A gathering organized by the Turkish Association of Canada got together in front of the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa on Saturday, July 16, 2016 to condemn the actions of those responsible for the military coup attempt.
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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also stated the government remained in control following the attempted coup which begun late Friday night as members of the nation’s military attempted to forcibly seize power in the capital, Ankara, and in Istanbul.
The back-and-forth occurred against the backdrop of Turkey closing its airspace, effectively grounding US warplanes that had been targeting Islamic State forces in neighboring Syria and Iraq.
The septuagenarian Gulen, who has kept a low profile in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains for more than 15 years, leads a worldwide movement that blends a mystical form of Islam with calls for democracy, education, science and interfaith dialogue.
Despite the coup turning out to be a failure, the force in the European Union that oppose Turkish membership will still “use that excuse that Turkey isn’t a stable democracy”, Masood said.
Turkey’s prime minister says a group within Turkey’s military has engaged in what appeared to be an attempted coup.
Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States had not received any request to extradite Gulen.
“Please meet our request if we are strategic partners”, Xinhua news agency quoted Erdogan as saying in remarks delivered in Istanbul.
“U.S. officials are working with the Turks to resume air operations there as soon as possible”, he said.
Before the weekend’s chaos, Turkey – a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member and key Western ally in the fight against the Islamic State group – had been wracked by political turmoil that critics blamed on Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian rule.
Turkey is a key partner in USA -led efforts to defeat the Islamic State group, and has allowed American jets to use its Incirlik air base to fly missions against the extremists in Syria and Iraq.
She said “Germany stands on the side of all of those in Turkey who defend democracy and the rule of law”.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday that Washington had had no idea that a coup attempt was brewing in North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally Turkey before Friday’s bloody events. “We are confident that the government and the people of Turkey will persevere against these challenges in an orderly and peaceful manner”. “And the United States will accept that and look at it and make judgments about it appropriately”. Gulen and Erdogan only became estranged in recent years. “After last night, we have one more thing to add to an already extensive list”.
Fadi Hakura, a Turkey expert at the Chatham House think tank in London, said it was not clear who was behind the attempted coup, but it appeared to have been “carried out by lower-ranking officers – at the level of colonel”. “It’s no secret that there are some trends within Turkey that I have been troubled with”, Obama said in April.
Erdogan’s ruling AKP party accused Gulen, by then living in the United States in self-imposed exile, of engineering through his followers in law enforcement a crackdown on government ministers, including Erdogan’s son, Bilal, on allegations of corruption.
“Since I do not know these people I can not speak to their potential involvement in the attack”, Gulen said through an interpreter.
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“There is a slight chance, there is a possibility that it could be a staged coup”, Gulen told reporters through a translator in Pennsylvania, where he resides.
