Authorities find tiles stolen 20 years ago

ISTANBUL

The Culture and Tourism Ministry has announced that 136 pieces of tiles stolen from a mosque in the southeast of the country almost 20 years ago were found in Istanbul.

"A total of 136 pieces of tiles were seized in Istanbul’s Sarıyer district. The Ali Pasha Mosque, commissioned by the then Diyarbakır Governor Ali Pasha to Mimar Sinan between 1534 and 1537, is among the mosques damaged in the Feb. 6 earthquakes," said a statement from the ministry.

The tiles belonging to the Ali Pasha Mosque will be reinstalled in their original places as part of the restoration, it added.

The statement also noted that the ministry’s anti-smuggling department continues its effective fight against movable cultural assets stolen within the country or smuggled abroad, stating that 131 pieces, including 21 inheritance items, have been brought back to our country since 2002.

"In 2002, the Directorate of Anti-Smuggling was established and work began. Since that date, theft incidents have been largely prevented and efforts have been meticulously made to recover stolen artifacts,” the statement said.

Recently, with the Turkish ministry’s effort, a headless bronze statue thought to depict Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was recently removed from the Cleveland Museum of Art as part of an investigation by New York officials into looted antiquities from Türkiye.

Turkish officials earlier noted that the statue, valued at $20 million, was stolen by smugglers from an archaeological site called Bubon in the southern province of Burdur in the 1960s.