Below is a press release from Armenian Americans for Human Rights (AAHR), chaired by David Boyajian.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Chairman Menendez Fail to Question the Nominee for U.S. Ambassador to Turkey about Terrorism
Several times this year, the U.S. State Department and Treasury Department have cited Turkey as a financial base for ISIS and al-Qaeda.
Turkey has long sponsored ISIS and other international terrorist organizations. No serious analyst disputes this.
Turkey has armed, financed, and deployed terrorists in such locations as Syria, Libya, and Azerbaijan.
On September 28, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) and Chairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ) quizzed President Biden’s nominee to be ambassador to Turkey, former U.S. Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ).
The SFRC —and particularly Sen. Menendez —shocked observers by failing to ask Flake even a single question about Turkey’s sponsorship of terrorism.
Since 2014, veteran State Department advisor Dr. David L. Phillips, Director of Columbia University’s Program on Peace-Building and Rights, has thoroughly documented Turkey’s backing of ISIS and other terrorist groups.
This year he wrote that if a “non-NATO country behaved like Turkey, it would warrant designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism,” like Iran and North Korea.
In 2014, Vice President Joe Biden told his Harvard University audience that Turkey and others had been giving “hundreds of millions of dollars [and] tons of weapons” to al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, and ISIS.
According to Turkey’s counterterrorism chief from 2010-2013, Ahmet S. Yayla, “Turkey was a central hub for… over 50,000 ISIS foreign fighters, and the main source of ISIS logistical materials [including] IEDs, making Turkey and ISIS practically allies.”
The United Nations, the European Union Parliament, and others have documented Turkey’s and Azerbaijan’s deployment of terrorists and terrorist mercenaries against the Armenian region of Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabagh last year.
In a July 21 SFRC hearing, Chairman Menendez asked Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland about “Turkey facilitating the transfer of fighters from Syria to Azerbaijan” in 2020. Nuland sneered that she would discuss it only “in another setting.”
Sen. Menendez has never revealed whether he subsequently met Nuland “in another setting” and, if so, what resulted. Chairman Menendez’s lack of transparency is unacceptable.
AAHR concludes that the SFRC, Chairman Menendez, and ranking member Senator James E. Risch (R-ID) are engaged in covering up Turkey’s (and probably other countries’) terrorist activities.
The Senate, unfortunately, confirmed Mr. Flake on October 26 as ambassador to Turkey.
Turkey is, in effect, a State Sponsor of Terrorism.
For the SFRC and Chairman Menendez, therefore, to have not asked Flake even a single question about terrorism is an abdication of their duties and a betrayal of the American people, especially our courageous men and women in uniform.
David Boyajian is an Armenian-American freelance journalist. His primary foreign policy focus is the Caucasus. Many of his articles are archived at www.armeniapedia.org/wiki/David_Boyajian.
For his previous essays at Gates of Vienna, see the David Boyajian Archives.
It is quite clear this week that the EU’s influence is waning and their popularity waning less popular. Nation states are rebelling in small ways,; Poland, Hungary and Czechia. They don’t want to lose their rights to the EU. The EU has lost it’s leverage with the Balkans last week when it said that they could not join the EU for a while and given what major members of the EU think that will be NEVER!. Balkans joining would mean millions more mouths to feed. Russia no longer sees value in the EU or NATO and will now try to pick off neighbouring states to being them back into it’s orbit. Armenia should consider aligning with Russia, a more reliable ally and closer geographically. Serbia has realised the EU is a waste of time. Trump would have made an effort to help but not Biden.
The turk is always a bloody turk in the end.