From: here
Turkey has been accused of cultural chauvinism and attempting to blackmail some of the world´s most important museums in the wake of its demands for the return of thousands of archaeological treasures.
According to cultural chiefs in Berlin, Paris and New York, Turkey has threatened to bar foreign archaeologists from excavation sites in the country by not renewing their digging permits if governments refuse to return artefacts that Ankara says were unlawfully removed from Turkish soil. It has also threatened to halt the lending of its treasures to foreign museums, they say.
Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin, which among other collections oversees the city´s Pergamon Museum, has accused Turkey of "playing a nasty game of politics" and of "threatening the future" of scientific work and other collaborations.
"The Turks are engaging in a rather aggressive style of politics," he said. "They are trying to blackmail us and others by pushing foreign archaeologists out. Their new tactic is to accuse us of not investing enough in the infrastructure of the digs."
Turkey is also in dispute with the Louvre in Paris, which has refused requests to return objects. Ankara retaliated two years ago with a ban on French archaeologists digging in Turkey.
Turkish officials are also at loggerheads with the Norbert Schimmel collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York over 18 objects they claim were illegally excavated, as well as with the British Museum in London over the Samsat Stele, a basalt slab from the 1st century BC.
Ankara says it only wants back what rightfully belongs to Turkey. Ertugrul Gunay, culture and tourism minister, said 4,067 artefacts were returned from 2002 to 2012. He said Ankara´s demands coincided with a new-found pride in the country´s cultural heritage.
"Our museum inventory is now on a par with that of European museums," he said recently.
"The times when we simply exhibited artefacts in cupboards is over. We have caught up … what we have taken back is only a very small part of what we will take back." He added that over the past five years, Turkey had "spent more on history" than any other European country.
