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Pentagathus:
But surely being an archaeologist of a certain culture or are would not give you any rights to relevant archaeological sites or evidence. If artefacts are illegally being removed from Turkish soil then I would imagine Turkey has the rights to them, though I don't really have a clue what the legal situation would be once they've left Turkey. And obviously Turkey is the only state that has the right to decide whether Turkish sites can be excavated. 
If we're talking about artefacts already removed from the area before there were laws on this kind of thing then the legal owners are the legal owners, and legally they have the rights to them. Turkey could claim some kind of inherent or moral rights to them I guess, but it doesn't really mean anything. Still, if we're talking outside of legal rights then I don't see who else could claim to have a right to them.

Jubal:
I think in strict legal terms that's all correct. Morally I think there is a bit more complexity, especially when it comes to states who actively want to erase parts of their historical culture - see for example Azerbaijan which has been very programmatically destroying historica Armenian sites, artefacts, and monuments on its territory, or China which has demolished quite a few medieval mosques as part of a pretty literal culture war against the Uyghurs.

I guess in the imaginary world where we had proper international courts that could overrule states and determine cases about cultural heritage I would not have a problem with a possible legal defence (under some kind of international law) of "I removed these things because there was a clear, present, well documented threat to their preservation from the state which nominally has a legal claim to them". Generally I think that defence should be pretty hard to make stick, and I think one should always be extremely cautious about advocating the removal of antiquities for their preservation or you end up with western European museums nicking the whole world's heritage again. But I don't think it's always invalid to consider that heritage may need protecting from states as much as protecting by states.

Pentagathus:
Yes, but also in that case there's at least a state and a still existing ethnic identity which clearly seems to have some valid claim on them - Armenia and Armenians. Whilst with Turkey, I don't see who else could make a claim. AFAIK there's no modern people who can really claim cultural or hereditary continuity with these ancient peoples. I don't know very much about the history of population transfers during Turkish conquest and Ottoman rule, but I would imagine that the current native population has at least as much native ancient ancestry as modern Greeks for example.

Jubal:
Mass protests against the new "foreign agent law" in Georgia:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64882475

I doubt they'll work, I'm terribly sad about this: it really does seem that Georgia is on a path to rapidly cut itself off from Europe.

I did a longer write-up at: https://thoughtsofprogress.wordpress.com/2023/03/08/georgian-nightmare-the-foreign-agent-bill/

Jubal:
Protests! Strikes!

Most dramatically currently in Israel which looks like it's rattling towards a general strike & constitutional crisis because it turns out that 50%+1 isn't a sustainable democratic strategy if the other 50%-1 think (correctly) that you're turning their country into an authoritarian monoculture.

Also in India, where Rahul Gandhi (yup, one of those Gandhis) of the Congress party has been arrested for being arguably rude about people called Modi because the BJP are getting increasingly authoritarian these days.

Also in Germany, where public transport strikes over the cost of living are grinding travel to a halt.

Also in France where people have been throwing fireworks at police in protests against the building of a new water reservoir.

The world feels unsettled at the moment: a lot of things feel very in the balance that could make a big difference to how the coming years turn out.

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