Don't Sign Cultural Property Deals with Turkey and Tunisia

Five Reasons NOT to Sign Cultural Property Deals with Turkey and Tunisia: Destroying sites, denying minority and religious rights; overbroad restrictions impacting centuries of commercial trade, and failure to enforce laws all factor. This must be stopped by all right-thinking Americans.

Turkey: Centuries of Multicultural History and Trade Denied

Temple at Ain Dara, after bombing by Turkish forces, Syrian Human Rights Observatory.

Turkey Claims all Art and Artifacts: Centuries of Multicultural History and Trade Denied.

We ask that the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Property Advisory Committee follow the criteria under U.S. law, and reject the request from the Republic of Turkey for unnecessary, over-reaching, and legally unjustified import restrictions. The legal criteria are not met. The factual basis for the Turkish request is absent. So is any practical argument for an MOU having any positive effect. What we do know is that an Agreement with Turkey Will Help President Recip Erdogan’s Campaign of Religious Extremism and Xenophobia. Religious minority communities both in Turkey and in the United States will suffer from the gratuitous granting of import restrictions to a repressive and abusive regime that already claims rights over minority heritage beyond what are allowed under Turkish law.

Nothing Changes

Gold earring with glass head pendant, 3rd–1st century B.C in the Met Museum.

It looks modern but it is Phoenician or Carthaginian.

Striking back

Qasem Soleimani commander of the Quds Force (Iran's external security agency) has been killed in US drone strikes at Baghdad airport. This man had the blood of many brave US military personnel on his hands, and was directly responsible for 100s of American deaths. He engineered attacks in Iraq, often with sophisticated IEDs, that killed hundreds of US service-members and wounded thousands more. All Americans were at risk, as long as this man remained alive. The critics of Our President who say he did the wrong thing are still living in an Obama apology we're so sorry world. Now the world knows who's in charge. Go America!