The scandal erupted at the highest political level of the countries.

As part of the pre-season preparation of Turkish Galatasaray and Greek Olympiacos, it was decided to take an important diplomatic step by holding a friendly match between these teams in Athens.

It is worth recalling that at the interstate level, Ankara and Athens have a long-term conflict over the division of zones of influence in the region, after Greece gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821.. In particular, in recent years, the presence of these countries on the territory of the island of Cyprus has been actively discussed..

The friendly match between Galatasaray and Olympiacos in this context was supposed to be one of the steps of reconciliation, after a five-year pause in diplomatic relations. However, already at the stage of the arrival of the Turkish delegation to the capital of Greece, something went wrong..

As befits the protocol of international matches, the "

However, upon arrival at the airport of Athens, it turned out that the Greek side refused to accept data from the Turkish team, instead offering them to undergo a second express test in the airport building..

Galatasaray considered such a request disrespectful, after which Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu decided to intervene in the conflict situation with a scandal, who called the behavior of Greek customs officers "

Galatasaray called the incident "

"

At the same time, the Minister of Health of Greece Nikos Hardalias said that the planned friendly match did not take place within the framework of international competitions, therefore, the players of the Turkish club had to go through the testing procedure on equal terms with the rest of the guests of the country.. This includes the mandatory passage of express or PCR testing.

Ultimately, based on the refusal of the Turkish side, he made the following statement: "

As you can see, the attempt at diplomatic rapprochement failed with a scandal.