Curators in other countries are alarmed at what they see as growing aggression. A leading museum director even described the campaign as “blackmail”. So what chance has Turkey of winning this new culture war?

其他国家的馆长将这些日益增长的挑衅行为感到震惊。一个重要的博物馆馆长甚至说这场运动是敲诈行为。如此一来土耳其会有什么样的机会来赢得这场文化战争呢？

At the crossroads of the ancient world, drawing Roman armies from the west and Persian conquerors from the east, Turkey—especially the region of Anatolia—has long been a rich seam of knowledge and treasure from antiquity. In the 19th century teams of European scholars travelled there in search of archaeological remains. Among the most successful was a German unit led by Carl Humann. Armed with a firman, or Ottoman permit, and financed by a group of rich backers in Berlin, Humann and his team, in 1878, began excavating a site in Bergama, near the modern city of Izmir on the Aegean coast of western Turkey.

处在古代世界的十字路口，土耳其吸引了西方的罗马军队和东方的波斯征服者，土耳其，尤其是安那托利亚地区，长期以来被人们视为知识繁荣文物丰富的宝地。19世纪欧洲学者为了搜寻考古遗迹来到这里。其中最成功的要数卡尔·休曼领导的德国考古队。有了苏丹的敕令（奥斯曼帝国的许可），得到了大批柏林富翁的资助，休曼和他的同事从1878年开始挖掘在土耳其西部其爱琴海岸贝尔加马（现代城市伊兹密尔附近）的一处遗址。

Humann’s most important discovery was the altar of Zeus, which dates from the second century BC. Its dramatic frieze depicting the battle between the giants and the Olympian gods makes it one of the most distinctive works from the classical world. With the sultan’s permission, the altar was sent to Germany and became the centrepiece of the Pergamon museum in Berlin. Meanwhile, German archaeologists continued to work on the site; today, the ancient city of Pergamon is the second oldest ongoing archaeological dig in the world. German excavations are still the most important of the foreign digs in Turkey, and for decades Turkish archaeologists have been educated in Berlin and other German cities, their studies subsidised by German government grants.

休曼最重要的发现是公元前二世纪的宙斯祭坛。它的浮雕生动地描绘了巨人和奥林匹亚众神作战的情景，这座祭坛也因此跻身古代最杰出的艺术品行列。获得苏丹的允许后，祭坛被送到德国，成为柏林佩加蒙博物馆的镇馆之宝。与此同时，考古学家在遗址上继续工作。今天佩加蒙古城是世界上第二个持续进行的考古发掘。现在，在土耳其的外国发掘中，德国独占鳌头，数十年来，土耳其考古学家在柏林和其他德国城市接受教育，他们的学习得到了德国政府拨款资助。

Archaeological teams like Humann’s were soon followed by scholars from Britain and France, and into the 20th century from Italy, Japan and America. Some paid for their projects by selling a portion of their finds to Western collectors who were becoming increasingly enamoured of all things à la Turque. Others removed treasures they believed might be at risk from war and insurrection, and gave them to the new European museums. Foreign scholars saved a considerable number of Turkish artefacts from being commercially looted or destroyed by invading armies. This is rarely mentioned in Turkey’s discussions about its archaeological past.

类似休曼考古队的行动很快被来自英国和法国的学者效仿，到了20世纪，意大利、日本和美国的学者也加入到这个行列。有人为了支付工程款项就向西方收藏家出售了发掘到的部分物品，那些收藏家对土耳其所有的东西越发倾心。其他人因为害怕战争和动乱带来风险就转移了文物并把他们送到了欧洲博物馆。他们的行动使文物免于被低价掠夺或者侵略军的毁坏。土耳其讨论过去的考古工作时，对这段历史几乎只字不提。

The precise way in which objects were acquired has kept on changing. Some scholars had formal permission from the Ottoman authorities to take their treasures back to Europe; others were motivated by a wish to preserve and protect and did not bother with obtaining proper permissions or establishing a full and accurate provenance for an object. Looters robbed graves and helped themselves.

取得文物的正确方法一直在变化。有些学者到得到奥斯曼帝国当局的正式批准后将文物带回欧洲。有的学者出于保存和保护文物的目的，没有费尽心机的征得适当的许可或者建立完整准确的文物档案。掠夺墓地的抢劫者只拿他们想要的东西。

Use of force
使用强力

Western museums house tens of thousands of objects from Turkey. Most of these were given or acquired without full documentation. Though Turkey passed a law in 1884 (updated in 1906) stating that all antiquities were the property of the state and could not be taken out of the country, this was only loosely enforced.

西方博物馆里来自土耳其的文物成千上万。博物馆获赠或获取的这些艺术品没有完整档案。虽然1884年土耳其通过一部法律（1906年更新）规定所有的文物属于国家财产并且不能带到国外，这部法律的约束力不大。