PHOTO: President Obama at a press conference on Friday — “America is governed by rules of law” (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

President Obama has again held the US line against the request of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the extradition of his political enemy, cleric Fethullah Gülen.

At a press conference on Friday, Obama said that he told Erdoğan to present evidence of Gülen’s complicity in last weekend’s failed coup in Turkey. The extradition request would then receive the review required by the Justice Department and other US Government agencies:

America’s governed by rules of law, and those are not ones that the president of the United States or anybody else can just set aside for the sake of expediency. We’ve got to go through a legal process.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu had said on Friday that the US offered to form a working group to assist Ankara in preparing its request for extradition.

Çavuşoğlu said the American officials would come from the State and Justice Departments, then pressed:

Our demand from the U.S. is plain and simple. They should not harbor this person who attempted to make a coup. The U.S. should prevent the escape of the ringleader of this gang.”

The Foreign Minister criticized Washington’s insistence that Ankara submit “solid evidence”, saying the coup attempt was the evidence.

Erdoğan accuses Gülen of organizing a “parallel organization” within a “deep state” to overthrow the Government. In the week after the coup attempt, the Turkish Government has used the allegation to detain or suspend more than 60,000 soldiers, police, judges, civil servants, and teachers.

Gülen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, has condemned the attempted coup and denied any involvement.

The cleric was a political ally during Erdoğan’s rise to power as Prime Minister from 2003. However, they fell out in 2013 over allegations of corruption within the Government.

Obama Rejects Allegations of US Coup Involvement

Obama also said that he rejected allegations of US involvement in the failed coup, telling Erdoğan this in the phone call in which the Turkish President called for Gülen’s extradition:

Any reports that we had any previous knowledge of a coup attempt, that there was any U.S. involvement in it, that we were anything other than entirely supportive of Turkish democracy are completely false, unequivocally false.

He needs to make sure that, not just he but everybody in his government, understands that those reports are completely false. Because when rumors like that start swirling around, that puts our people at risk on the ground in Turkey and it threatens what is a critical alliance and partnership between the United States and Turkey.

The Turkish Government has maintained pressure on Washington by cutting off power to the Incirlik airbase, a main staging area for US operations against the Islamic State, since the coup was launched on July 15.