Erdoğan: New documents on top FETÖ member found
ANKARA
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said late June 22 that new information about a top suspect of the 2016 coup attempt has been found.
During a joint interview with the state-run broadcaster TRT's channels, Erdoğan said new documents related to Kemal Batmaz would be published in the coming days.
Batmaz is the accused second-in-command of what the government titled as the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETO), the movement of U.S.-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen who is widely believed to be behind the coup attempt in Turkey of July 15, 2016.
“With these documents about Kemal Batmaz, they will be backed into a corner," he added.
Turkish authorities have repeatedly criticized the U.S. administration for not extraditing Gülen.
Meanwhile, a relative of Turkey’s most wanted coup suspect, theology lecturer Adil Öksüz, was detained by security forces in the Central Anatolian province of Konya on June 23.
Ökkeş Tetik, Öksüz's brother-in-law, has been accused as a key figure in the movement who "inspected" Gülenist military officials and its top leaders, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
'No recoupment for this election'
Turkish President also called all citizens to vote in the June 24 elections.
"This is really very important. There is no recoupment for this election," he said.
During the interview, Erdoğan slammed the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and its presidential candidate Muharrem İnce, saying that he did not include the fight against terrorism and the fight against the coup attempt in their campaigns.
Erdoğan said that under his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), “denial policies and policies of rejection” against Kurdish people in Turkey were removed and assimilation of Kurdish people abolished, adding that Kurdish people today are free to speak their languages and live with cultural differences.
'Roadmap in Manbij'
Erdoğan also spoke about the Turkish army's current patrol mission in Syria's northern city of Manbij.
"In Manbij, a roadmap has been identified, which is a 90-day roadmap. With this road map, the PYD and YPG will completely empty it (Manbij) and the residents will come and settle there -- 90-95 percent of them are Arabs," he said, referring to the two Syrian Kurdish organizations that Ankara considers an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which was designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU.
On June 18, Turkish and U.S. forces began patrols in Syria's Manbij in line with a deal that was first announced after a meeting in Washington last week between Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The Manbij deal focuses on the withdrawal of the YPG from the city in order to stabilize the region.
Should the model prove to be a success, Turkey will push for a similar arrangement in eastern Syria. In its over 30-year terrorist campaign against Turkey, the PKK has taken some 40,000 lives, including those of women and children.
