Turkey to US Museums: We Want Our Stuff Back

Turkey has taken note of how neighbors Italy and Greece have cajoled US museums into returning their long-lost antiquities, and it wants in. The government has asked four American facilities—the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Met, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Harvard's Dumbarton Oaks collection—to return a slew of goods taken from the country's archeological sites over the past century, reports the Los Angeles Times.

"Turkey is not trying to start a fight," says a Turkish cultural official. "We are trying to develop ... cooperation and we hope these museums will also understand our point of view." As the negotiations continue, the nation has started playing hard ball, at least relative to museum fights: It has denied loans of items to the Met and may do so with the others as well. (More Turkey stories.)