recep-tayyip-erdogan

Turkey Summons U.S. Ambassador Over Security During Erdogan Visit

Competing accounts from U.S. and Turkish officials about violent confrontation

Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the U.S. ambassador to protest what it called “aggressive and unprofessional actions” by U.S. security toward Turkish bodyguards during President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Washington last week.

.. Local police, U.S. lawmakers and demonstrators said members of Mr. Erdogan’s security detail took part in an unprovoked attack on protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington.The U.S. State Department said it summoned the Turkish ambassador last week to express its concern over the incident, which D.C. police, the Secret Service and the State Department are investigating.
The summoning of U.S. Ambassador John Bass on Monday added to Turkey’s challenges of the prevailing narrative in Washington by casting blame on U.S. security personnel for unprofessionalism outside the Turkish Embassy, as well as unspecified “lapses of security” throughout Mr. Erdogan’s visit.

..The ministry also condemned “the inability of U.S. authorities to take sufficient precautions at every stage of the official program.” A spokesman for the ministry declined to further specify Turkey’s complaints, pending the investigation it requested.

.. A narrative of the incident published by Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said the fight started after protesters threw water bottles at Turkish citizens.

.. The Turkish government cast the anti-Erdogan demonstrators as sympathizers with the PKK, the Kurdish separatist group classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and Turkey.

.. “There is a big difference between freedom of expression and expression of solidarity with terrorism and terrorists,” Amb. Serdar Kilic said at a speech at the Trump Hotel to people gathered for a conference on U.S.-Turkey business relations. “We do not take it as freedom of expression, it’s expression of solidarity with terrorism.”

.. said Americans were “concerned and disturbed” by the violence.

..“It is important to note that, in the United States, such protests are legal, protected and customary,” Mr. Shannon told the same business conference, where he sat next to the Turkish ambassador during the lunch. “In this regard, we found the attack to be deplorable and lacking in the respect for our laws that we expect from visitors.”

In Video, Erdogan Watches as His Guards Clash With Protesters

Nine people were hospitalized after the skirmish, and the State Department issued a stern statement condemning the attack.

.. Investigators were paying particular attention to two members of the Turkish security detail who assaulted American Diplomatic Security officers assigned to protect the visiting delegation.

.. The men were briefly detained on the scene Tuesday and their guns confiscated. But when it was determined that they held diplomatic status, they were promptly released

.. By the time video of what had happened outside the ambassador’s residence shot across the internet Tuesday night, stoking outrage in the United States, the two men were on their way out of the country with Mr. Erdogan and the rest of his entourage.

.. The two men remain the subject of an active criminal investigation and will not be allowed to re-enter the United States, the aide said.

.. They declined to identify the two members of the Turkish security forces who were detained, but said their immunity was no longer in place.

.. The embassy issued a statement on Wednesday contradicting much of the American officials account and laying blame for the episode on protesters who they said had incited the violence.

.. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill showed less restraint. In an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said the United States “should throw their ambassador the hell out of the United States of America.”
“This kind of thing cannot go unresponded to diplomatically,” Mr. McCain said. “And maybe in other ways. Maybe bring lawsuits against so we can identify these people.”

.. Later in the day, Mr. McCain and Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, sent a letter to Mr. Erdogan demanding that he hold members of his staff implicated in the attack responsible. Their actions, the senators wrote, constituted “an affront” to the nation’s legal rights “and reflects poorly on your government.”

The episode Tuesday was not the first in which Turkish security forces have incited violence in Washington. The police and members of Mr. Erdogan’s security team clashed with demonstrators last year outside the Brookings Institution, where Mr. Erdogan was delivering a speech.

Erdogan Says He Will Extend His Sweeping Rule Over Turkey

In a signal that Turkey faces indefinite rule by decree, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Sunday that a state of emergency, introduced as a temporary measure after last year’s failed coup, would continue until the country achieved “welfare and peace.”

The state of emergency allows Mr. Erdogan and his cabinet to issue sweeping decrees without parliamentary oversight or review by the constitutional court, giving him an almost untrammeled grip on power.

.. So far, the decrees have allowed Mr. Erdogan to

jail more than 40,000 people accused of plotting a failed coup,

fire or suspend more than 140,000 additional people,

shut down about 1,500 civil groups,

arrest at least 120 journalists and

close more than 150 news media outlets.

.. In late April, a decree issued under the state of emergency was used to block access to Wikipedia.

.. What we’ve seen is that instead of using the state of emergency to counter genuine threats to national security, it’s been abused to stifle criticism of the ruling AK party,”

l Plenty of tough talk for Erdogan guards, but action is unlikely, experts say

police handled the disturbance smartly by separating the antagonists and leaving it to others to sort out culpability and criminality. He said even if the officers didn’t immediately grasp that the guards were potentially immune from arrest, they would have known that a fight outside an ambassador’s residence was more complex than a simple dispute.

“The officers in D.C. are well trained,” Ramsey said. “They are very familiar with these unique kind of circumstances. This is not your typical city.”

.. “Diplomatic immunity can’t be a license to attack people at will. The cops see people beating others into submission, and I think they’re convinced it was above their pay grade to act.”

.. Turkey’s semiofficial news agency cast the melee as a failure of D.C. police, saying they did not stop the anti-Erdogan protest. The government later alleged that its guards had “responded in self-defense” to terrorists it said had joined the protesters.