Trafficking fake 'ancient' Torahs in Turkey: a media analysis

Over the last decade, scores of supposedly ‘ancient’ manuscripts have been seized by police in Turkey. Although reports of the seizures regularly feature in the country’s media, the ‘ancient’ manuscript industry has received only sporadic scholarly attention. As a consequence, very little is currently known about the scope and scale of this persistent, peculiar, and now decade-old phenomenon. To understand the various factors that facilitate its growth, this article investigates how the trade, its participants, and the manuscripts themselves have been represented in the Turkish media over the past decade. Through a review of approximately ninety-three news articles published online between 2012 and 2022, I argue that the trade in ‘ancient’ biblical manuscripts in Turkey is legitimized by a narrative of the phenomenon that is fuelled by sensationalism, uncritical reporting, and an indifference to expert opinion.