President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday charged that the European Union has a “biased and prejudiced” stance on Turkey, following stinging EU criticism over a crackdown in the wake of the failed coup.
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Yildirim said only a few people who took part in the coup attempt remain at large – a group of around 15 who attacked a hotel Erdogan was staying at in the resort of Marmaris and some who went to Greece.
During his interview, he said he and the government had been trying since 2013 to tell the military how risky FETO is: “We were trying to explain to them – the Turkish army – how serious they are. We said so earlier than just about anybody and have been consistent throughout that the Turkish people deserve a government that was democratically elected”, Obama opined.
Turkish authorities have already launched a series of mass purges of the armed forces, police, judiciary and education system, targeting followers of Gulen, who operates an extensive network of schools and charitable foundations.
He said he told Erdogan that in a phone conversation this week.
Speaking at a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bankers in China on Saturday, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said Turkey would strongly adhere to democratic principles and the rule of law.
Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States for years, has denied any role in the attempted putsch, and accused Erdogan of orchestrating it himself.
“This is not a declaration of martial law”, he said.
The president blames the coup, which saw seized fighter jets bomb Ankara and tanks run amok in Istanbul, on loyalists of the US-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen.
Obama on Friday flatly rejected reports that the United States had prior intelligence, calling such suggestions “unequivocally false”.
Turkey has criticized the United States for not immediately handing over the cleric for prosecution, though President Barack Obama said there is a legal process for extradition and encouraged Turkey to present evidence.
Twenty-eight people were detained in a nationwide operation against individuals suspected to be behind an allegedly pro-Gulen Twitter account called Fuat Avni, which claims to spill key state secrets, the Dogan news agency reported. “I said to him that he needs to make sure that not just he, but everybody in his government understand that those reports are completely false because when rumors like that start swirling around, that puts our people at risk on the ground in Turkey and it threatens what is a critical alliance and partnership between the United States and Turkey”, Obama added.
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Erdogan has basked in the support of jubilant crowds who took to the streets of Istanbul Thursday night, packing one of the bridges spanning the Bosphorus and closing it to traffic. But crowds at rallies have demanded the coup plotters be executed, and the government says it must at least consider it.
