An article in the Turkish opposition newspaper Sözcü returns in a strange way to the case of the eight Turkish officers who fled to Greece after the 2016 coup attempt against Erdogan.
The IFF scandal
The daily says that President Erdoγan harshly criticized Greece for granting political asylum to almost 2,000 members of FETO (the network of the self-exiled US imam Fethullah Gülen) between 2017 and 2020.
And he brings, as he notes, to the forefront the IFF scandal, for which “the Ministries of National Defense and Foreign Affairs have been silent for a long time”.
Following the July 15 coup attempt, “the IFF (Friends and Foes Recognition System) and night-vision equipment dismantled by the Sikorsky S-70 helicopter with the 8 FETO soldiers who fled to Greece are still in their hands of the Greek secret services! ” the newspaper emphasizes.
Photos by Sozcu
Each of the 8 soldiers is wanted for a reward of 10 million TL (Turkish lira), he adds.
“Erdogan's harsh expressions”
He goes on to say that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who sent a video message to the symposium entitled “The Sea of the Islands (s.s. Aegean Sea) and Neighborhood Relations with Greece”, organized by the University on September 9 at the Sabanci Cultural Center, used harsh expressions.
Erdogan said of Greece, which granted political asylum to 2,000 FETO members between 2017 and 2020, that (Greece) closed the doors to the oppressed Syrians and opened them to those FETO assassins who tried to stage a bloodshed. 251 of our citizens, emphasizes Sözcü.
“The left-wing newspaper Ta Nea wrote last January that from a year after the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, until the beginning of 2020, the asylum applications of 2,000 FETO members were accepted,” he underlines.
It was not surrendered to the Turks
The article claims that after the landing of the Sikorsky S-70 helicopter in Greece, a part of the Turkish Armed Forces that was in the helicopter, was not handed over to the Turks.
“On the morning of July 17, 2016, it was revealed that the night vision device had been removed, also, when the Greek authorities handed over the helicopter to the Turkish ones”, it is noted.
They avoided answering
The Ministry of Defense's Operations and Intelligence Coordination Department, as “military”, and the Foreign Ministry's Deputy Director General for Security and Intelligence, in terms of “diplomacy”, declined to answer questions about whether the devices were later delivered to Turkey.
The article continues with information about the eight soldiers who took refuge in Greece, presenting photos and personal information.
Source: Sözcü, echedoros-a.gr
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