Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Tuesday that if the USA failed to hand over Fethullah Gülen “it will have sacrificed Turkey to a terrorist”.
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North Atlantic Treaty Organisation spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said Wednesday that “Turkey is a valued ally, making substantial contributions to NATO’s joint efforts”.
Meanwhile, Erdogan faces a huge challenge in keeping the country together in what will be a long haul in the next few years, with the president able to stay in power until 2024 and planning projects for his “New Turkey” ranging from high speed train lines to a Panama-style canal in Istanbul.
Mr Cavusoglu warned “time has run out” for the people who failed to return to Turkey after they were summoned.
“The fact is the coup was carried out in part by the military but with the support of a substantial civilian network”, Wilson said.
Turkey has embarked on a wholesale purge of the military in the wake of the coup which was blamed by Ankara on followers of the US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen. Two military attachees, based in Greece, are thought to have recently fled elsewhere with their families, The Associated Press reported.
The United States has refused extradition requests, saying there is no clear evidence of Gulen’s involvement in the coup attempt. “We have always called on Russian Federation to carry out anti-Daesh (IS) operations together”, Cavusoglu said in a live interview with the private NTV television, adding that the proposal was still “on the table”.
He said that Russian Federation and Turkey may have different views on Syria: “However, we share the same view on maintenance of Syria’s territorial integrity and political structure as a unified state”. 11,597 have been released, and 5,685 remain in custody.
The U.S. swift reaction to these terror attacks in Turkey apparently aims to fix its strained ties with Ankara, a major North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally and major part of the U.S. -led coalition in fighting the Islamic State terrorist group, media reports said.
Turkey is performing what appears to be a dramatic U-turn, since it shot down a Russian military jet for allegedly invading its airspace for a matter of seconds in November 2015.
Bulgaria, which shares borders with Turkey and Greece, has restrained its comments on Turkey, potentially amid fears that it could face a fresh migrant inflow if a EU-Turkey deal reached last March were to fall apart.
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“The alignment of Arab Islamists with Mr Erdogan and his party poses a number of issues related to the assessment of political and religious awareness”, said Idriss Al Kanboury in the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Al-Arab.
