Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned Nato against sheltering “terrorist” soldiers after Turkish officers in the alliance’s command reportedly sought asylum after a failed putsch.
“How can a terrorist, a terrorist soldier, a soldier who has been involved in plotting a coup, be employed in Nato?” Erdogan told journalists on a plane from Uzbekistan, the Milliyet newspaper reported. “They cannot do such a thing.”
On Friday, Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said that a number of Turkish officers serving in Nato command positions had requested asylum following the botched coup on July 15.
Neither Stoltenberg nor Erdogan provided a number, although Erdogan said it was not high.
Erdogan said the Turkish government has demanded that soldiers who asked for asylum be extradited and warned the alliance against providing them with a haven.
“Nato cannot entertain accepting asylum requests of this kind. Those in question are accused of terror,” he said.
Stoltenberg said the Nato countries concerned would make their own asylum decisions rather than the alliance headquarters in Brussels.
“We would be wrong if we started to go into that kind of legal issue; that’s for the judicial system” of the countries concerned, Stoltenberg said.
Stoltenberg is due to meet Erdogan today on the margins of a Nato meeting in Istanbul.
Erdogan has accused Western powers of failure to show solidarity in the aftermath of the coup bid, which he blames on rogue elements in the army led by Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen.
He has angrily batted away criticism of his crackdown against alleged plotters.
Within the military, 9,300 army personnel have been arrested, including 118 generals and admirals, while thousands more have been discharged dishonourably or suspended.
Erdogan also warned yesterday that Turkey did not need to join the European Union “at all costs” and could instead become part of a security bloc dominated by China, Russia and Central Asian nations.
Turkey’s prospects of joining the EU look more remote than ever after 11 years of negotiations.
European leaders have been critical of its record on democratic freedoms, while Ankara has grown increasingly exasperated by what it sees as Western condescension.
“Turkey must feel at ease. It mustn’t say ‘for me it’s the European Union at all costs’. That’s my view,” Erdogan was quoted by the Hurriyet newspaper as telling reporters onboard the same flight.
“Why shouldn’t Turkey be in the Shanghai Five? I said this to (Russian President) Mr Putin, to (Kazakh President) Nazarbayev, to those who are in the Shanghai Five now,” he said. “I hope that if there is a positive development there, I think if Turkey were to join the Shanghai Five, it will enable it to act with much greater ease.”
China, Russia and four Central Asian nations – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – formed the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) in 2001 as a regional security bloc to fight threats posed by radical Islam and drug trafficking from neighbouring Afghanistan.
Turkish membership of the SCO, which had initially not included Uzbekistan and been known as the Shanghai Five, would be likely to alarm Western allies and fellow Nato members.
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan speak Turkic languages, and Ankara signed up in 2013 as a “dialogue partner”, saying that it shared “the same destiny” as members of the bloc.
Mongolia, India, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan are SCO observers, while Belarus, like Turkey, is a dialogue partner.
Dialogue partners are entitled to take part in ministerial-level and some other meetings of the SCO, but do not have voting rights.
Erdogan last week urged Turks to be patient until the end of the year over relations with Europe and said a referendum could be held on EU membership in 2017.
The EU is treading a fine line in relations with Turkey: it needs Ankara’s continued help in curbing a huge flow of migrants, especially from Syria, but is alarmed by Turkey’s crackdown on opponents since the failed coup attempt in July.