One of Turkey's most infamous advisors to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has demanded that the Greek Consul General in Smyrna (Σμύρνα, Turkish: İzmir) be arrested.
Mesut Hakkı Caşın, a member of the Presidential Board for Security and Foreign Policy, is known for his bombastic remarks on television such as his promise to personally execute Greek pilots and threatened to kill American soldiers.
This time, Caşın showed his outrage over Greece discovering that a secretary at the Turkish Consulate General in Rhodes was a spy, along with a cook working on a Rhodes to Kastellorizo ferry line.
"As for those detained, Turkey can do the same as well. We can also arrest the Greek Consul General in Smyrna," he said on live television.
#Turkey may as well arrest #Greece Consul General in Izmir in response to the detainment of a local employee of Turkish consulate in Rhodes over espionage charges, says President #Erdogan's advisor Mesut Hakki Casin. pic.twitter.com/TvwCPRVe20
— Abdullah Bozkurt (@abdbozkurt) December 22, 2020
Of course there is no legal reason for the Greek Consular General in Smyrna, Despoina Balkiza, unlike Sebahattin Bayram, the secretary at the Turkish consulate in Rhodes, and Nezadin Mehmet, the cook.
Both were caught spying on the Greek military on many Aegean islands.
The cook and secretary accused of spying against Greece were sentenced by a unanimous decision by the Rhodes Investigator and the Public Prosecutor of Rhodes to temporary detention.
This was decided after a process that started early in the afternoon yesterday and ended just before 9pm.
The defendants' lawyers fought hard in order for their clients to avoid pre-trial detention, which ultimately proved impossible.
