“I can never see Turkey as a member of European Union and it has been clear for a couple of years that with Erdogan as president, Turkey will not develop in a western way”, Anders Vistisen said.
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In a statement read out on TV during the coup attempt the leaders of the coup, whose identities are not yet known, said they wanted to return Turkey to being a secular democracy, adding that Erdogan had eroded the constitution set down by its first president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
A group calling itself the “Council for Peace in the Homeland” declared martial law and a curfew late Friday, saying it had launched the coup “to ensure and restore constitutional order, democracy, human rights and freedoms and let the supremacy of the law in the country prevail…”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Turkish citizens to take to streets, stating that the coup attempt was carried out by a small group within the military.
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said 161 people have been killed and 1,440 have been injured in the violence that ensued Friday night.
An uprising within NATO’s second-largest military – and the one that’s closest to ISIS’ center of power – spells trouble for the global fight against the terrorist group, experts say. The attempted coup unfolding in Turkey is surprising to many observers who had thought the da…
Additionally, Ankara demands that Greece must extradite eight Turkish soldiers that earlier fled to Alexandroupolis city in a Black Hawk helicopter. “There is no power higher than the power of the people”.
News agency Anadolu said military chief of staff General Hulusi Akar is taking over the command of the operation against the coup plotters, CNN-Turk said.
A total of 2,839 soldiers had been arrested, Yildirim said. The pro-Gulen Alliance for Shared Values said it condemned any military intervention in domestic politics. Fighter jets and helicopters were seen flying over the Turkish capital, Ankara, and gunshots heard.
On Twitter, he hailed the Turkish people’s “defense of democracy & their elected government”, which he said “proves that coups have no place in our region and are doomed to fail”. Gulen and Erdogan only became estranged in recent years.
Erdogan flew back to Istanbul in the early hours of Saturday, saying the hotel he was staying at on Turkey’s Aegean coast was bombed after he left. While it was forced to lower its political profile under Erdogan’s government, Turkey’s military has been buffeted by a renewed conflict with Kurdish separatist rebels and bombings by suspected Islamic extremists, including an attack on Istanbul’s main airport last month that killed dozens.
As the morning wore on, crowds emptied out of Istanbul’s Taksim Square, where many gathered the night before.
From his estate in the Poconos outside the village of Saylorsburg, Pa., Gulen – who is at the helm of a broad religious network that includes hundreds of schools across the world that promote a moderate version of Islam – denied any complicity in the takeover attempt. The state-run Anadolu news agency in Turkey reported Wednesday, two days before the attempted coup, that prosecutors in Ankara were preparing to seek Gulen’s extradition from the USA, accusing him of trying to infiltrate and overthrow the government.
Mr Erdogan has long accused the cleric and his supporters of attempting to overthrow the government.
Bombs were thrown at the Parliament building in Ankara.
At least 200 soldiers turned themselves in to police in Ankara, Turkish state media reported.
Earlier, Nuh Yilmaz, a spokesman for Turkish National Intelligence told CNN Turk the coup attempt had been quashed.
“Their main gripe seems to have been President Erdogan’s attempt to transform his office into a powerful and centralized executive presidency”, Hakura said.
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Erdogan, who was visiting the coastal resort of Marmaris when the coup began, had flown to the airport and emerged to greet the thousands of cheering, flag-waving supporters who had descended on the facility to eject the coup participants.
