“He was denied access to his own cultural heritage,” said Boz, whose job is now to reclaim Turkey’s ancient treasures, as head of the country’s Department for Combating Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Property.
The 4,500-year-old artifacts still sit in Moscow, in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. With claims by Russia, Germany and Turkey, they are frozen in a bitter three-way international dispute unlikely to be resolved soon.
Many feared Priam’s Treasure had been destroyed. In the 1990s, however, Russia acknowledged that Soviet troops had taken the bounty as spoils of war. The revelation — followed by an exhibition at the Pushkin Museum — immediately inflamed tensions over the collection’s ownership.
Russia, insisting the gold is proper compensation for Nazi acts, says it has no intention of returning it.”
