Turkey’s foreign ministry on Friday issued a response to the third and last ruling by an appellate level council in Athens on Thursday blocking extradition of another two of eight Turkish servicemen that have sought political asylum in Greece.
In three separate cases, the same council — but with a different composition of justices — rejected Ankara’s demand for five of the officers and NCOs, but accepted the extradition notice for three of the five. The circumstances are essentially the same for all eight.
“We are following closely the extradition process regarding the 8 persons, who claimed the lives of our people and H.E. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of the Republic of Turkey on 15 July 2016 and fled to Greece in an illegal way. Within this context, we have difficulty in understanding the decision of Athens Appeal Court that rejects the extradition of five of these individuals, while accepting our request for extradition of the three others.
“As a country (i.e. Greece between 1967 and 1974) which experienced the negative ramifications of a military junta in the past and could therefore empathize with Turkey in this period, we expect our neighbor and ally Greece to extradite coup plotters to Turkey… We understand that the extradition process is currently pending. We will continue to follow the developments in the upcoming period.”
The extradition request is solely the domain of the independent judiciary in Greece and does not involve a decision by the government or law enforcement authorities.
