The United State House Intelligence Committee chairman has said it is “hard to believe” that U.S.-based Turkish cleric is behind the military coup attempt last summer, questioning Turkey as a reliable ally.
“I find that hard to believe,” Devin Nunes told Chris Wallace from Fox News when asked if cleric Fethullah Gulen is the architect of the coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
Mr. Nunes added that the government of Mr. Erdogan is becoming very authoritarian and that Ankara, as a NATO ally, is “becoming more and more worrisome in terms of actually being a reliable ally.”
Mr. Nunes noted that he has not seen the evidence that Mr. Gulen was involved in the coup attempt and that he does not know if the U.S. is going to extradite “somebody like that.”
He added that if there was an evidence linking Mr. Gulen to the coup attempt in Turkey, that would be “a different issue.”
The GOP intel chairman reminded that relations between the U.S. and Turkey are strained and it is becoming even more complicated as “we try to get ISIS out of Iraq and Syria.”
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