Over a hundred Turkish NATO soldiers applied for asylum in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany in the wake of the attempted coup in July last year, public broadcaster NOS and the NRC said on Tuesday.

Some 700 Turkish troops were employed by NATO at the time. Two months after the attempted coup the Turkish government published a list of NATO staff they considered untrustworthy, including 400 who were mainly employed in the Benelux countries, Germany and the US.

The soldier were ordered to return to Ankara. Those who did were arrested on arrival. Most stayed where they were in order to avoid persecution.

The number of Turkish asylum requests increased in many European countries after the coup. In the Netherlands the number rose from 50 in 2015 to 235 in 2016. In Belgium asylum requests tripled to 736. In Germany some 5,700 Turks put in a request compared to 2,000 the year before.

In an interview with the NRC, three Turkish soldiers who have asked for asylum in Belgium said they knew a fellow soldier who went back and was tortured.

Proof

‘There is no proof at all we were involved in the attempt. But I was trained in the United States. In the eyes of the ultranationalists in the Turkish army this may make me too pro-Western,’ one soldier told the paper.

The positions of the Turkish soldiers have now been filled by other, pro-Russian Turkish soldiers, a situation which is worrying NATO headquarters, according to NOS foreign correspondent Arjan Noorlander.

‘These soldiers stand for a different, more pro-Russian agenda and are not completely trusted by the other 27 NATO countries,’ Noorlander said. ‘That creates a risky situation in a military volatile world in which Turkey plays a crucial role.’