating that the Ministry maintain the power and responsibility of monitoring, conserving, and tracking all of Turkey’s national treasures in the form of “cultural and natural property” (Law 2863). The definition of this property is extensive enough to include almost anything found in or under what current Turkish boundaries, yet the stipulations over such objects do not leave much room for interpretation. Any such property found within Turkish domain is automatically property of the state, including antiquities housed in private institutions and individual collections. Anything “found” must immediately be reported to the local Ministry directorate (Law 2863, Article 4). In addition, the legislation establishes the 34 Regional Conservation Councils of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to approve conservation of development interventions at any identified natural and archaeological sites, making these RCCs responsible for “scientifically guiding the intervention in immovable cultural and natural property throughout the country” (Baraldi et. al. 3). Given that tourism generates about $23 billion annually for Turkey, the government’s interest in any cultural heritage contributing to the tourism industry is clear (“Tourism revenue grew by one-tenth to $23 billion last year”). The Ministry of Culture and Tourism absorbs all income of all state museums, heritage and archaeological sites, which it redistributes nationally, negating any chance for budget autonomy. This creates fundamental problems for individual museums and sites as all funding, work routines, museum programming, and exhibition structures are handled centrally. The consolidated control extends to the archaeological permit process, which is conducted entirely through this government Ministry, as stipulated by the same Turkish statute mentioned above (Law 2863, Article 35). All fieldwork is to be carried out either by the museum directorates themselves or by preapproved academic institutions, not private parties. Academic permits for excavations must be renewed every year, permits which confer strict responsibilities on all archaeologists, noticeably making international participation more difficult. Few Turkish projects today include foreigners due to the heavier bureaucratic burden of preapproval. This has impacted the field on a visible scale: the total number of excavations in Turkey (113 in 2008) pales in comparison to the over 5,000 sites in the UK in 2007 (Baraldi et. al 7-9). And yet, Turkey is home to over 7,700 listed archaeological sites. The 2010 edict requiring a Turkish co-director on all archaeological excavations was met with mixed response. Some of the Turkish media approved of the regulation, calling its granting Turkish archaeologists a role in the excavations of major sites previously dominated by foreign teams long overdue. The implications of this campaign have spread beyond the walls of museums into academia, most extraordinarily impacting the fields of cultural heritage management and archaeology. Dr. Edhem Eldem, a renowned Turkish historian who teaches at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, has spoken publicly about his perspective on this development in Turkish politics and the serious problems the situation presents for both museology and archaeology. As he wrote in a recent interview, “Decisions are taken singlehandedly by the politicians concerned and by the bureaucracy of the Ministry. Universities are rarely consulted, and most archaeologists are conscious of the fact that their own sites depend on the will and acceptance of 8|Page
the Ministry. More importantly, this nationalist and xenophobic discourse is more often than not close to the heart of the general public, the press, and even academic circles. This makes it difficult to organize, as some archaeologists try, a public forum capable to discuss state and government policies in this regard” (Chatzoudis). Dr. Eldem has expressed concerns about the detrimental effects of this political rhetoric, especially on the disciplines surrounding the antiquities and national treasures that the Ministry of Culture and Tourism claims to protect. Eldem disagrees with the possibility that the current system of repatriation and fierce archaeological regulation could ever benefit these fields of study, referring to the strategy as “a means of leverage and retaliation” against the foreign home nations of many of these excavators. He cites a stark example of this, involving the Turkish government’s threats to freeze all German excavations in 2011 unless one of the Hattusa sphinxes was returned from the Pergamon Museum in Berlin (Chatzoudis). What has been referred to as a “defensive approach to archaeology within public administration” involves strict regulations on excavations as mentioned above, a mandatory Ministry representative on site to monitor the digs, stipulations about consistent frequency of publications of any findings; the failure to comply with any of these risks a loss of the entire permit (Baraldi et. al, 8). More recently, violations of such archaeological stipulations have prompted the withholding of loan requests by international museums and stronger demands for “stolen” works to be repatriated to Turkey. As Dr. Eldem asserts: This leaves one doubtful as to whether the concern expressed is really about archaeology or about whatever power and interests can be accrued from control over it. Indeed one finds it difficult to consider seriously the government’s