Turkey
employs an all-star lobbying team of former government officials,
including former Democratic lawmakers Dick Gephardt and Al Wynn;
former Republican Senator Tim Hutchinson; retired Central
Intelligence Agency Director Porter Goss; and, until he was indicted
in June and left the Dickstein Shapiro law firm, former Speaker of
the House Denny Hastert. Others on the payroll include Brian Forni, a
former Democratic aide, the law firm Greenberg Traurig, and Goldin
Solutions, a media strategy firm
by Lee
Fang
Some of the
most successful fighters against the Islamic State are being isolated
and attacked by America’s new favorite ally in the region.
Kurdish
militias are achieving the stated goals of the Obama administration —
to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS — as well or better
than any other fighting force. From Kobane to the recent liberation
of Tel Abyad, Kurdish militias have won hard-fought victories against
ISIS fighters in Syria, while preventing the advance of ISIS into
northern Iraq.
What’s
more, the Kurds in northern Syria have established a political order
like few others in this region of the world. Known as Rojava, the
Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria are governed through participatory
decision-making forums that include councils made up of women,
Christians, Yazidis and Muslims. David Graeber, a leading figure in
the Occupy Wall Street movement, calls Rojava a “remarkable
democratic experiment.”
But those
gains are now in danger as Turkey, which has a long history of enmity
towards ethnic Kurds and fears the potential for a Kurdish state to
its immediate south, in northern Syria or Iraq, flexes its political
muscle in Washington and applies its military might in the Middle
East.
Behind the
scenes, American lobbyists employed by Turkey started working to
block U.S. military assistance to Kurdish fighters last year,
lobbying disclosures show.
This past
week, the Turkish government made two critical air bases available to
U.S. forces, a long-sought concession that allows the U.S. military
to launch anti-ISIS raids more quickly. And it began its own
airstrikes against ISIS. But that move is increasingly being seen as
something of a feint, with Turkey’s main focus being a new
offensive against Kurdish militants.
Simultaneously
with its announcement about U.S. access to the air bases, the Turkish
government broke its truce with Kurdish militants. During the past
week, the Turkish military began attacking Kurdish bases in Iraq and
allegedly in Syria as well. The Turkish government says its campaign
is simply a response to an attack by the Kurdistan Worker’s Party
(PKK), a separatist group, and has emphasized that it is also
targeting ISIS.
On Friday,
Turkey launched a series of mass arrests. Though some ISIS supporters
were detained, the “vast majority” of arrests, according to the
local press, were of leftists and Kurds. And on Tuesday, Turkey’s
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for a crackdown on the People’s
Democratic Party, a Kurdish-leftist political party that gained seats
in parliament for the first time last month.
Turkey
intends to use the increased airstrikes to create a “safe zone”
for Sunni Arab militias, which as the New York Times noted, would
come at the expense of Kurdish fighters.
Rather than
condemn the attacks on the Kurds, the Obama administration praised
Turkey’s government for making its air base available.
Turkey’s
role as a coalition partner in the campaign against ISIS has been and
remains the subject of some controversy. For years, foreign jihadi
fighters trickled through Turkey’s porous border to join the ranks
of ISIS. The Guardian reported on Saturday that a recent U.S.-led
raid on an ISIS official responsible for selling black market oil to
traders in Turkey revealed direct dealings between Turkish officials
and ranking ISIS members
Vice
President Joseph Biden remarked on this strange relationship with
Turkey in a speech in October 2014. Turkey, Biden said, is “so
determined to take down [Syrian President Bashar Assad’s
government] and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did
they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens,
thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against
Assad — except that the people who were being supplied were al
Nusra and al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from
other parts of the world.”
Biden
quickly apologized, as good an example as any of the pressure to
maintain long-standing U.S.-Turkey business and military
relationships — and the intractable power of the Turkish lobby,
which is among the biggest spenders on foreign lobbying in Washington
and a major sponsor of congressional junkets.
Turkey
employs an all-star lobbying team of former government officials,
including former Democratic lawmakers Dick Gephardt and Al Wynn;
former Republican Senator Tim Hutchinson; retired Central
Intelligence Agency Director Porter Goss; and, until he was indicted
in June and left the Dickstein Shapiro law firm, former Speaker of
the House Denny Hastert. Others on the payroll include Brian Forni, a
former Democratic aide, the law firm Greenberg Traurig, and Goldin
Solutions, a media strategy firm.
