Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Chief of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces Hulusi Akar review the presidential guards during a welcoming ceremony in Ankara. (Photo: AFP)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Chief of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces Hulusi Akar review the presidential guards during a welcoming ceremony in Ankara. (Photo: AFP)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pressed the US in a television interview broadcast on Wednesday to extradite preacher Fethullah Gulen, saying waiting to get the alleged coup plotter was “intolerable.”
Mr Erdogan complained in the interview with Mexico’s Televisa television that United States authorities were asking for documents for the extradition of Pennsylvania-based Gulen, whom he accuses of being behind last month’s failed military putsch.
“You have to be blind and deaf not to understand that he is behind all of this,” Mr Erdogan said.
“If we request the extradition of a terrorist then you should fulfil that,” he said. “If you start asking for documents and what not, then it’s a huge obstacle in our way of fighting terrorism.”
“But at the moment we are running into the difficulty of not being able to receive a terrorist that we are asking to be extradited,” he said.
Mr Erdogan also asked forgiveness over his past alliance with Gulen whom Ankara blames for last month’s attempted coup.
In a rare show of public humility, Mr Erdogan said he had failed to see the “true face” of Gulen, who cooperated closely with the Turkish strongman while he was mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s and after his Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002.
“Despite everything, I feel sad that I failed to reveal the true face of this traitor organisation long before,” Mr Erdogan said in a televised speech, referring to Gulen’s network which Turkey alleges is a terror group.
The Turkish police, meanwhile, raided the offices of the national science research council on Wednesday, broadcaster NTV said, widening an investigation into followers of the US-based cleric suspected of masterminding last month’s coup attempt.
Many people were detained in the raid on the offices of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (Tubitak) in the north-western province of Kocaeli, NTV said, without giving details.
