Turkey Asks Getty Museum to Return Antiquities
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The government of Turkey has asked the J. Paul Getty Museum and several other American museums to return artifacts that it believes were looted. The Turkish government has contacted the Getty, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Cleveland Museum of Art and Harvard University's Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection to present evidence that objects in their collections may have been illegally excavated from the country's archaeological sites, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. It has threatened to halt all loans of art to those institutions until they respond to the claims.
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Stepevi, a Turkish rug company known for its rich, textural designs, will open its first North American outpost next week in SoHo. The company was started about seven years ago (although the family behind it has been in the business since the early 1900s) and currently has showrooms in London, Paris, Milan and Istanbul. SoHo was the natural next step, said Aysegul Yurekli Sengor, the managing director and wife of the founder, Cem Sengor.
A Turkish entrepreneur has expanded his business by introducing lokum, also known as Turkish delight, to Russians, who have quickly taken to the taste of the sweet dessert. Entrepreneur Ali Yılmaz, who is from the western province of Denizli, moved to St. Petersburg in 1999 to study and at the same time started selling small packages of lokum to Russians. He rented a small storage unit where he kept packages of lokum and delivered orders himself directly to his customers’ doors. He said, “Now, those days are over.”
The new Turkish historical epic “Fetih 1453” (The Conquest 1453) defeated “Recep İvedik 2” and has become Turkey's all-time most watched film in just 18 days. “Fetih 1453” opened in 850 theaters across Turkey with 500 prints last month, and it managed to sell 1,161,250 tickets in its first weekend, becoming the second-best opening of all time after “Recep İvedik 2,” which sold 1.2 million tickets in the first three days after its release on Feb. 13, 2009.
