...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
’s presidential candidate of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Muharrem Ince, has threatened to close a major American military base in the country by Christmas unless Washington extradites US-based opposition holy man Fethullah Gülen
... a Turkish preacher living in Pennsylvania whom the current govt of Turkey considers responsible for all the ills afflicting Turkey and possibly the entire world..., whom Ankara blames for an abortive 2016 coup.
Ince sent out the warning to the White House about shutting down the base at Incirlik, a military airport located in southern Turkey, in an interview with Turkey’s Fox TV late on Wednesday, saying Washington must "extradite Fethullah Gulen from the United States."
"If you (the United States) don't hand him back, we will shut down Incirlik and send back US soldiers on December 24 and they can celebrate Christmas with their families," Ince added, a 54-year-old former physics teacher from the northwestern province of Yalova.
Shortly after the mid-July 2016 coup attempt against the government of
... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey...by a faction of the army, Ankara accused 76-year-old Gulen of being the criminal mastermind and orchestrator of the botched putsch, sending several official requests to Washington to hand over the elderly holy man, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the US since 1999.
Washington, however, has so far declined Ankara’s requests, saying it needs compelling evidence of Gulen’s alleged role in the failed coup to hand him over to the Anatolian country. In response, Ankara has on several occasions threatened that it would revisit its ties with the US if Washington failed to extradite Gulen.