About 18,000 people have been detained or arrested, a lot of them from the military, and authorities have said the purge of those suspected of links to Gulen in the military will continue.
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“We have not received the support we were expecting from our friends, neither during nor after the coup attempt”, EFE news quoted the President as saying.
Ankara has also staged a sweeping overhaul of state institutions, sacking tens of thousands of civil servants, with Prime Minister Binali Yildirim saying the government was engaged in “virus and traitor cleansing” to weed out Gulenists from state institutions. It has repeatedly claimed that overwhelming evidence exists linking Gulen to the coup attempt on July 15, including confessions and retrieved written communications by high-ranking military officials involved in the coup that they were acting on Gulen’s orders.
Turkish officials also met in Ankara with the top U.S. military commander in the first direct talks since the failed coup, with Washington under pressure to extradite the Islamic preacher, who has lived in self-imposed exile since 1999 – from his leafy compound in Pennsylvania.
Gulen, who has lived in the United States since 1999, has condemned the coup attempt and denied involvement in it.
Tufenkci said the full picture should be seen in a medium-term context even if some investors stayed away in the short-term, adding that the rebels had made Turkey look like a third world country.
Dunford also met his Turkish counterpart and USA personnel stationed at the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, used by the US -led coalition in the fight against Islamic State. “I hope US officials consider this request with sensitivity”.
Erdogan lashed out at Germany’s judicial authorities for not allowing him to address via video conference a weekend rally in Cologne in his support. Berlin’s foreign ministry spokesman acknowledged relations were going through a “bumpy patch”.
The inclusion of Erdogan’s son in the list of people under investigation follows a petition to authorities from Turkish businessman Murat Hakan Uzan, a political opponent of Erdogan who is wanted by Turkish authorities and is in exile. Drones and helicopters pinpointed them in forested hills around the Mediterranean resort of Marmaris after a two-week manhunt, an official said. The demonstrators waved Turkish flags and chanted “Traitors! We want the death penalty!”
When it was allied with Erdogan’s government in the past, the Gulen movement was believed to have been behind a series of crackdowns on pro-secular figures as well as military officers accused at the time of plotting a coup.
The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, visited the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation military base in Incirlik, some 500 kilometres south of Ankara on Tuesday, as part of a two-day visit seen as an attempt to ease tensions between the two countries.
Erdogan said Turkey had “zero tolerance toward torture” and said the London-based rights group should visit those wounded in the coup. Nearly half of Turkey’s generals were fired in the wake of the coup. Defense Minister Fikri Isik said expulsions from the army were not over.
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About 3,000 officers suspected of involvement in the coup or of links to Gulen’s movement have been discharged from the armed forces since the failed attempt and Defense Minister Fikri Isik told CNN Turk television in an interview Monday that the purges from the military would continue.
