Erdogan to seek Gulen extradition in US talks

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will seek the extradition of his ally-turned-foe, US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, when he meets US President Barack Obama at the NATO summit on Friday, Turkish media reports said.
Erdogan, inaugurated last week, has vowed to press his battle with Gulen and his supporters whom he accuses of using influence within the judiciary, police and state bureaucracy to plot against him in his final year as prime minister.
On his plane traveling to Wales for the summit, Erdogan told reporters the “parallel structure,” the expression he uses to describe Gulen supporters within the state apparatus, would be among subjects he would discuss with Obama there.
Gulen lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. His followers revere him as an enlightened, pro-Western face of moderate Islam but secular critics say he infiltrated government ranks with religiously-minded professionals. “Deport him or give him to us,” the pro-government Yeni Safak and other newspapers quoted Erdogan as saying of Gulen. “Let him come and live in his own country if he says he hasn’t committed a crime.”
Erdogan says Gulen’s followers orchestrated a corruption probe against his inner circle, which emerged last December, and in response the government has purged thousands of police and hundreds of judges and prosecutors.