The following summary by David Boyajian recaps the events in D.C. seven years ago when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s bodyguards roughed up American citizens. He also looks at the larger issue of the behavior of those same bodyguards on other occasions, both in the USA and elsewhere.
Turkish bodyguards attacking protesters, Washington DC, May 16 2017
The Day(s) That Turkish President Erdogan Humiliated America
by David Boyajian
Weak. Deceitful. Cowardly.
Those words describe America’s ongoing responses to the savage, unprovoked attack on peaceful protestors by Turkish President Erdogan’s security detail in Washington, DC.
It happened on Tuesday afternoon, May 16, 2017 following his meeting with President Trump.
Shortly after his motorcade arrived at the Turkish ambassador’s Sheridan Circle residence, where protestors had lawfully assembled across the street, Erdogan commanded his bodyguards to “attack, attack.”
Breaking through police lines, they kicked, punched, and bloodied the protesters, including women. Other Turks, purportedly not in Erdogan’s entourage, did the same.
The motorcade then brutalized a female demonstrator on its way to the Turkish Embassy. Assaults on Americans continued there.
The day saw a minimum of eleven persons, some with severe injuries, transported to the hospital.
Among those set upon and injured: Two U.S. Diplomatic Security members, six Secret Service agents, and a DC police officer.
Turks Allowed to Escape
Turkish Ambassador Serdar Kilic promptly asked that the bodyguards not be detained.
Sure enough, some 90 minutes later, U.S. security released them and accompanied Erdogan’s caravan to Joint Base Andrews where they jetted off to Turkey.
It was the fastest “joint move and departure I’ve ever seen,” said one U.S. agent.
The administration let the Turkish bodyguards flee, allegedly because they had diplomatic immunity.
Indignation
Then, too late, came the indignation, such as:
- The State Department expressed its “concern to the Turkish government in the strongest possible terms.”
- The bodyguards should be “charged and prosecuted,” said a unanimous House resolution in June.
Astonishingly, Trump said nothing about the attack. Perhaps this was due to his and his associates’ close relationships with Turkey and Erdogan.
There was good news, though.
On August 29, 2017, a federal grand jury indicted 15 Turkish bodyguards on felony charges.
That suggested that releasing them had been a serious error.
But then came Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s disgraceful meeting with Erdogan in Ankara on February 15, 2018.
America Caves in to Turkey — Again
Tillerson ordered that no American translator, aide, or transcriber attend the meeting.
That violated State Department protocol and ensured that no American could witness what Tillerson would bargain away.
Just the day before, the Justice Department moved — surely not coincidentally — to drop its case against most of Erdogan’s bodyguards. Charges were dismissed eight days later. Apparently, the entire detail has since dodged U.S. justice.
Tillerson obviously struck a Faustian deal to let Turkey’s unhinged president and his thugs off the hook.
That betrayed the American security agents, police, and demonstrators whom the Turks had assaulted and injured. It also mocked the First Amendment’s freedoms of assembly and speech.
American credibility took a hit as Ankara got away — like so many times before and since — with its crimes.
Turkish Thuggery and Western Cowardice
- 2009: Erdogan’s bodyguards brawled with President Obama’s Secret Service detail and police in NYC.
- 2011: Inside the UN, Erdogan’s detail battled with the organization’s security staff, two of whom were injured with one taken to the hospital.
- 2014: Turkish security threatened and pushed around journalists while the latter covered a meeting between Vice President Biden and Erdogan in NYC.
- 2015: Over the course of two days in Brussels, Erdogan’s squad clashed with police and elbowed a Belgian VIP security agent.
- 2016: Outside DC’s Brookings Institution, Erdogan’s detail “roughed up protesters [and] tried to drag away ‘undesired’ journalists.”
- 2016: In Ecuador, Erdogan’s crew broke a parliament member’s nose.
- 2018: While Erdogan visited South Africa, Turkish Embassy guards attacked peaceful protesters, leaving at least one bloodied.
- 2019: A scuffle between Erdogan’s team and Sarajevo airport police broke out after the Turks refused to hand over their firearms as required by Bosnian law.
No wonder Turkish security details act with impunity.
America has learned nothing from these attacks or, more likely, is OK with being spat on by Turkey.
More generally, and contrary to popular belief, neither military power nor diplomatic skill explains Ankara’s feats.
Rather, it’s America’s, Europe’s, and others’ cowardly reactions to Ankara’s incessant temper tantrums, bullying, and threats.
Erdogan sees that. So do Washington’s enemies.
More American Impotence
In October of 2019, a White House letter warned Erdogan not to attack America’s Kurdish allies in Syria.
Erdogan attacked anyway, confident in U.S. weakness.
