Turkey will ignore U.S. requests for extradition of terror suspects from Ankara, the country’s president said, reflecting a new rift in relations with NATO ally.
“From now on, whenever you want a terrorist from us, you won’t get him, so long as I am in the office,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday.
Turkey recently extradited 12 suspects to the U.S.
But the Turkish-U.S. relations again descended into a new diplomatic spat over the U.S. training of Syrian Kurdish militants whom the Turkish government deem as “terrorists.”
On Wednesday, the Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned Chargé d’Affaires Philip Kosnett in Ankara to convey its concerns over training People’s Protection Units (YPG) fighters.
The bilateral ties are strained over the extradition of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, a New York court verdict against a Turkish banker and the U.S. alliance with Kurdish militia in Syria.
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