The president, having been tipped off that he was in danger, had fled the hotel by the time they arrived.
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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.
Bozdag said the relations between Washington and Ankara would be affected if Gulen was not extradited, Xinhua news agency reported. Recalling the deal Turkey and the European Union reached in recent months to halt the flow of migrants to Europe, Erdoğan said: “It was us who protected Europe from the flow of 3 million Syrians”.
Erdogan said Gulen’s major source of income was in the United States, adding that US$200 -300 million (S$267 million – S$401 million) alone comes from charter schools run by foundations linked to him.
He said the ruling government has been in power for 14 years and he was elected president with 52 percent support of the country.
And he also took aim specifically at Germany, after a German court ruled against allowing him to appear on a video link to address a crowd of about 30,000 supporters and anti-coup demonstrators in Cologne over the weekend. “There would have been no trace of free press, freedom of expression”.
But Germany, which is home to the largest portion of Turkey’s diaspora, played down the incident, saying such “invitations” were nothing out of the ordinary.
The moves represent a further tightening of government control in the country.
The government says the coup was instigated by a USA -based Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania and whose extradition Turkey is seeking from the United States. There are serious claims and expressions that Gulen has a hand in the coup attempt. The number, however, is not a true representation of the group’s shadowy presence inside the Turkish state, he said.
“The tone in all three meetings was very positive and non-accusatory at all”, Dunford said.
He was due to meet with the Turkish premier.
Tensions between the two North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies have been aggravated by the foiled putsch, with some Turkish officials even alleging that Washington could have had a hand in the plot.
The suggestion has been firmly denied by top U.S. officials.
Gulen, who has lived in exile since 1999 after charges were laid against him by Turkey’s then secular authorities, has vehemently denied from his Pennsylvania compound all accusations of involvement in the coup.
“Turkey came from the brink of a precipice”, Yildirim said.
Now I ask: “What would be the reaction if the Italian parliament was bombed?”
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – The head of the Council of Europe, the continent’s top human rights organization, said Wednesday there had been “too little understanding” from Europe about the challenges facing Turkey in the aftermath of a failed July 15 coup.
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This was the toughest attack on Ankara’s Western allies since the July 15 attempted putsch. He said one soldier was still at large.
