Any suggestion that Votel was involved in a coup against Turkey, a close North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally, “would be absurd”, he said.
Advertisement
“Know your place!” Erdogan told Votel, using one of his favorite expressions of anger.
He said life in Turkey had returned to normal after the July 15 coup attempt was crushed. Images of detained soldiers with bruises and bandages have anxious civil rights groups over mistreatment.
Turkey continues to demand the US extradite Fethullah Gülen, a cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania whom it accuses of being behind the coup attempt July 15 that left at least 290 people dead.
He said: “Not a single person has come to give condolences either from the European Union. or from the West”. “Many of our interlocutors have been purged or arrested”, he said.
While Mr Erdogan has stopped short of directly accusing the Obama administration of stirring the coup attempt, officials and news outlets are blaming the United States with increasing intensity, fuelling a surge in anti-Americanism. Erdogan says the US was taking sides with coup plotters.
“I am concerned that it will impact the level of cooperation and collaboration that we have with Turkey which has been excellent frankly”, General Joseph Votel said on Thursday, speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.
Senior U.S. leaders, including President Barack Obama, have spoken with their Turkish counterparts in the last two weeks since the coup attempt.
Gulen is also accused of running a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police, and judiciary, forming what is commonly known as the parallel state.
The commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, General Joseph Votel, issued a statement yesterday asserting that he had no link to the coup attempt in Turkey, an unusual move by one of the highest-ranked USA military leaders.
It is believed that 32 admirals, Eighty-seven land army generals, and 30 air force generals combine to compromise the total number of 149 officials, which are unhonourable discharged from the army on the back of their complicity in the coup bid.
“It is an unvarnished move for an arbitrary, mass and permanent purge of the civil service, prosecutors and judges, and to close down private institutions and associations without evidence, justification or due process”, she said.
According to the state-run Anadolu news agency 49,211 passports have been cancelled and 18,044 people have been detained since the coup. The labour ministry said it was investigating 1,300 staff over their possible involvement.
Erdogan says Gulen harnessed his extensive network of schools, charities and businesses, built up in Turkey and overseas over decades, to create a secretive “parallel state” that aimed to take over the country.
“The power of the people has overcome the power of the tanks”, he said.
National Intelligence Director James Clapper reiterated Votel’s comments later in the day, saying that the government crackdown is having an effect on USA operations against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, said the WSJ. As home to millions of Syrian refugees, it is also the European Union’s partner in a deal reached a year ago to halt the biggest flow of migrants into Europe since World War Two.
“The coalition would prefer to fly out of Incirlik” against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, but could compensate from other bases in the region and naval aircraft, said Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook.
“This situation is no different than if Turkey or another country refused to extradite Osama bin Laden after 9/11”, Mr Ozhan said in an interview in Ankara.
On Thursday, Cavusoglu told local media CNN Turk that ties between Turkey and the US would be impacted if the USA did not hand over Gulen to Turkey. The protesters burned a USA flag.
Such a change would require a constitutional amendment, so Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK Party would require the support of opposition parties in parliament, Turkish media said.
Advertisement
Teams from the Izmir Police Department Counterterrorism Bureau conducted simultaneous operations around the city and apprehended several suspects, the agency reported.
