Two U.S. Marines attacked in Turkey by nationalist youth group

Two U.S. Marines were assaulted in Turkey on Monday by more than a dozen members of a nationalist group, authorities said.

Thirteen men and two women were detained after being accused of attacking the service members, officials in Izmir province said. They are accused of membership in the Turkish Youth Union, a secular nationalist group that opposes U.S. and European Union influence in Turkey.

The assault took place Monday afternoon in Konak, a municipality in Izmir, in western Turkey, on the Aegean Sea, officials said. The service members, who are from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, were in civilian clothes, they added. Local police intervened, and other Marines in the area aided the two members who were attacked, U.S. and Izmir officials said.

The Turkish Youth Union posted a video of an attack on social media, which showed a group pushing two men and covering one of their heads in what appeared to be a white sack to chants in English of “Yankee, go home.”

“U.S. soldiers who carry the blood of our soldiers and thousands of Palestinians on their hands cannot defile our country,” the post said.

Cmdr. Tim Gorman, a spokesperson for the U.S. Sixth Fleet, said in an email that the two Marines were taken to a hospital as a precaution but were not injured and had returned to their ship, the USS Wasp. The amphibious assault ship arrived in Izmir on Sunday after conducting training exercises with the Turkish Naval Forces.

“Local Izmir police and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service are cooperating in an investigation of the incident,” he said. “No Marines have been detained by authorities and those involved are cooperating with investigators.”

Sean Savett, a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council, said in an email that “We are troubled by this assault on US service members and are appreciative that Turkish police are taking this matter seriously and holding those responsible accountable.”

In 2014, about 20 people claiming to be members of the Turkish Youth Union attacked three U.S. sailors in Istanbul and put a bag over one’s head.

In 2016, two members of the group were detained after trying to put a sack over the head of a U.S. soldier, the Associated Press reported. The group posted on Twitter at the time that “You put a sack over our soldiers’ heads in 2003,” according to the AP, an apparent reference to the detention of 11 Turkish special forces soldiers by U.S. troops in Iraq that sparked public outrage in Turkey.

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Beril Eski in Istanbul contributed to this report.