Canada returns 11 artefacts to Turkey in the first repatriation between the countries

Canada returned 11 Ottoman-era artefacts to Turkey—seven manuscript pages, two printed-work pages, and two modern calligraphy works—in what Turkey called the first official repatriation of cultural property from Canada to Türkiye. Turkey’s culture and tourism minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy announced the milestone on 31 March, and the handover ceremony took place on 30 March at the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa. The items date from the 17th to 19th centuries and include Arabic and Turkish calligraphy on Islamic jurisprudence, Sufism, history, and literature; some pages had removed bindings and added modern miniatures, but were still deemed cultural heritage. Ersoy said the Canada Border Services Agency first intercepted the artefacts while they were being transported from Istanbul to Vancouver, and that a Canadian Federal Court ruling recognized them as Turkish cultural property, aligning the process with the 1970 Unesco Convention.

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