Alwaght- Addressing his supporters in Istanbul, the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to cleanse the country of network of loyalists of the US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen.
Erdogan has attended a rally that was called for by him to speak to his backers who the reports said were nearly a million in number.
The rally is considered a display of strength of the Turkish president in the face of his opponents at home and also to shrug off a bitter Western criticism over a nationwide crackdown following a failed coup last months.
The "Democracy and Martyrs" rally comes as a peak of a series of rallies held in support of Erdogan for three weeks, namely since the army's failed coup bid on 15 July.
Following the coup attempt, Erdogan immediately accused Fethullah Gulen– once political ally of Erdogan– of plotting to overthrow him.
Erdogan said that Gulen designed the plot to seize the power of the state in association with his followers in the security forces, army, judicature, and civil service.
Since the coup, the Turkish officials have suspended, detained, and placed under investigation tens of thousands of people who allegedly had links to the 15 July power grab attempt by military.
Those covered by post-coup clampdown in the country included soldiers, police forces, journalists, medics, and civil servants. A majority of them are claimed to have been members of Gulen Movement on whom the government even before the coup started to put strains.
The Turkish government officially asked the US government to extradite Gulen to Turkey. But Washington said it would take time to see if it was possible for the US to hand over the Pennsylvania-based cleric to the Turkish authorities.
Washington added that Ankara must present documents that prove Gulen stood in league with his supporters in the Turkish institutions to remove Erdogan from power.
The US Secretary of State John Kerry said: “Turkey should present evidence to back any extradition request.”
Gulen, 75, however, has condemned the coup bid and rejected any involvement in the plot of army mutineers, saying that he had no reason to orchestrate any coup against Erdogan despite the fact that they have been political opponents since 2002, the time the Islamist Justice and Development Party (JDP) rose to power in the country.
He suggested that the coup “may have been staged by Erdogan regime" in a bid to justify an already underway campaign to clean from state institutions those who Erdogan branded members of Gulen Movement.
The Alliance for Shared Values, a Gulen-linked campaign, issued a statement, maintaining that it condemned any military intervention in domestic policies of Turkey.
Gulen’s network covers a variety of layers of the Turkish society. It runs schools and higher education centers, and also has crept into a set of government institutions including security forces and army.
A political expert said that the Turkish opposition leader Gulen had some people in the Turkish military, but there was no evidence to say that he organized the recent failed coup.
Jim W. Dean, managing editor of the Veterans Today, told Iran's Press TV that Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan could not urge the US to have his critic extradited to Turkey because Ankara had no appropriate documents proving Gulen’s hands in the attempted coup.
Western criticism
The Western leaders and media have lashed out at Erdogan for the purges that he conducted following the coup to remove all of his opponents in the country.
The very latest reaction to the Erdogan-ordered crackdowns and dismissals of army generals as well as state workers was shown by the Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern who said EU needed to end talks with Ankara over Turkey's accession to the European bloc –remarks that fanned tension between Austria and Turkey.
Turkey has imposed a three-month state of emergency and temporarily suspended the European Convention on Human Rights, prompting Europe to doubt if it is justified to allow Turkey in the EU.
Rights groups urged the Turkish government to minimize the range of people being prosecuted for allegations of connection with the coup plotters which the government says are all elements of Gulen network, as they are reported to be tens of thousands.
