Turkey demanded Tuesday that the US arrest a Pennsylvania-based preacher for allegedly masterminding last week’s failed coup attempt – as Ankara sent documents seeking his extradition.

“We have sent four dossiers to the United States for the extradition of the terrorist chief. We will present them with more evidence than they want,” Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told parliament, Agence France-Presse reported.

Fethullah Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the Poconos community of Saylorsburg since 1999, has vehemently denied any involvement in the putsch.

He also has suggested the President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may have concocted the coup attempt himself to solidify his control over the military.

Yildirim called on the US to “give up protecting that traitor” during a speech to his ruling Justice and Development Party.

“We have no hesitation about the origin (of the coup). It is crystal clear,” he said. “We know who staged and who ran it,” he said, referring to the “parallel terrorist organization” Turkey says is run by Gulen.

Washington has said it would only consider an extradition request if clear evidence is provided that Gulen was behind the plot.

Yildirim, who spoke in the parliament building that was heavily damaged by several airstrikes, praised Turkish citizens for foiling the coup.

“July 15 has shown the power of tanks were defeated by the power of people. This nation takes its strength from people, not from tanks,” he said. “This parliament has seen plenty of coups but none of the coups have dropped bombs on parliament,.”

The army has launched three attempts to seize power since 1960. A 1997 bloodless coup forced an Islamist government out of office.

Meanwhile, Erdogan made a series of televised appearances in which he disclosed dramatic details of his political survival and raised the specter of reintroducing the death penalty to punish conspirators.

He told CNN he barely escaped death after coup plotters stormed the resort town of Marmaris where he was vacationing.

“Had I stayed 10, 15 additional minutes, I would have been killed or I would have been taken,” he said.

Addressing hundreds of supporters outside his Istanbul residence Tuesday morning, Erdogan responded to calls for the death penalty by saying: “You cannot put aside the people’s demands.”

Turkey abolished the death penalty in 2004 as part of the country’s bid to join the European Union.

“In a country where our youths are killed with tanks and bombs, if we stay silent, as political people we will be held responsible in the afterlife,” Erdogan said, stressing that capital punishment exists in several countries around the world, including the US and China.

Speaking to parliament, Devlet Bahceli, chairman of the opposition Nationalist Movement Party, said his party would back legislation to reintroduce the death penalty if it was put forward by the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP.

“If the AKP is ready, we are in for the death penalty,” Bahceli said.

Turkish courts also have ordered 85 generals and admirals jailed pending trial over their roles in the quashed coup and dozens of others were still being questioned, Turkish media reported.

Among those arrested were former air force chief Gen. Akin Ozturk, who allegedly masterminded Friday’s uprising, and Gen. Adem Hududi, commander of Turkey’s 2nd Army, which is in charge of countering possible threats to Turkey from Syria, Iran and Iraq, the Anadolu Agency reported Tuesday.

Ozturk has denied the allegation, saying he neither planned nor directed the coup.

Authorities also have detained thousands of people who were said to have been involved in the coup, in which 208 government supporters and 24 coup plotters were killed.

Gulen, who is weakened by a heart condition and diabetes, has broken his customary seclusion in Pennsylvania to defend himself against the accusations by Erdogan, his former ally.

Speaking at the Golden Generation Worship & Retreat Center, he condemned the coup attempt as treason, claiming that “even if at the helm of the country there are people who would like to replace me and suppress me and oppress me at the level of blood-sucking vampires, even then I do not want to remove them with anti-democratic means.”

Without naming Erdogan, he compared him to dictators such as Hitler and Saddam Hussein, the BBC reported.

But he asked his followers to remain peaceful because “society is already polarized enough, don’t make it worse.”