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LONDON – Although allied to NATO, Turkey has pledged to target President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's opponents on foreign soil, including the United States.
The threat comes amidst diplomatic tensions over Americans imprisoned in Turkey and the arrest or kidnapping of dozens of Turkish citizens in nearly 20 countries.
Erdogan's spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, said that the Turkish national intelligence organization would launch "operations" abroad against supporters of Fethullah Gulen, a former cleric who lives in Iraq. exile in Pennsylvania.
"They will feel Turkey breathe in their neck," Kalin told reporters in Ankara.
Erdogan accuses Gulen of orchestrating the July 2016 coup attempt and described his worldwide FETO movement, which means "Fethullah Terror Group".
Turkey has repeatedly asked the White House to extradite Gulen, while officials are working in other countries to arrest and dismiss his supporters.
"The units and institutions concerned will continue their operations in the countries where FETO operates, whether in the United States or in another country," said Kalin. "The Turkish Republic will not let them rest."
Thousands of opponents of Erdogan live in exile around the world.
In the United States, there are the Enes Kanter of the New York Knicks who can not return to Turkey after Erdogan canceled his passport and issued an international warrant for his arrest.
"If you talk to Erdogan, it can affect your whole life and everyone around you," Kanter wrote at TIME this month. "I am now stateless and can hardly leave the United States.
But while the United States has not responded to Erdogan's extradition requests, countries with closer ties to Turkey have been more in line.
Seven teachers in Moldova, who had applied for asylum, were arrested and returned to Turkey on 7 September, resulting in the conviction of Amnesty International.
Six men, including a father of two, were arrested in Kosovo in March and transported by private plane to Turkey as part of an operation conducted by Erdogan's intelligence agency. (This decision surprised the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj, who said he was not informed and then dismissed his Minister of the Interior.)
The wife of Mustafa Ceyhan, a businessman, said he was abducted on April 28 in front of a courthouse in Azerbaijan. The Turkish authorities subsequently confirmed that he had been taken to Istanbul where he had been detained pending trial.
In total, Turkey has admitted to detaining at least 80 citizens in 18 countries since it launched a crackdown after the coup d'état of such magnitude that it builds hundreds of additional prisons.
Alp Aslandogan, executive director of the Alliance for Shared Values, a New York-based nonprofit organization and member of the Gulen global movement, said: "The Turkish presidential spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, recognizes clearly and clearly violation of international law and agreements to which Turkey is a party ".
Aslandogan added, "Rather than being ashamed of such operations, they boast of them. While other countries have facilitated such extrajudicial operations, the United States, which adheres to the rule of law, must strongly oppose Turkish demands and operations. "
Earlier this year, US prosecutors dropped charges against 11 of Erdogan's 15 bodyguards, charged after a fight with protesters outside the Turkish embassy in Washington in May 2017.
