The Turkish Foreign Ministry said they were handed over to Ankara “in response to a request from Interpol under its Red Notice.”
“Turkiye appreciates the cooperation demonstrated in this matter by Armenia,” it said in a statement.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry reported the extraditions earlier on Sunday. It too cited an Interpol arrest warrant for the two men who are apparently Turkish nationals.
Citing the Turkish Interior Ministry, the state-owned Anadolu news agency identified them as “organized crime ringleader Ercan Yilmaz and his accomplice Ibrahim Kaymak.” It said Yilmaz has been wanted in Turkey for the past 15 years. The ministry also released a short video of masked Turkish police officers escorting the two men on board a plane bound for Turkey.
The Armenian statement did not clarify when and how the two men entered Armenia. They were extradited just over a month after Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) reported a “possible attempt” to illegally enter the country from Turkey.
Russian border guards alerted the NSS about the suspected illegal border crossing on December 11. They spotted damage caused to barbed wire protecting a section of the Armenian-Turkish border and footprints leading from there towards a nearby Armenian village.
The NSS said on December 12 that it is taking “necessary operational-intelligence measures” in connection with the alert. It has still not clarified whether someone indeed crossed the frontier and was detained as a result.