A senior Greek official was detained in Turkey at the weekend because of what the Ankara government described as a technical error, Agence France-Presse reported, citing Turkish media on Tuesday.
Athens issued a formal complaint on Saturday after Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the governor of the Greek province of Central Macedonia, was detained for several hours when he arrived by boat in the port of İzmir, western Turkey, for a meeting of the Euro-Mediterranean Regional and Local Assembly.
“It was an accident. A Greek citizen was delayed from entering our country because of a technical problem,” Turkish media reported Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu as saying on Monday.
“Once the technical problem was solved, the Greek citizen was authorized to enter,” Çavuşoğlu said.
Pro-government paper Daily Sabah said Governor Tzitzikostas had been mistaken for someone else of the same name.
“It was a misunderstanding. But what Greece is doing is deliberate,” Çavuşoğlu added without further explanation.
Greece and Turkey, which have historically testy relations, have been engaged for months in a war of words, most notably over their air and sea borders, and immigration.