France suspended its honorary consul in Turkey’s southern coastal town of Bodrum on Friday amid allegations that she was selling boats to refugees who are trying to cross to nearby Greek islands.
The consul, Francoise Olcay, was suspended after admitting in a TV report to selling inflatable boats to refugees, France’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Footage from French TV channel France 2 showed Friday that the consul — who was posted in October 2014 — said that if she did not sell the boats to the refugees, they would buy them from other shops.
But, Consul Olcay’s husband, Engin Olcay told Anadolu Agency on Saturday the media was waging an “attrition campaign.”
“We do not have a section saying ‘sales for emigrants.’ We have been selling boat equipment for years here,” Olcay said.
“We have 35,000 different products and one of them is lifejacket, the other is boat,” he said.
Olcay added that they had not received any information from France’s General Consulate in Istanbul related to the suspension of the honorary consul. He said that the meetings are going on and that a press conference would be held Tuesday on the issue.
Separately, Mugla Governor Amir Cicek said the companies selling these kinds of products are audited by authorities, and noted that his office too had not received any notification that the honorary consul was suspended.
The Turkish resort town of Bodrum is one of the main destinations for refugees aiming to cross to the Greek island of Kos and head to Europe.
According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, more than 300,000 people have risked their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea so far this year — mainly from Libya to Italy and from Turkey to Greece. Approximately 2,500 of them have died or gone missing trying to reach the continent this year alone.
Earlier this month, photos of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s lifeless body that washed up on a beach near Bodrum seemed to inspire soul-searching in the international community to take a common stance toward the thousands of refugees heading for Europe from conflict zones in Africa and the Middle East.
