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ANKARA, Turkey , Oct 17 (AP) \u2014 Turkey and Greece on Monday exchanged more mutual recrimination over 92 migrants who were found stripped naked by Greek authorities at the two countries\u2019 joint border, a day after the United Nations called for an investigation into the incident.<\/p>\n
Greek migration minister Notis Mitarachi on Saturday tweeted a photo of the naked migrants, some with bodily harm, accusing Turkey of pushing them into Greece and stripping them naked before doing so. The claim prompted Fahrettin Altun, the communications director of Turkey\u2019s president, to accuse Greece of engaging in \u201c fake news.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Monday, Turkey\u2019s foreign minister again rejected the allegation and accused Athens of \u201cshameless and reckless\u201d behavior. He also took aim at European Union nations, accusing them of encouraging EU-member Greece to \u201cslander\u201d Turkey.<\/p>\n
The Greek government\u2019s spokesman, Giannis Oikonomou, meanwhile, charged that Turkey was \u201ccontinuing to openly instrumentalize migrants and even with unprecedented and unthinkable practices of barbarism.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exchange of accusations comes at a time when tensions between the two neighbors is running high, with the two engaging in mutual accusations of airspace violations and Turkey accusing Greece of militarizing islands in the Aegean Sea in violation of international treaties and threatening possible military action.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be able to appear right even when you are in the wrong like Greece – you need to be shameless and reckless. It\u2019s only Greece that can achieve this,\u201d Cavusoglu said at a news conference at the end of meeting in Istanbul of the foreign ministers of Turkic states.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is natural that Greece … attempts to slander Turkey as its crimes increases,\u201d Cavusoglu said. \u201cUnfortunately, there are European Union member countries who want to believe this, who want to accept everything that Greece says as true … This is what encourages Greece.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greek police said Saturday that police officers found the migrants stark naked on Friday, \u201csome with bodily injuries.\u201d They had entered the country using plastic boats to cross the Evros River \u2014 known as Meric in Turkey \u2014 which forms a border between the two countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis inhuman behavior is a disgrace to civilization, and the Turkish leadership, instead of blaming others for what is happening on its territory, should investigate the incident, punish those directly involved and honor its obligations under its Joint Declaration with the EU,\u201d the Greek government spokesman said in reference to a 2016 deal to stem the arrival of refugees.<\/p>\n
Turkey regularly accuses Greece of violently pushing back migrants entering the country by land and sea. Turkey\u2019s coast guard frequently shares videos of such pushbacks.<\/p>\n
Greece accuses Turkey, which hosts the largest number of refugees in the world, of \u201cpushing forward\u201d migrants to put pressure on the EU.<\/p>\n
The U.N. refugee agency said it was \u201cdeeply distressed by the shocking reports,\u201d condemning the \u201cdegrading treatment\u201d and calling for an investigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ANKARA, Turkey , Oct 17 (AP) \u2014 Turkey and Greece on Monday exchanged more mutual recrimination over 92 migrants who were found stripped naked by Greek authorities at the two countries\u2019 joint border, a day after the United Nations called for an investigation into the incident. Greek migration minister Notis Mitarachi on Saturday tweeted a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-202913","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}