Canada Repatriates Historic Items to Turkey

OTTAWA, CANADA—Hürriyet Daily News reports that Canada has returned 11 artifacts to Turkey in a ceremony at the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa. The Canada Border Services Agency seized the artifacts, which were in transport from Istanbul to Vancouver, in January 2024. Officials at the Department of Canadian Heritage then worked with Turkish authorities to review the case. Canada’s Federal Court later ruled that the artifacts are protected under Turkey’s legislation on the protection of cultural assets and must be returned. Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said that the items include seven manuscript pages, some of which had been detached from larger works, rare printed materials, and calligraphic works written in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish. To read about excavations of the capital of the Lydian Empire in western Turkey, go to "The Palace Times."