Also Monday, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters that Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and the US military were taken off-guard by the coup attempt.
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“The people on the streets have made that request”, Erdogan said on an interview with CNN. Erdogan has demanded that Gulen be returned to Turkey.
“What happens to our relationship with Turkey will largely depend on how Turkey itself works its way through the investigations and the decisions they make in the wake of this attempted coup”, a senior USA official said.Erdogan has accused Gulen of being behind the coup and said on Monday that his government will formally request the cleric’s extradition within days.
The government has gutted some of the country’s security forces, dismissing nearly 9,000 people from the Interior Ministry, mostly police officers, and hundreds of others from various ministries.
When asked about how the situation came to be, Kurtulmus, said it was “normal procedure for police under these circumstances”, adding that their “crime is very heavy”.
The official said Turkey’s military command had been dealt “a heavy blow in terms of organisation” but was still functioning in coordination with the intelligence agency, police and the government.
Gulen, a one-time political ally of Erdogan whose billion-dollar network controls banks, media companies and construction firms, denies any involvement and accuses the Turkish president of engineering the failed coup to consolidate power and snuff out dissent.
Erdogan and Gulen are former allies whose relationship fell into a bitter feud in 2013.
Erdogan said he would discuss punishment with opposition parties. Erdogan is little more than a better equipped Saddam Hussein with more powerful friends in the west.
“If it is separated from NATO, Turkey would go into a chaos of problems”.
Ozturk is a former four-star general who served as the 30th Commander of the Turkish air force until August 2015.
Whistleblower site WikiLeaks seems to think Turkey’s purge has spread to cyberspace.
Turkey purged its police on Monday after rounding up thousands of soldiers in the wake of a failed military coup, and said it could reconsider its friendship with the United States unless Washington hands over a cleric Ankara blames for the putsch.
The facility is home to 1,500 United States personnel, and the U.S. has deployed drones, Prowler electronic warplanes and A-10 ground attack aircraft there.
Wikileaks has promised it will publish 300,000 emails and 500,000 documents related to the Turkish government.
“We share concerns about what is happening in the country these hours”, Mogherini said Monday.
It was unclear when the other 500,000 documents would be released.
“I am not someone who has planned or directed the coup attempt that was carried out on July 15 and I don’t know who did”, Ozturk said, according to Turkish news agency NTV.
Three days after a failed military coup, the Turkish government continues to crackdown on opponents.
In a third day of government purges after a failed military coup, Turkey on Monday suspended 9,000 Interior Ministry officials, drawing USA and European Union warnings for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to keep the crackdown within the boundaries of democracy.
“It looks at least as if something has been prepared”.
The EU commissioner handling Turkey’s membership bid, Johannes Hahn, on Monday expressed concern over the mass arrests following the coup, saying it looked like the government had already decided on a list of people to arrest beforehand.
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NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg joined the call for Turkey’s leaders to respect the rule of law when dealing with those responsible for the thwarted plot.
