Published in the Guardian on the first anniversary of the July 15 defeated coup, Erdogan wrote: \u201cThere is no way to sugar-coat this betrayal of Turkey\u2019s friendship — which is incompatible with bilateral relations and fundamental values alike.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, western leaders have a choice between standing in solidarity with terrorists or regaining the favor of the Turkish people.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the Turkish government, Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) and its U.S.-based leader Fetullah Gulen orchestrated the defeated coup of July 15, 2016, which left 250 people martyred and nearly 2,200 injured.<\/p>\n
Ankara also accuses FETO of being behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police, and judiciary.<\/p>\n
“The thwarting of the coup marked a turning point in the history of democracy; it will be a source of hope and inspiration for all peoples who live under dictators,” the president said.<\/p>\n
He slammed western leaders for not fully appreciating the significance of what happened in Turkey on July 15, 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of expressing solidarity with my countrymen, a number of western governments and institutions opted to wait and see how the crisis would play out,\u201d Erdogan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir hypocrisy and double standards deeply disturbed the Turkish people, who risked everything to defend freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his article, the president underlined the importance of bringing Fetullah Gulen and his followers to justice; Erdogan said evidence proves they were behind the foiled coup.<\/p>\n
It \u201cisn\u2019t just important for Turkey but for democracy everywhere,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal is to prosecute criminals to the full extent of the law while building our country\u2019s resilience to future attacks.\u201d<\/p>\nError, group does not exist! Check your syntax! (ID: 12)<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked western leaders to make a choice between Turkey and terrorist organizations in an article he wrote for a British daily on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":59134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,118,102,101],"tags":[13297,1153],"class_list":["post-59132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-hot","category-interviews","category-politics","tag-guardian","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}