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Southeast Europe
May 19, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 14
request for the handing over of Gulen, which Washington is yet to respond positively to.
The overall presentation of the press conference stressed the importance of the strategic alliance between Turkey and the US. “The relationship that we have together will be unbeatable,” Trump said. He praised historic contributions made by Turkey during the Cold War.
Trump added that, “the US supports Turkey in the first fight against terror and terror groups like ISIS and the PKK [the Kurdistan Workers’ Party which the YPG is linked to], and ensure they have no safe quarter, the terror groups.”
Ankara deems the YPG as a threat to its national security because of its link to the PKK, which has been fighting an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984.
At the joint press conference, Erdogan stopped short of directly criticising the US for its decision to arm the YPG, but his speech contained a warn- ing that “there is no place for the terrorist or- ganisations in the future of our region. Taking the YPG into consideration in the region, it will never be accepted, and it is going to be against a global agreement that we have reached”.
Erdogan added that Turkey will never allow those groups “to manipulate the religious structure and the ethnic structure of the region making terror- ism as a pretext or an excuse.”
Reiterating Ankara’s demand for the extradition of Gulen, Erdogan said. “I have been frankly communi- cating our expectations with regard to the Fethullahist Terrorist Organisation (FETO), [and] we have notified our friends of their involvement in the failed coup.”
The Ankara government uses the term FETO to describe the Gulenist network which it says infil- trated the country’s military, judiciary, police force and other key institutions prior to the coup.
Trump chose not to comment on Gulen who has been living in the US since 1999.
Following the press call, delegations from the two countries, headed by Erdogan and Trump, met for further discussions.
According to Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, the delegations discussed cooperation in the fields of trade and defence as well as the fight against the PKK and ISIS. The spokesman also noted that “possible steps against FETO” were also discussed. But he did not elaborate.
Albanian opposition agrees to participate in election
bne IntelliNews
Albania’s biggest opposition party, the Demo- cratic Party (DP), has decided to participate in the upcoming general election, after threatening a boycott that would have seriously undermined the legitimacy of the vote.
The breakthrough follows intensive US official mediation efforts, and will put Albania’s EU acces- sion efforts – which would have been undermined by an election that failed to include the opposition – back on track.
The information came in the early hours of May 18 when Prime Minister Edi Rama of the Socialist Party and DP leader Lulzim Basha reached an agreement on the election.
The main part of the agreement between the two men is the decision to postpone the general elec- tion by one week to June 25. Delaying the election was one of the key demands of the DP.
During his visit to Tirana, US Deputy Assistant Sec-