Turkey’s Erdogan slams West for failure to show solidarity over coup attempt

“Those countries or leaders who are not anxious about Turkey’s democracy, the lives of our people, its future – while being so anxious about the fate of the plotters – can not be our friends”, stated Erdogan.

Turkey considers Gulen’s movement a terrorist organization. Gulen has denied any prior knowledge of the plot and says his movement espouses interfaith dialogue.

Erdogan has said that Gulen harnessed his extensive network of schools, charities and businesses, built up in Turkey and overseas over decades, to create a secretive “parallel state” that aimed to take over the country.

Turkey on Saturday released more than 750 soldiers who had been detained after an abortive coup, state media reported, while President Tayyip Erdogan said he would drop lawsuits against those who had insulted him, in a one-time gesture of “unity”.

Erdogan had earlier also lashed out at a top USA general who had expressed concerns about military relations after the putsch, accusing him of “taking the side of the plotters”.

Gen Votel, head of US Central Command, said jailing some military leaders could damage Turkish-American military co-operation.

He also said he was concerned about the impact on relationships with Turkish military leaders, many of whom were detained after the coup. He declined to say when a U.S. decision would be made.

Turkey has begun overhauling its armed forces following a failed coup, but its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally the United States complained that the purges of generals and officers were hindering cooperation in the fight against Islamic State.

“My people know who is behind this scheme… they know who the superior intelligence behind it is, and with these statements you are revealing yourselves, you are giving yourselves away, ” he said.

Erdogan, in a separate televised speech outside the headquarters of police special forces in the capital Ankara, also accused Votel of “siding with coup plotters”.

The rapid pace of arrests since the failed coup has anxious many of Turkey’s allies, with some saying they see the country, which is now under a state of emergency, going down an increasingly authoritarian road.

“It is not possible for them to remain in this country’s institutions, those who rained bombs purchased with taxes on my pristine people”, he added.

Cevikoz said that the government’s purge of thousands of employees of Turkey’s military, civil service and education system has caused some anxiety within Turkish society.

The President blames US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers for plotting the coup, and among the political measures proposed in its aftermath is a renewed insistence on reforms to the Turkish constitution in order to give more power to the presidency, rather than parliament.

But outside Turkey, Erdogan’s actions are being watched with skepticism and concern by government and human rights monitors shocked by the scale of the mass firings and detentions.

Also over 66,000 people in the wider civil service have been suspended from their jobs.

“And if there is even the slightest doubt that the (treatment) is improper, then the consequences will be inevitable”, he told German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung. “Of course we will not do that.”.

Germanys foreign minister said it was good that the coup had been foiled “but now the reactions are getting far out of proportion.”.

He confirmed his support for Turkey’s European Union bid, which is at risk of being suspended by Brussels if Erdogan goes ahead with reintroducing the death penalty.

Prosecutors in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir issued orders to detain 200 police on Friday as part of the investigation targeting Gulenists, the Dogan news agency said.