In dismantling slave trade rings in Smyrna and Constantinople the Turkish police proceeded on the basis of information transmitted to the competent Turkish authorities by the National Intelligence Service as well as the Coast Guard.

Code-named police operations “Shield 9” and “Shield 10” led to the arrest of a significant number of slave traders and hundreds of migrants, who were about to travel from the coast of Turkey to the islands of the Eastern Aegean.

According to a post by Turkish Interior Minister Ali Gerlikaya on Twitter, five teams from the Turkish irregular immigration prosecution service participated in the “broom” operation in Izmir.

11 traffickers and 92 immigrants were arrested. Raids were carried out on 20 houses inhabited by immigrants, while legal proceedings were filed against 16 owners, who had rented their houses to immigrant rings. The Turkish police also carried out a similar operation in Istanbul.

Greek officials told “K” that after the visit of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Athens and the recent visit of Shipping Minister Christos Stylianides to Ankarathe level of cooperation between the Coast Guard and the Turkish Coast Guard to control migration flows has improved. But the same thing happens between the EYP and the MIT in the field of information exchange, mainly in what concerns the activity of slave trade rings. A competent Greek official, in fact, revealed to “K” that weeks ago detailed information with names and addresses of traffickers in Smyrna, Adana and Istanbul, which have emerged from sources – informants, as well as interviews with migrants arriving in the East, were sent to the Turkish services Aegean.

Sources of LimenikoThey note that migratory flows in the last twenty-four hours have been significantly limited, attributing the phenomenon not to bad weather conditions, but to the response of the Turkish Coast Guard.