alleged concerns for archaeology when compared to the almost total absence of references to the subjects of this discipline in educational programs and in the scientific endeavors undertaken by state- and government-sponsored agencies (Chatzoudis). Here, the tension between the competing interests of politicians and bureaucrats operating the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, legislation passed to protect Turkey’s cultural heritage and the archaeologists, art historians, and academics working within its structure manifests itself unambiguously. The laws intended to revive, publicize, and celebrate Turkey’s rich cultural history are deemed politicized and counterproductive by the very professionals studying this cultural narrative. Government officials, however, deny that they only protect certain chapters of what has become the history of Turkey. For Günay, the repatriation of objects is both a result of political progress and a marker of further growth: “We are showing respect to history. We are not just asking for Ottoman or Seljuk artifacts; I am also laying claim to pieces from the Roman period or the pagan period. Why? Because we are aware that safeguarding your history, archeology and your museums is an element of development” (Yeginsu). The Minister’s policies have incorporated the deep history of the region and are reflected in the broad variety of objects repatriated internationally. In addition, this broad protection entails legal restrictions on all present archaeological ventures on Turkish land, in the name of the development of the nation, much to the frustration of the scholars and experts working on these sites. Diplomatic officials in Turkey and abroad have commended the development of this new priority in the Turkish government. The approach has created some friction between Turkey and the international art community, but the basic rationale of the campaign remains legitimate. A maturing republic is taking ownership over its cultural history.
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Lawyer Remzi Kazmaz, who works with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, acknowledges Turkey’s weak track record when it comes to cultural preservation, but that the stabilized democratic government enables the country to remedy its oversights: “We are very grateful to the British Museum for housing these artifacts for all these years, but is it not natural for us to want them back? We may not have the best track record when it comes to preservation, but we now have the power to protect and facilitate these items” (Yeginsu). To Kazmaz, the issue expands beyond simply returning objects, but functions as a human rights issue that begs to be corrected. However, the conflict of priorities within the ministerial force governing both cultural heritage management and tourism revenue has effectively excluded the vital practical measures of documentation, research, preservation, protection, public engagement, and education from the Ministry’s budget allocation. The fact that the Ministry’s budget comprised approximately 0.4% of the total state budget in 2009 suggests that such gaps are inevitable given all else the department is responsible for (Atakuman 125). The Ministry’s website continues to feature a list of stolen artifacts from across the globe for which it demands restitution while it struggles to feasibly maintain the expanse of cultural heritage over which it already has command (“Stolen Works”). Ultimately, the Ministry plans to place all these new acquisitions in a new “Museum of the Civilizations” in the nation’s capital, Ankara. According to Günay, “Our dream is the biggest museum in the world,” (Schulz). The unprecedented 270,000-square-foot institution is scheduled to open in 2023, coinciding with the centennial anniversary of the Republic (Schulz). In the meantime, the government has been rounding up antiquities taken from the nation to fill the museum and to continue the process of taking ownership over documenting its history. At Ankara’s State Art and Sculpture Museum, over 200 works in the collection are missing, and approximately 46 works from the museum’s catalog were replaced with fake replicas (“Ministry Admits Grand Theft from Art Museum”). Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism blames the losses on pillaging during the 1980 coup d’état, but this example speaks to deficient security and accountability of many museums, as well as a lack of transparency evidenced by the museum’s conscious display of fake artifacts to cover up their losses. According to the museum administrator, the dispersion of ancient works perhaps illegally excavated from Turkey can be seen as a beneficial phenomenon. These works are as a result, afforded a greater sense of importance internationally, are likely in better condition, and afforded the opportunity for other countries to write Turkey into the history of art. IV. Implications One aspect of the issue that is remarkably difficult to gauge involves the Turkish public’s response to all of these political impulses. Do Turks appreciate Turkish antiquity? As a general response, they seem to enjoy the publicity and are happy that art said to be part of their heritage is returning, but it is unclear of their conceptions of the wider-reaching issues of the topic: international tension, academic roadblocks, and possible theft or loss in Turkish museum basements. Accessibility to these works once repatriated for Turks and tourists raises an interesting dimension to the issue. According to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s statistics, in 2011 382,148 people visited the Istanbul Archaeological Museums alone. While the general admission is ten Turkish Lira, a special government-sponsored card, called Müzekart, can be purchased for 30 Turkish Lira guaranteeing unlimited visits to any museum or site affiliated with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for a year. This card is reserved for and limited to Turkish 10 | P a g e
