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The extent of the crackdown has worried rights groups and many of Turkey's Western allies, who fear Erdogan is using the emergency rule to eradicate dissent. The government says the actions are justified given the threat to the state posed by the coup attempt, in which more than 240 people died. The executive decrees have ordered the closure of 15 more newspapers, wires and magazines, which report from the largely Kurdish southeast, bringing the total number of media outlets and publishers closed since July to nearly 160. Universities have also been stripped of their ability to elect their own rectors...

On Wednesday, America's Vice President Joe Biden will arrive in Turkey. His main mission is to smooth things over with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is getting angrier with the United States by the day. The reason Erdogan is so angry with the United States is, Erdogan says, that America still provides a safe haven to Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, who Ankara accuses of being behind the failed military coup on July 15. Both before, but especially after the coup, the Turkish government has accused Gülen, who lives in Pennsylvania, of being a terrorist leader comparable to ISIS self-declared...

An obscure website published a vague report Thursday making the dramatic claim that relations between Washington and Ankara had deteriorated so badly that the United States had begun moving nuclear weapons from Turkey to Romania. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be any basis at all for the report, which alleged B61 nuclear weapons were on their way to Romania’s Deveselu base. Romania’s defense ministry promptly denied it and experts dismissed the idea as illogical for technical and other reasons.

Over the past month, ever since the "failed" Turkish coup, there has been a dramatic, and surprising, deterioration in the of Turkey with various European states, most notably Austria and Germany, as well as with the US, and NATO in general. This was confirmed once again earlier today when Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu lashed out at NATO, in an interview with Russian Sputnik, saying the alliance is not fully cooperating with Ankara. More importantly, he hinted that Turkey would consider military cooperation with Russia. In the interview, Cavusoglu said that Ankara has become alarmed at the lack of willingness...

EXCLUSIVE/ Two independent sources told EurActiv.com that the US has started transferring nuclear weapons stationed in Turkey to Romania, against the background of worsening relations between Washington and Ankara . According to one of the sources, the transfer has been very challenging in technical and political terms. “It’s not easy to move 20+ nukes,” said the source, on conditions of anonymity. According to a recent report by the Simson Center, since the Cold War, some 50 US tactical nuclear weapons have been stationed at Turkey’s Incirlik air base, approximately 100 kilometres from the Syrian border. During the failed coup in...

Turkish authorities have been hard-pressed to find room for the 35,000 people that have been detained since the coup attempt last month that killed more than 270 people. Currently 23,400 people are in custody in connection to coup allegations, a Turkish official said Wednesday. ... Human rights groups and opposition politicians have voiced concerns over the wave of detentions immediately after the coup attempt. Soldiers and officers sympathetic to it were rounded up and detained, handcuffed in their underwear in sports halls and stadiums. ... In the letter, the parliamentarians said they had asked that a delegation be set up...

Dozens of US nuclear weapons stored at a Turkish air base near Syria are at risk of being captured by "terrorists or other hostile forces," a Washington think tank claimed Monday. Critics have long been alarmed by America's estimated stockpile of about 50 nuclear bombs at Incirlik in southern Turkey, just 70 miles (110 kilometers) from the border with war-torn Syria. The issue took on fresh urgency last month following the attempted coup in Turkey, in which the base's Turkish commander was arrested on suspicion of complicity in the plot.

NEWS ANALYSIS: Post-coup actions turn precarious for Christians, and potentially fatal for a vision of a civil Islam. In Turkey, a failed military coup against President Recep ErdoÄŸan on July 15, squelched in about six hours, has triggered a fierce government response: mass civilian arrests, declaration of a state of emergency giving ErdoÄŸan authoritarian power for at least three months and a hateful atmosphere of accusation that puts Christians at risk. As a longtime American ally, a member of NATO since 1952 and a country where important American military assets are located, TurkeyÂ’s stability has special significance for the U.S....

On Feb. 14, 1979, less than one month after the shah of Iran’s exile, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was overrun by Iranian militants. Within hours, it was returned to U.S. hands. Now on notice that our diplomats were stationed on a vulnerable outpost in a sea of anti-Americanism, the Carter administration considered, but rejected, closing the embassy. In October, President Carter permitted the shah – despised by Iranians and the regime that replaced his – to enter the United States. Days later, Iranians climbed the embassy gates again, took the Americans there hostage and demanded the shah’s return, beginning...

Some 5,000 state employees have been sacked and 77,000 suspended in the purge since last month's failed coup in Turkey, the prime minister says. Binali Yildirim told reporters in Ankara that more than 3,000 of those sacked were members of the military. They are suspected of links to exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, he said. Announcing a visit to Turkey by US Vice-President Joe Biden, he again urged the US to extradite Mr Gulen. The cleric, a former ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, from where he runs a worldwide network of charities and...

