The news comes as Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced that US Vice President Joe Biden will visit Turkey, the first by a Western leader since the failed coup.
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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry would also visit Turkey some time in October, he said.
Yildirim told reporters in Ankara his government has not backed down from demands the US government hand over Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally who lives in Pennsylvania and runs a series of influential Muslim schools outside Turkey.
A delegation from the U.S. Justice Department will be arriving on August 22 to discuss extradition.
-Turkish relations is dependent on the United States cooperating with their request to extradite Gulen.
Yildirim said he believed there would be a “positive outcome” with the United States on the extradition, Anadolu said.
The coup began late on July 15 in Turkey, when a faction of the Turkish military blocked Istanbul’s Bosphorus Bridge and strafed the headquarters of the Turkish intelligence agency and parliament in the capital.
Washington has said it would need evidence of the cleric’s involvement, and says the regular extradition process must be allowed to take its course. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses the cleric, a one-time ally, of plotting the coup- charges Gulen denies.
Yildirim said that more than 76,000 officials have been suspended and almost 5,000 dismissed since the coup, including 3,000 soldiers as well as judges and civil servants.
Gülen is among Turkey’s most wanted, with the country exerting a tremendous effort to obtain an worldwide arrest warrant for him.
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A foreign ministry spokesman called the remarks from Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human rights, “unacceptable”. “This is turning into a witch hunt, losing its credibility”, Deputy Prime Minister Tugrul Turkes, formerly a member of the nationalist opposition party and now a member of the ruling AK Party founded by Erdogan, told CNN Turk.
