US pastor in Turkish jail while Gulen dominates talks
Turkey’s prime minister has asked the US president-elect to hand over exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen in the interest of furthering US-Turkey relations even as Ankara continues to hold American pastor Andrew Brunson on terror charges.
Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim called on US President-elect Donald Trump today to extradite Fethullah Gulen, the Pennsylania-based Sunni cleric who was named as the mastermind of the July 15 coup attempt. Yildirim told a news conference that Gulen's delivery to the Turkish authorities would help improve stormy relations between the two NATO allies.
Yet just as Gulen’s presence in the United States remains a thorn in Turkish-US ties, so too does the incarceration of American pastor Andrew Brunson, whose case has gone largely unnoticed in Turkey but not in the United States.
