the-awkward-turt:

Turtles/tortoises find handling more stressful than a lot of other reptiles. The only time a chelonian wouldn’t have all four feet on the ground or in water would be if they were about to be eaten.

Some tortoises are fine with safe, supervised free-roaming time outside their cage (not handling, just free roaming), but an aquatic turtle without access to water is a panicked aquatic turtle. They only move away from water to find a new body of water or lay eggs and are extremely vulnerable when doing this. 

Please don’t take your aquatic turtle out to walk around without access to water; they will probably just continually walk in search of water or find a dark place to hide. If you want to give them natural sunlight outside fill a kiddy pool for them (and monitor the water temperature constantly).

You can still bond with turtles/tortoises. They will beg for food from you, you can hand feed them, you can stick your arm in the tank and let them climb on you, you can scratch their shells, but generally they do best when left in their enclosure and really shouldn’t be picked up more than is necessary. If you need to pick them up try and support all four legs and ideally the bottom of the plastron also.