A spokesman for the Turkish government said the United States should be able to extradite the cleric “on grounds of suspicion” rather than requiring specific facts about the case against him.
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“The people have the opinion that these terrorists should be killed”, he said. “So this is sufficient ground”.
Yildirim said the justice ministry had sent a dossier to United States authorities on Gulen, whose religious movement blends conservative Islamic values with a pro-Western outlook and who has a network of supporters within Turkey. Our citizens’ demand is an order for us.
CHP lawmaker Ozgur Ozel said the decision would amount to a “civilian coup” against Parliament and was a display of “ingratitude” to all the legislators who had gathered in the assembly to oppose the coup attempt.
Turkey is demanding that Washington extradite Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has been in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since the late 1990s and who the government has long accused of being behind a “parallel terrorist organization”.
“They (the Turkish government) are gravely violating fundamental principles of the rule of law by arresting thousands of judges and prosecutors and anyone who can vaguely have the label of Gulenist attached to them”, he said. The eight, who deny involvement, have applied for asylum in Greece, saying they fear for their safety if they are returned.
The dismissals touched every aspect of government life.
More than 1,500 university deans have also been ordered to resign and the licences of 21,000 teachers working at private institutions revoked.
Before the vote Thursday, another deputy prime minister, Numan Kurtulmus, said once the emergency measures are invoked, the country would suspend its participation in the European Convention of Human Rights, an worldwide treaty meant to protect human rights and freedoms. Almost 10,000 people have been arrested and over 58,880 civil service employees including teachers, university deans and police have been dismissed, suspended, forced to resign or had their licenses revoked. A Turkish brigadier general at the base has already been detained for his alleged role in Friday’s uprising, and news reports say refueling aircraft that took off from the base helped keep F-16s used by the coup-plotters up in the air. Dozens of others were still being questioned.
Incirlik is host to a number of USA intelligence facilities that are critical to the fight against Islamic State.
“The types of arrests and roundups that you cite have not gone unnoticed by us”, he said.
He also told Al-Jazeera that in the aftermath of the attempted coup he would support reinstating the death penalty, which Turkey abolished in 2004 as part of a bid for European Union membership.
Many government supporters did go to the streets in peaceful protest-along with Turks who did not vote for the AKP, but simply opposed a military coup.
Ties between the United States and one of its most crucial military allies, Turkey, were rapidly fraying Monday as Washington criticized the widespread purges that have followed an abortive coup d’état, and Turkey’s Prime Minister said there would be “a questioning of our friendship” if the USA didn’t extradite the man Ankara believes masterminded the failed putsch. She took out her smartphone to show reporters pictures of Terzi in his hospital bed.
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Western countries said they supported Erdogan’s government but Ankara should abide by the rule of law. On Monday, according to Anadolu, prosecutors entered Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey, which is key to the US -led campaign against the Islamic State group. “But we also firmly urge the government of Turkey to maintain calm and stability throughout the country”, he said in Brussels on Monday. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry saysTurkey must provide hard evidence that Gulen was behind the foiled coup, and that mere allegations of wrongdoing wouldn’t suffice. “Two of my close bodyguards were martyred, they were killed”, he told CNN in an interview. “I want to ask our friends in the US, did you ask for proof when you demanded the terrorists after the Twin Towers fell on September 11?”
