October 28, 2016•Update: October 31, 2016
By Esra Kaymak Avci
WASHINGTON
The upcoming U.S. presidential election and subsequent administration change in Washington will not affect the process to extradite Fetullah Terrorist Organization’s (FETO) leader Fetullah Gulen to Turkey, that country’s justice minister said Thursday.
Speaking here at the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) think-tank, Bekir Bozdag said Turkey would continue to work on the process with the newly elected U.S. president, regardless of who is elected.
Turkey alleges that Gulen is the mastermind behind the failed bloody July 15 coup attempt in which least 241 people were martyred and nearly 2,200 injured.
Gulen has led a long-running campaign to overthrow the Turkish government through the infiltration of state institutions, particularly the military, police, and judiciary, forming what is commonly known as the parallel state.
Bozdag’s remarks came in response to an American woman who introduced herself as an “old friend of Turkey” from the audience and asked whether the extradition process would be negatively affected should Democratic Party candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton win the election.
Recent polls show Clinton leading Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. An independent project website which collects individual-level data for predictions, PredictWise, gives Clinton a 90 percent chance of winning Nov. 8.
FETO has donated between $3 million and $4 million to Clinton’s presidential campaign and the nonprofit Clinton Foundation since last year, according to Murat Guzel – a U.S. based Turkish businessman who is in charge of Democratic Party’s National Democratic Ethnic Coordinating Council and also serves on the Clinton campaign’s financial committee.
FETO’s efforts to influence the U.S. government showed itself in a letter last year that was sent to Secretary of State John Kerry that complained about freedoms in Turkey, The letter was signed by 88 congressional representatives.
It was then discovered that FETO had previously made donations to some of the same lawmakers who signed the letter and organized a trip to Turkey.
Monitoring the congressional expenses, the website, Legistorm, found that FETO took some of the lawmakers on a $3 million trip to Turkey, that included a tour of its own newspaper, magazine and school buildings.
During his four-day visit to the nation’s capital, Bozdag will also inaugurate Anadolu Agency's photo exhibit on "The Rise of the National Will".
