“Kosovo is Turkey, and Turkey is Kosovo.” This assertion, made by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2013 while serving as prime minister, must have rung eerily true for six Turkish nationals as Turkish intelligence officials spirited them out of Kosovo by private jet on March 29.

The men, five Turkish schoolteachers and a medical doctor, have been accused of links to Fethullah Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based Sunni cleric the Turkish government blames for the failed 2016 coup attempt. The extractions, which human rights advocates denounced as illegal, have sent tremors through the tiny Balkan state, exposed the extent of Turkish impunity and ignited tensions between Turkey and its former Ottoman dominion.

Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj has denied knowledge of the affair. He fired his interior minister and spy chief the day after the incident for their alleged complicity. Kosovo's Foreign Affairs Ministry declared in a statement, “The arrest and deportation of the Turkish citizens with a regular residence permit … is … in direct contradiction to international norms.”

This prompted an angry reaction from Erdogan, who retorted that Haradinaj would “pay” for his actions. “Since when have you started to defend those who attempted a coup against Turkey,” he thundered March 31. An unfazed Haradinaj, who visited the wives of the snatched Turks, followed up with a salvo of his own in an interview with the Voice of America’s Albanian service, remarking, “The [alleged] Gulenists were not deported, they were stolen.”