Turkish travelers said Israeli officers singled them out for airport strip searches. Israeli passengers said they were segregated and searched at Istanbul, Anatolia news agency reported.
Passengers said they were separated from travelers from other countries as they headed back to Turkey on Sunday and taken into rooms for detailed body searches at Ben Gurion airport, near Tel Aviv, Anatolia reported.
“They immediately told the group from Bucharest to pass ... but they took us into changing rooms. (We) took off our clothes and shoes. (They) searched our bodies with their hands and then with a detector,” Arif Cinar said at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, Anatolia reported.
“They searched our bodies for explosives for several times,” Cinar said.
Another passenger, Mustafa Teke said he was asked to take off his clothes and remain naked for body search and when he refused officials forced him to do so.
“I told them I am a Muslim and would not take off my trousers. They said I could not fly then ... They forcibly made me to (take off) my trousers,” Teke said.
The leader of the tour group, Eyup Ensar Ugur said their plane was delayed due to those security searches. “They even examined my paper napkin three times,” he said.
Hayuta Leibovich, an Israeli who manufactures clothes in Turkey, said she and other Israelis in line at passport control at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport were told by security officers to stand in a corner of the terminal.
“They gathered us in a group and asked for our passports — not very nicely,” she said. “I felt as if they put us in a ghetto.”
Leibovich said she usually speeds through the airport’s arrival procedures in about 15 minutes during her frequent business trips to Turkey.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman in Jerusalem said the Israeli travelers were questioned individually and waited about 90 minutes before their passports were returned and they were released.
“We don’t know what the questioning was about. We are looking for more details. We were told by the Turkish authorities that they were not familiar with the case,” the spokesman said.
An Israeli woman who gave her name only as Orit said she was in transit at Istanbul airport when she and about 20 other Israelis were separated from other passengers.
Orit said the passengers were taken away for strip searches before being allowed to board a flight to Israel at the last minute. “We were all traumatized,” she said.
There was no immediate comment from Turkish authorities.
Tourism between Israel and Turkey has declined as political tensions have risen.
In the first five months of 2011, only 30,000 Israeli tourists visited Turkey compared with 72,500 during the same period in 2010. The number of Turkish visitors to Israel fell slightly over the same periods, from around 6,900 to 6,600.
