That has been a rule for a long time, way before Erdoğan. When I was visiting Turkey as a child about 18 years ago, there were signs all over the airport saying that it’s illegal to remove artifacts, stones, etc. from the country. The signs mentioned that the punishments can be high fines and even go up to imprisonment.
According to a previous article (written in Dutch), one of the stones they took had flowers drawn on it so therefore it was of historical value. However they found it in a street in-between some trash so it’s not like they really stole it from anywhere. The other stones they took from the shore.
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