Turkey has ratified the Heritage Sovereignty Act, a landmark piece of legislation that requires all digital data generated from archaeological excavations—including LiDAR scans, 3D models, and genomic sequences—to be hosted on national servers. The law aims to prevent 'digital colonialism,' where high-resolution data of Turkish heritage sites is held exclusively by foreign institutions or private companies. Under the new regulations, foreign research teams must provide the Turkish government with full, unencrypted copies of all digital findings within six months of collection.
Proponents of the law argue that digital twins of sites like Göbekli Tepe are as much a part of the national heritage as the physical stones. By controlling the data, Turkey intends to ensure that future virtual reconstructions and AI-driven analyses are accessible to local scholars. The act also establishes a new national digital archive designed to preserve these data sets for centuries, protecting them from technological obsolescence.