citizens (“Directive About the Procedures and Principles to be Followed”). According to Murat Usta, the Director of the Ministry’s Central Directorate of Working Capital (DÖSİM), “The number of Müzekarts sold in 2012 was 843,019,” and 3.6 million Müzekarts had been sold since 2008 (“New Restrictions Placed on Museum Card by Ministry”). However, at the beginning of 2013 a new measure was taken to limit the access that the card provides, making it so that the same museum can only be entered once per year with the card, instead of the unlimited access included previously. Turkish people are clearly using the cards, but the answer remains unclear as to Turkish approval of the government’s tactics. Last year, the site that sold the most cards was the Topkapı Palace, not the Archaeological Museums. Beyond the Turkish public, Topkapı and the Hagia Sophia each sell about 12 times more tickets than the Archaeological Museums per year, generating 20 times more revenue (“New Restrictions Placed on Museum Card by Ministry”). Less than one in ten visitors to these sites will ever visit the Archaeological Museums, despite their equal proximity in Istanbul (Eldem). Ultimately the draw to these places eclipse interest in the Archaeological Museums’ massive collections, leaving any measurable effects of the repatriation for a public that appears relatively apathetic undetermined. Another challenging aspect involves the bureaucratic turnover at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Not much has been written on the subject because the methods of seeking art restitution and the laws around it change so much with each new cabinet and leadership, making the subject nebulous and constantly shifting. Further research could be used in determining personnel strategies inside the Ministry: why is a certain person appointed to lead the sector, and whom does he or she use as political support? Additionally, what are the benefits or drawbacks of such perpetually reformed laws? Turkey is asserting itself as an equivalent power to any Western country by promoting its own cultural patrimony and historical scholarship, owning its ties to ancient greatness, and forming a current identity of self-awareness. It is reclaiming a foundational narrative and rewriting its contemporary character, notably by recovering antiquities as Turkish simply based on provenance within its borders, regardless of what empire or time period the works originated. However, this new identity seems to function aggressively, appearing to isolate itself from Western countries as it levels itself with them culturally. Rather than participating in a cultural exchange where objects from vastly different histories and locations circulate in the academic and touristic markets, Turkey is creating an environment that is decidedly separate. Both its methods of what has been called “cultural blackmail” and its results – a catalog of Turkish art that resides only in Turkey, contention in archaeological licensing, and limiting the travel of Turkish antiquities beyond its borders – sets it apart from any other traditional route of art exchange. Turkey’s unprecedented position, literally straddling the West and East, by definition sets it apart. Particularly evidenced by its management of what the nation has defined as its cultural heritage, Turkey is reminding the world that this position does not render it any less powerful.
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Acknowledgements There are many people who have guided us on the winding path to the realization of this research project. As two Americans with little connections to Turkey, the interviews with professors, professionals, and students about this topic have proven invaluable. The study of cultural heritage management is a developing field, and we were fortunate to speak with current experts who helped us tremendously. Special thanks to Dr. Lucienne Thys-Şenocak at Koç University for taking a chance on an unexpected email and giving us plenty of homework, and to Helen Human and Pınar Özgüner at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations for sharing their expertise, as well as a beloved restaurant in Istanbul. Thanks as well to Fatma Çolakoğlu at the Pera Museum for answering all our many questions about museum organization. Additionally, Dr. Korel Göymen, former Undersecretary at the Ministry of Tourism, was very helpful regarding our general questions about the government’s take on art and culture. Last but far from least, we are especially grateful to those at Rice University who facilitated these opportunities for us in Istanbul: Abbey Godley, Dr. Michael Emerson, and our wonderful program director, Ipek Martinez. It is safe to say that neither of us would have discovered our interests in Turkey without the Global Urban Lab, and we remain indebted to those at the Gateway Program for this life-changing discovery. Teşekkür ederim.
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