Azerbaijani citizens J.M. (45) and E.M. (33) were arrested for their involvement in the incident on 26 October in Zabjelo in Podgorica, when Montenegrin citizen M.J. was injured, which led to a surge in violence against Turkish citizens and the introduction of visas for Turkish citizens.
The police, who previously arrested the wrong people, now claim that the two Azerbaijanis tried to leave Montenegro and were arrested at the Božaj border crossing.
“After showing the travel documents, the police officers doubted the authenticity of one of the persons’ documents, and the vehicle and these persons were taken aside for a detailed check,” the Police Directorate announced.
The Podgorica court previously lifted the detention ordered the day before for Turkish and Azerbaijani citizens Y.G. and N.D. because he assessed that there was no reasonable suspicion that they had committed the crime of attempted murder of M.J. because they were in their accommodation at the time of the fight.
Several previous evenings, groups of citizens in Podgorica had called for the lynching and expulsion of Turkish citizens, there were also physical attacks on them, as well as the demolition of Turkish establishments.
Various recordings have been published in the Montenegrin media and speculation is being made about who started the fight first, and the police say they are still investigating it.
The civil sector, civic activists and some parties have condemned both the attack on the Podgorica resident and the violence directed at foreign citizens, emphasizing that an entire community should not be stigmatized because of individual guilt.
They state that the ruling parties and right-wing media, one of whose narratives is that 100,000 Turkish citizens have immigrated to Montenegro, which has a population of 620,000.
The police said that there were actually 13,400 of them, and that the total number of foreigners in Montenegro was 100,000.
At a rally in Podgorica today, Turkish Ambassador to Montenegro Bariš Kalkavan said that “what was prevented is much greater than what happened”.
“Montenegro does not feed on all these things that we have seen – calls for lynching and xenophobia, but is oriented towards other values. You have shown the long-standing ties between the Montenegrin and Turkish people. You can feel safe, we are in communication with all authorities”, said the ambassador, speaking at a rally organized by the Strategy for Civic Montenegro (STEGA) on the Petrović Castle plateau in Podgorica.
Some media outlets and analysts claim that a number of circumstances indicate that behind the eruption of hatred is not just a spontaneous reaction of citizens, but a much broader, organized and politically motivated campaign that could also be interpreted as “a message to Ankara, sent from Belgrade, and potentially from Russia”.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić on Wednesday denied any connection to the attacks on Turkish immigrants in Montenegro, saying he “had no idea it was happening.”
Responding to accusations from Podgorica that it was using Montenegro to deal with Turkey, because Ankara had recently delivered drones to Kosovo, Vučić said that “something like that had never even crossed his mind.”
“They have to generate a new agenda because they don’t know what to offer but hatred for everything Serbian,” he said.
