GREECE ANGRILY REJECTS ERDOğAN’S proposed soldier swap
TURKEY - Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has sparked anger with a proposal that since March be exchanged for eight Turkish officers who have sought asylum in Greece.
Only days after calling snap elections, Erdoğan raised the prospect of a trade-off, saying Ankara could return the soldiers if Athens first extradited the eight officers. “If they are handed to us, we will consider,” the leader told NTV channel at the weekend, publicly linking the two cases for the first time. In a tersely worded statement issued last weekend, the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, rebuffed the offer, calling it unacceptable. “Regarding references to an exchange … we stress once more that it is unacceptable and is rejected,” his office said. “The position of Greece, and of the EU in its entirety, is clear and consistent: we seek the immediate release of the two soldiers without conditions.” Insisting the Turkish servicemen had deliberately fled to the EU member state after participating in Turkey’s failed coup in July 2016, Erdogan claimed Ankara had already proposed the exchange to Greece. Despite rising tensions between the two countries, Turkey wanted good relations with its neighbor, he said. “They’ve asked us to give back the Greek soldiers and we’ve told them ‘if you make such a demand, you should first give us the FETO soldiers involved in the coup against our state,’” he said. Erdogan and his neoIslamist government use the term FETO to describe the movement of US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, who has been accused of orchestrating the attempted coup.
Earlier, the Greek president, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, also rejected the offer out of hand while Athens’ defense minister, Panos Kammenos, said it provided further proof that the two men were being held as “hostages”. Sgt Dimitris Kouklatzis, aged 27, and Lt Angelos Mitretodis, 25, were arrested after being found in a “forbidden military zone” by Turkish authorities in early March. They have been detained in a high-security jail pending trial in the border town of Edirne ever since. (The Guardian)