Mr Gulen’s lawyers said it was unlikely any extradition request would stand up in a U.S. court and there was nearly no chance that their client would get a fair trial in Turkey, given what had been said against him there since the coup attempt.
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He was suspended from his position following the failed coup and detained on July 26 in the investigations into the plotters. But Washington has said Ankara must provide clear evidence of Gulen’s involvement in the failed military coup before any handovern process can move forward. Ankara has demanded the extradition of Gulen from the United States, where he has lived in self-imposed exile since 1999.
Turkey’s government has repeatedly said the defeated attempt was organized by followers of Fetullah Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the US state of Pennsylvania since 1997.
“Under no circumstance, based upon the record to date of the applicable rules, does Turkey come anywhere close to getting the extradition they’re apparently requesting”, Weingarten said.
Gulen strongly denies masterminding the coup and the movement he leads insists it is a charitable network promoting tolerant Islam.
Turkey has frequently called on the United States to extradite Gulen, sending documents to Washington as evidence of his alleged involvement in the putsch attempt.
Kerry’s visit, if confirmed, comes at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Ankara in the wake of the attempted military takeover on July 15. A spokesman declined to give a reason but said the company, while not questioning its engagement with Turkey, was monitoring the political and economic situation very carefully. “In extradition proceedings, evidence matters and due process matters”, he said.
Since the coup attempt, almost 70,000 people suspected of links to Gulen have been suspended or dismissed from the military, civil service and judiciary, and from the education and health care sectors.
Turkey’s actions have strained relations with Western allies like the United States and European Union members such as Austria. Turkey is also pressing its allies to crackdown on Gulen-linked schools and charities and was expected to ask the Kazakh leader to shut down Gulen-run establishments in his Central Asian nation. “We believe it is at least incorrect, when the minister of foreign affairs of a country tells another state about the need to take certain steps, while using the language of ultimatums and blackmail”, the Kyrgyz foreign ministry said. In his turn, Fethullah Gulen denounced this act and said in a statement that “certainly, the ruling regime in turkey lacks judicial independence”.
Meanwhile, police in Ankara detained a comedian for questioning over his possible ties to the Gulen movement, Anadolu reported.
Separately, Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported a German woman had been arrested in Turkey on suspicion of belonging to the Gulen movement.
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Mumtazer Turkone, former columnist of the newspaper, was one of the journalists arrested by an Istanbul court, on charges of “serving FETO s purposes”, it added. “Given the recent reports in the last two weeks, it has got to be a real concern in this case”, said Jens David Ohlin, an worldwide law expert at Cornell Law School in Ithaca, New York. It didn’t specify when or where she was arrested.