A number of
public relations firms and lawyers help sponsor junkets to American
politicians and journalists to visit Turkey. Turkish Coalition of
America, a Turkish interest group that helps to sponsor the trips,
retained Brown, Lloyd and James, the lobby group that, in an ironic
twist, previously represented Assad’s wife.
Recently,
the Turkish lobby has worked to block military support to the Kurds
working to defeat ISIS.
The battle
has been over legislation that would allow President Obama to bypass
the Iraqi government in Baghdad and directly provide Iraqi Kurds with
the heavy weapons and armored vehicles needed to battle ISIS. In the
House, Reps. Ed Royce, R-Calif., and Elliot Engel, D-N.Y., the House
Foreign Affairs Committee chairman and ranking member, introduced a
bill last November, and then again in March, to provide the
administration with the appropriate authority to arm the Kurds.
David
Thompson, a former Capitol Hill staffer retained by the Turkish
government, lobbied House Republican leaders on the Royce-Engel
legislation in late 2014. The firm contacted aides to GOP leaders
Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise regarding the bill, according to the
statement filed by Thompson’s law firm, Dickstein Shapiro, with the
Justice Department in January.
Turkish
interests say they have legitimate concerns about the bill.
“Supporting a militia for money and then unleashing them into the
wild of terrorism we think is irresponsible,” said Gunay Evinch, a
longtime attorney for the Turkish government and former president of
the Assembly of Turkish American Associations.
“There are
tidal wave kind of ripple effects that could be caused just by
flooding a particular group within a broader group with heavy weapons
and it could dwarf the ISIS problem or multiply it to many types of
problems,” Evinch added. Evinch said that he was speaking only on
behalf of the ATAA board of directors, not the Turkish government. He
noted that he met with Turkish embassy officials, who said they had
supplied information to congressional intelligence officials about
the dangers of supplying Kurdish forces with weapons.
Human rights
watchdogs point out that in some areas of Iraq, Kurdish forces have
been linked with efforts to segregate Arab and Kurdish refugees.
Embassy
officials and Thompson did not respond to multiple request for
comment about the bill. The Turkish embassy later sent a fact-sheet
claiming, “Though acting with different motivations, [ISIS] and the
PKK share similar tactics and goals.”
President
Erdogan has been clear about the threat posed by Kurdish militias. “I
say to the international community that whatever price must be paid,
we will never allow the establishment of a new state on our southern
frontier in the north of Syria,” Erdogan said last month.
“Turkey
has legitimate concerns about the international and American
long-term policy towards Syria as well as in Iraq,” G. Lincoln
McCurdy, the president of the Turkish Coalition of America, said in
October. McCurdy, whose group organizes congressional junkets to
Turkey and serves as the treasurer of a pro-Turkey political action
committee, noted that he is working to improve Turkey’s image as a
member of the anti-ISIS coalition, and stressed the need to highlight
Turkey’s role as a major host country for refugees.
“We’re
in a very strong position because of the PACs,” McCurdy explained
to a gathering of Turkish American leaders and Turkish embassy
officials in March. He pointed to the strong pro-Turkey sentiment of
Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., a freshman lawmaker and a member of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee.
At the
event, Boyle took the stage, praising Turkey as “one of our best
friends, if not the best friend, in the region.” He went on to
chide his fellow lawmakers for introducing “nine anti-Turkish
resolutions,” a reference to legislation to recognize the Armenian
genocide and condemn Turkey’s efforts to restrict Internet freedom.
“This is wrong and counterproductive and bad for U.S.-Turkish
policy,” he declared. About a week after Boyle’s remarks,
McCurdy’s Turkish Coalition PAC contributed $1,000 to Boyle’s
reelection campaign.
When the
Royce-Engel bill to arm Kurds against ISIS was reintroduced this
year, most members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee signed on
as co-sponsors. Boyle was not among them. Asked why he did not sign
onto the legislation, Boyle’s spokesperson declined to comment.
Earlier this
summer, the Senate rejected a similar bill to arm the Kurds fighting
ISIS, with opponents citing White House concerns that such an effort
would sow division within Iraq’s unity government.
It’s not
the first time Washington has turned its back on the Kurds.
In 1991,
President George H.W. Bush’s public suggestion that Iraqis “take
matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator,
to step aside” encouraged a Kurdish and Shiite uprising against the
Baathist regime. But when the uprising occurred, the Bush
administration provided no support and thousands of Shiite and
Kurdish Iraqis were slaughtered by the Saddam regime.
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