Nevertheless, he again received the honor of a White House invitation. Arriving on November 13, 2019, Erdogan outright insulted the president by handing him back the letter.
U.S. presidents’ failures to hit back at Turkey have bred contempt.
Erdogan’s scheduled — and wholly undeserved — visit to President Biden on May 9, 2024 has, fortunately, been postponed.
Given Ankara’s destabilizing role in the Middle East’s recent crises, the invitation was especially unwarranted.
Though this isn’t the place for a fuller discussion of the West’s long-standing kowtowing to Turkey — going back more than a hundred years — a recent example proves the point.
The Sick West
Since 2022, Erdogan had blocked Finland’s and Sweden’s joining NATO.
He claimed, without evidence, that the two countries were assisting Kurdish terrorists.
Yet Turkey itself is a major supporter of ISIS and other jihadist terrorists. The country is a state sponsor of terrorism.
The two Nordic nations, the U.S., and NATO were simply too cowardly to point that out. Hard to believe, but true.
Erdogan eventually lifted his baseless veto of the two nations’ NATO memberships but only after the West needlessly agreed to deliver F-16s jets to Turkey.
May 16’s anti-Erdogan protesters, thankfully, are proving to have more guts.
Putting the West to Shame
In 2018, the protesters filed two lawsuits that asked for over $100 million in damages from the Turkish government.
Citing “Foreign Sovereign Immunity,” Ankara has rebuffed the suits.
In 2021 and 2022, federal courts, including the Supreme Court, rejected that defense.
The main reason: The Turkish bodyguards’ “conduct was not plausibly related to protecting President Erdogan.”
Permitting the bodyguards to flee to Turkey and subsequently dismissing charges against them were clearly grave, intentional concessions.
Congress must grow a spine, cease being intimidated by Ankara’s bluster, and put its foot down.
Otherwise, American presidents and the State Department will continue to put the interests of Turkey above those of the American people.
David Boyajian’s usual focus is the Caucasus. His work can be found at www.armeniapedia.org/wiki/David_Boyajian.
For his previous essays at Gates of Vienna, see the David Boyajian Archives.
When barbarians detect weakness in the government of a country, they always do what barbarians do; they become violent.
It seems to be necessary, from time to time, to respond to barbarian violence with violence. It’s not pleasant but history suggests it’s necessary if a country values its peace and security.
to say the least: i really doubt that any of these “independent” and “spontaneous” protests on US soil were not set up by some of the many agencies of the secret and security service of USA.
In the old days, this would be considered an ACT OF WAR.
Observers say that there are secular and moderate Turks in modern Turkey, but you’d never know it by the fact that Recep Erdogan keeps winning elections. The Turkish President is an unapologetic Islamic supremacist and neo-Ottoman who styles himself the next great sultan of a rejuvenated Islamic empire mirroring the ones which had been dominant for centuries before collapsing in the early 1920s.
President Erdogan is a cool and calculating sort, who is canny enough to present a public image which is modern and sophisticated in all of the ways that impress the high-rollers and the jet set and other members of the influence-making classes of the West. But in reality, the man is demonstrating that oldest of Islamic deceptions ~ false friendship with the kafirs as long as it benefits Muslims and Islam.
If Erdogan is a friend of the West and dependable ally in NATO, then consider the following…
Erdogan, acting with his friends and associates then-U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, helped to create/fund the Sunni direct-action/terror jihadist group ISIS. When it became too much of a hot potato for Obama politically, Erdogan and the Turks took on the job of sustaining the group.
About a decade ago, perhaps a bit less, Bilal Erdogan, his son, was caught red-handed operating a fleet of Turkish-flagged oil tankers which were transporting ISIS oil to market, and selling it, the proceeds being used to fund the group’s operations in Syria and elsewhere.
Are these the actions of a friend?
Erdogan has also been one of the chief drivers of the “Great Replacement” underway across Europe, at times offering to assist “migrants” and “refugees” making their way from the Middle East to SE Europe and the Balkans, hence into the heart of the continent. For many years now, along with Obama/Biden, Merkel, and radical billionaire troublemaker George Soros, just to name a few – Erdogan has been stalwart in funneling Muslims into the heartland of Europe.
The same Muslims now engaging in acts of jihad across the continent…
Are these the actions of a friend?
No, they are not. Remember that Islamic doctrine going back almost fifteen hundred years calls upon the believers to mislead, deceive, and lie to the infidels whenever it benefits Muslims and Islam. False truces, feigned friendship, and all of the rest of it. Erdogan knows this full-well, and is practicing it in his day-to-day political life as leader of the Islamic Republic of Turkey.
Knowledge is power, and now that westerners can take the proper measure of the man, they ought to exercise even more scrutiny, discernment and skepticism than ever before, when dealing with this chameleon-like leader.