“I can understand how some of your countrymen feel the world didn’t respond to their existential crisis rapidly enough or with the appropriate amount of solidarity and empathy”, Biden said following a two-and-a-half hour meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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The dismissed personnel were accused of being linked to Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), which the Turkish government blames for the deadly July 15 coup attempt, according to the assembly’s decision.
He said the matter of the extradition of FETÖ leader Fethullah Gülen, someone who has found sanctuary in the US, needs to be resolved through the American judicial system and implied that the administration’s hands were tied.
Vice President Joe Biden looked to ease tensions between the US and Turkey Wednesday during a visit to Ankara.
Anti-American sentiment has been on the rise in Turkey since the coup.
The pledges of support and friendship seemed to go some way in repairing some of the damage done to the relationship between the United States and Turkey. The United States backs the Syrian Kurdish YPG in the fight against Islamic State in Syria. I believe they mean what they say. The U.S. has denied rumors that it had prior knowledge of the coup attempt, and Biden reiterated that position, saying the people of Turkey “have no greater friend that the people of the United States of America”.
Meeting with Erdogan and Turkey’s prime minister in Ankara on Wednesday, Biden delivered a message of alliance and conciliation. “None”, he said. “But we need to meet the legal standard requirement under our law”.
“The American people stand with you”, Biden told reporters, sitting next to Erdogan at the presidential palace in Ankara.
Turkish officials have been incensed by the concerns expressed by Washington and European capitals about Ankara’s subsequent crackdown on suspected plotters, but what they perceive as indifference to the coup attempt itself. Around 40,000 people have been formally arrested for links to the coup.
The Turkish premier stressed that the U.S. “Why are they protecting them?” asked Furkan Murel, a student in Istanbul, in an interview with CBC News last month.
It won’t exactly help to smooth things over with the United States that Turkey has begun shelling US -supported Kurdish forces in Syria. “You have to say “this is a guy or a woman who committed the following explicit crime” said Biden.
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USA officials have never indicated that Gulen might be extradited for actions he carried out before the coup. At one point after the coup attempt, the Turkish government temporarily cut off power to Incirlik Air Base, which Biden called a “linchpin” of United States anti-ISIS efforts.
