Erdogan: Turkey to normalize relations with Israel "within days"

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he is prepared to normalize ties with Israel within days or weeks after counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for a deadly raid in 2010.

Erdogan, speaking on US broadcaster PBS late Monday, said US President Barack Obama was instrumental in arranging a phone call between the leaders of Israel and Turkey, once intimate allies, but who have been at odds since a 2010 Israeli assault on a Gaza-bound flotilla of aid ships in which soldiers shot dead nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists.

Officials said the two government in recent weeks have been narrowing the gap between them by overcoming sticking points including the amount of compensation to be paid to Turkey.

Erdogan said the issue has been resolved.

"We have come to an agreement... with respect to compensation," he told PBS through a translator.

"And with respect to sending humanitarian aid to the people in Palestine through Turkey... is the other step of the negotiations, and with the completion of that phase we can move towards a process of normalization," Erdogan said.

"I think we're talking about days, weeks."

Erdogan said the first step "would no doubt be taken by the sending of ambassadors."

The May 2010 Israeli assault on the Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara in international waters en route to Gaza sparked widespread condemnation and provoked a major diplomatic crisis between the two sides.

Ankara expelled the Israeli ambassador, demanded a formal apology and compensation, and an end to the blockade on the Gaza Strip.

Talks on compensation began a year ago after Israel extended a formal apology to Turkey in a breakthrough brokered by Obama.

Switching to a thorny subject for Turks, Edogan flatly denied that the World War I killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire amounted to genocide, just days after his government offered condolences over the massacres for the first time.

"This is not possible because if such a genocide had been the case, would there have been Armenians living in this country?" Erdogan told US broadcaster PBS on Monday.

"We are a people who think genocide is a crime against humanity and we would never turn a blind eye to such action," he added.

Erdogan last week offered his condolences over the 1915 massacre, calling it "our shared pain" in a statement marking the 99th anniversary of the start of the killings and mass deportations -- an unprecedented move described by the United States as a historic gesture.

Armenia dismissed the statement, accusing Ankara of "utter denial."

Using both diplomatic levers and its influential diaspora abroad, Armenia has long sought to win the massacre's international recognition as genocide.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million people were killed during World War I as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart, a claim supported by several other countries.

Turkey argues 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians rose up against their Ottoman rulers siding with invading Russian troops.

In the interview, Erdogan also called on the United States to extradite an Islamic cleric he accuses of plotting to topple him and undermine Turkey with concocted graft accusations and secret wire taps.

Fethullah Gulen has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1997 when secularist authorities raised accusations of Islamist activity against him. He denies engineering a police graft investigation but has denounced Erdogan over moves to shut down the inquiry by purging police and judiciary of his followers.

Asked by a reporter at parliament after a meeting of AK Party deputies if a process will begin for his extradition from the United States, Erdogan said: "Yes, it will begin."

In the PBS interview, Erdogan said Gulen, a former ally with broad support in the police and judiciary, could also pose a threat to US security by his activities.

"These elements which threaten the national security of Turkey cannot be allowed to exist in other countries because what they do to us here, they might do against their host," Erdogan told interviewer Charlie Rose, according to a transcript.

He said Turkey had cancelled his passport and that he remained in the United States on a green card as a legal resident.

Gulen runs a network of businesses and schools, well-funded and secular in nature, across the world. The schools are a major source of influence and funding and have therefore become the target of government efforts to have them shut down.

Erdogan accuses Gulen of contriving criminal allegations that his son and the children of three ministers were involved in a corruption scandal and took billions of dollars of bribes.

He has also accused Gulen's Hizmet (Service) movement of bugging thousands of phones and leaking audio recordings, including purportedly of his foreign minister and senior security officials discussing possible armed intervention in neighboring Syria, on the website YouTube. Gulen has also denied these accusations.

The recordings appeared ahead of a March 30 municipal election, but did little to affect Erdogan's popularity, with his AK Party dominating the electoral map.

He said Turkey had complied with more than 10 extradition requests from the United States and now expected the same response from its NATO ally. He did not say whether Turkey had officially made an extradition request.