Vice President Joe Biden will travel to Turkey later this month to smooth over the administration’s relationship with the NATO ally. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime survived a coup attempt last month and has since been cracking down on journalists, academics and the military in an effort to suppress what it sees as vestiges of the coup movement. The White House said in a release that Biden's stop in Ankara will be part of a three-day trip that also includes visits to Latvia and Sweden.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday gave the U.S. an ultimatum following Ankara's repeated requests for the extradition of U.S.-based preacher Fetullah Gulen, accused of orchestrating the defeated July 15 coup. "Sooner or later the U.S. will make a choice: either Turkey or FETO," Erdogan said. "Either the coup-plotting terrorist FETO or the democratic country Turkey. [The U.S.] has to make this choice," he said, referring to the Gulen-led Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) which Ankara says mounted the bloody coup attempt through rogue elements within the military.

Snip ...These days, however, the U.S. and Turkey see eye to eye on very little. The two countries are at odds over Syria and the urgency of removing Syrian President Bashar Assad; over support for Syrian Kurds who, in contrast to the Turks, have proved to be reliable U.S. partners in the fight against Islamic State; over the territorial sovereignty of Iraq; and over continuing sanctions on Iran.Though American officials privately acknowledge that Mr. Erdogan is “erratic,” they have given the Turkish leader extraordinary leverage over U.S. policy. The U.S. fear is that public pressure will result in even less...

(CNN)Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave the United States "an ultimatum," demanding the extradition of the cleric he believes is behind the failed July 15 coup attempt. The state-run Anadolu news agency reported that Erdogan had said the US had to choose between its relationship with Turkey and Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally who has been in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania for decades. Turkey has requested his extradition, while Gulen denied involvement in the coup. Breaking down Turkey's rapprochement with Russia Breaking down Turkey's rapprochement with Russia 08:12 While ties with Washington threaten to cool over the Gulen issue,...

Leading up to the the most bizarre and unsuccessful coup attempt in Turkey's history, Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been choking out the civil liberties of his citizens, punishing journalists and threatening the country's top constitutional court. Erdogan has taken Turkey further from secularism and closer to Islamic theocracy, which is claimed to be one of the reasons behind the attempted coup. He somehow convinced Germany to punish a writer for reciting a negative poem and has imprisoned journalists in his own country for their negative criticisms of his increasingly authoritarian rule. It is suspiciously obvious that the recent failed coup...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has told a vast rally in Istanbul that he would approve the return of the death penalty if it was backed by parliament and the public. He was speaking to at least a crowd of at least a million who had gathered in Turkey's biggest city. The rally followed last month's failed military coup. Mr Erdogan also said the state would be cleansed of all supporters of the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. The cleric is blamed by the Turkish government for the attempted uprising. He denies any involvement. Religious figures and leaders of two of...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to arrive in Turkey later this month, Turkey's foreign minister said Friday, amid strained relations with Washington over the possible extradition of a Muslim cleric accused of being behind an attempted military coup last month. The Turkish government has expressed growing annoyance with what it regards as a lack of solidarity from international allies in the aftermath of the failed coup, as well as increased frustration over perceived foot-dragging by the United States over a Turkish demand that U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen be returned to Turkey to face trial. Turkey accuses...

Around 50,000 supporters of Turkey’s Islamist president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have rallied in Cologne, Germany to demand his authoritarian reign continues. The Islamist crowd chanted “Allah hu Akbar!” and held signs reading, “Erdoğan is a human rights activist”, whilst opponents waved banners insisting “Stop the Erdomania!” Members of the Turkish-nationalist, fascist-leaning “Grey Wolves” group were among the crowd that gathered on banks of the Rhine River with the city’s huge gothic cathedral in the background. The German Federal Constitutional Court banned the live broadcasting of Mr. Erdogan’s speech at the rally, Deutsche Welle reports. Some Germans reacted furiously to the...

The Erdogan regime continues to play with fire renewing accusations that the United States spearheaded a complex conspiracy to overthrow the Turkish government. A Turkish prosecutor claims that the CIA and FBI provided training to followers of US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara initially called the “mastermind” of the failed attempt to overthrow the Erdogan regime on July 15 that left hundreds dead and thousands more wounded. An indictment, prepared by the Edirne Public Prosecutor’s office and submitted to the local Second Heavy Penal Court, seeks the harshest possible punishment for 43 suspected coup plotters. In the indictment, the...

TURKISH citizens and police have ‘surrounded’ the Incirlik air base it operates with the United States — and where a large stockpile of NATO nuclear weapons is held — ahead of a visit by a senior US official tomorrow.