The delegations involved in the meeting between Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Monday also included the secret service organizations of Greece and Turkey, to further advance their not-so-secret collaboration.
As widely covered by Greek media, the Director-General of the National Intelligence Service (EYP), Themistoklis Demiris, accompanied the Prime Minister to meet with the Director of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) İbrahim Kalın.
The two, as previously announced by President Erdogan, are working on migration, human trafficking and terrorism as separate but also interrelated issues.
According to reports at TO VIMA, Greece and Turkey’s secret service agencies are hyper-focused on arresting migrant smugglers operating between the two countries.
Their work together resulted in the arrest of more than 80 traffickers by the Turkish police, says TO VIMA.
Yet, as irregular migrant arrivals from the Eastern Mediterranean route have jumped 109% in the first quarter of 2024, according to FRONTEX, the two countries will have to continue and possibly double their efforts as migrants seem to have temporarily abandoned the central Mediterranean route.
