President Barack Obama speaks during a joint news conference with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, July 22, 2016. Obama says he has worked to deepen the USA relationship with Mexico and that the two countries are not just strategic and economic partners, “we’re also neighbors and we’re friends”.
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US President Barack Obama today strongly rejected reports that the US had a prior knowledge of a coup attempt in Turkey or that it was involved in it, saying such allegations are “unequivocally false” as America fully supports Turkish democracy.
Erdogan, meanwhile, has blamed followers of US -based cleric Fethullah Gulen for masterminding the uprising.
Turkey has formally requested that the USA extradite Gulen, who is living in Pennsylvania and whom Erdogan blames for an attempted coup a week ago that left more than 200 people dead and led to massive arrests.
But in response to demands from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the USA extradite cleric Fethullah Gulen, Obama said that “a legal process” remained before the federal government would do so.
Jones, the editor of Culture Wars magazine, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV while commenting on the USA announcement to impose new sanctions on Syria, targeting the arms and financial networks of the government of President Bashar al-Assad. He said it would be the end result of a long-standing, legal process for judging extradition requests by a foreign government.
Any suggestions of early US knowledge of the rebellion by a faction of the Turkish military “are completely false, unequivocally false”, Obama said at the White House on Friday.
Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally, is a key player in the USA -led coalition fighting the Islamic State group.
“Given the relations between the United States and Turkey, I hope it’s not the case”, he said.
“Turkey needs to be reminded regularly that, after parts of the military tried to change the country, it would be a bitter irony now if the government would change the democratic state from above”, Michael Georg Link, director of the OSCE’s office for democratic institutions and human rights, told Germany’s rbb-Inforadio. Turkey closed its airspace to military aircraft and cut off power to Incirlik air base, a major launch point for U.S. air strikes against purported Daesh positions.
The government says 246 pro-government people – forces and civilians – died during the attempted coup, and at least 24 coup plotters were also killed. Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, has previously said Turkey is preparing a formal extradition but that Gulen “can easily be extradited on grounds of suspicion”.
Obama also echoed comments by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that Turkey must present evidence if it wants Gulen to be extradited. The Justice and State Departments are reviewing material Turkey has provided the US about the coup to determine whether it amounts to a formal extradition request.
Since the botched attempt to overthrow Erdogan, Turkey’s parliament has approved a three-month state of emergency, giving the president sweeping new powers. Erdogan has said the state of emergency will counter threats to democracy.
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The Turkish government has already imposed a crackdown that has included mass arrests, mass firings and closing hundreds of schools allegedly linked to Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania.
