The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is organizing a major exhibition on the Seljuks, whose medieval Islamic empire expanded from central Asia into much of modern Anatolia in Turkey, without loans from Turkey, "The Art Newspaper" has learned. Experts fear that loans from any collections in Iran or Russia will also be missing in the Met’s show.

The Met’s problem securing Turkish loans echoes those surrounding the British Museum’s exhibition on the Hajj, which went ahead in London in 2012 without Turkish artifacts after tangled disputes over an inscribed stele with a relief of Herakles, which have yet to be resolved.