clear

Creating new perspectives since 2009

Turkey considers requesting Washington to extradite Gülen

April 12, 2014 at 3:11 pm

The Turkish government is thinking about making a request for Washington to extradite the Turkish opposition leader Fethullah Gülen.


In response, the American ambassador in Ankara, Francis Ricciardone, remarked that the US government “will respectfully and seriously respond to any request regarding legal issues.”

“But we are just not going to get involved in the exercise of individual Turkish citizens’ rights while residing in our country,” Ricciardone added in an interview with Turkish media outlet Hurriyet Daily News.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused Gülen and his movement of running a parallel state that works against the elected Turkish government. Erdoğan believes that Gülen has managed to infiltrate many of the state’s bodies with the objective of organising a coup against the government’s legitimacy.

The political dispute erupted after the Turkish judiciary accused a number of Erdoğan’s sons and ministers in his cabinet of corruption.