A meeting between Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and recently re-elected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of a NATO summit next week is increasingly viewed as crucial for the release of two Greek servicemen, which continue to be held in pre-trial detention in the neighboring country since March 1.
The two men, a lieutenant and a NCO, were detained after allegedly straying into Turkish territory along a poorly demarcated point on the Greece-Turkey frontier. No specific charges have been filed against them, a local prosecutor’s probe continues to drag on, and no court date to adjudicate charges in an indictment has been set.
Complicating the issue is official Turkey’s now very public insistence on linking the release of the two men with the return, by Greek authorities, of eight Turkish military personnel that requested political asylum in Greece. The eight, Turkish army aviation personnel, fled to northeast Greece aboard a medi-vac helicopter after a failed July 2016 coup in the neighboring country, with Turkish authorities charging that the eight are coup conspirators.
Along those lines, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu questioned the most recent decision this week, by an independent appeals-level asylum committee in Athens, to grant formal political asylum to the third of the eight Turks.
“This decision for asylum is truly strange, because the Greek government, initially, wanted to give them (the eight) to us… Later, it (Athens) was pressured by the West,” Cavusoglu said, in brushing off repeated decisions by Greece’s independent judiciary.
“Mr. Tsipras and Mr. Kotzias had promised to deliver the eight Turkish officers; Nikos Kotzias had personally told me this, but the Greek justice system, which they say is independent, is being pressured by the West through the putschists…” the Turkish foreign minister was quoted by the Anadolu news agency as saying. He referred to the Greek prime minister and his counterpart, Nikos Kotzias.
In a related development, the Athens daily “Ta Nea” published what it called a letter by the Turkish government to European Parliament President Antonio Tajani, directly linking the extradition of the asylum seekers with the prospect of a “fair trial” for the two Greek servicemen in a jail in the border city of Edirne.
