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Steven Emerson,
Executive Director
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March 6, 2018
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Turkey
Refusing to Release Detained Greek Soldiers
by John Rossomando • Mar 6, 2018
at 8:55 am
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Turkish forces lead
captured Greek soldiers into custody.
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A Turkish court on Monday refused to release two Greek soldiers who
strayed across the border into Turkey last week. Turkey accuses the
soldiers of being spies. Greece claims the border crossing was accidental due to heavy snow and fog. This is just the
latest example of Turkey threatening its neighbors under President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan's rule.
A Turkish government spokesman said Monday the soldiers were being held
because they wandered into the military zone. He denied they were being
held as a bargaining chip to exchange for eight Turkish soldiers who fled
to Greece following the 2016 coup attempt as some press reports speculated.
Erdogan repeatedly demanded the soldiers be returned to Turkey.
The Greek soldiers told Turkish prosecutors they were "following
footprints in the snow in an attempt to stop migrant smuggling."
Turkish authorities remanded the soldiers into custody because they aren't
resident in Turkey and could flee the country. They also noted they planned to examine the soldiers'
digital data.
This latest action risks inflaming tensions between Greece and Turkey.
The two NATO allies have become locked into a war of words in recent weeks,
starting last month when a Turkish vessel rammed a Greek ship off a
disputed island in the Aegean Sea. Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias warned that the Turks had "touched on the red line
and in some sense it overstepped it." Greece would meet any Turkish
"aggression" with an equal response.
"Test our resolve. We are kindly asking Greece to set foot on the
Imia islets. If that happens, we will defend them to the death, from the
moment that Erdogan gives the order," said Erdogan adviser Yigit
Bulut.
Erdogan recently claimed that Turkey is a continuation of the Ottoman Empire and vowed to recapture influence in areas once ruled by its
caliphate. Much of northern Greece, where most ethnic Turks live today,
remained part of the empire until 1913. Erdogan's Neo-Ottomanist allies proudly speak of jihad and used such terms to describe
Turkey's recent invasion of the Afrin region of Syria.
Turkish armed forces also conducted war games in the vicinity of the Evros River,
where the Greek soldiers were arrested. That exercise included crossing a
river, which the Greek media insinuated meant learning how to invade a
neighboring country.
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