Sevan Nişanyan, a controversial writer who is wanted in Turkey for multiple cases, may be deported back to the country from Greece where he is living under a temporary permit, his Greek wife Ira Tzourou said on social media.

Tzourou announced that Nişanyan was detained on the island of Samos last Thursday after Greek authorities refused to renew his residence permit. A Samos court on Monday is to decide whether Nişanyan, a Turkish-Armenian, will be deported to Turkey or Armenia, she said. Greek police could not immediately confirm the case.

He had been jailed in Turkey in 2014 on charges of illegal construction. He escaped from a low-security prison in 2017 in western Turkey and sought asylum in Greece, a popular destination both for migrants and members of terrorist groups. Nişanyan was the defendant in several cases in Turkey and in 2012, he was convicted in a case regarding his support for an anti-Islam film. He also had faced a barrage of criticism for his controversial social media posts where he apparently lauded casualties in a 2020 earthquake in Elazığ, a province whose residents were described as "ignorant, sex-obsessed, backward masses" by Nişanyan. He was also criticized for social media posts trivializing rape cases. However, his first claim to notoriety was back in 2008, when he emptied a jar of excrement on the head of his ex-wife during a quarrel.

Greece, whose ties with Turkey are lukewarm and occasionally hostile amid multiple conflicts over migrants and gas exploration rights, had drawn the ire of Ankara in the past for harboring people charged with terrorism and refusal of extradition of military officers involved in a 2016 coup attempt engineered by the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ).