US says Erdogan’s bodyguards behind brutal attack on Kurdish protesters

US says Erdogan’s bodyguards behind brutal attack on Kurdish protesters

Posted on May 18, 2017

WASHINGTON,— The US State Department has confirmed that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s security detail was behind the brutal attack on Kurdish protesters in Washington, DC on Tuesday. Police believe “there could be a diplomatic immunity issue.”

A brawl broke out in front of the Turkish embassy in DC on Tuesday between Erdogan’s bodyguards and Kurdish protesters.

US officials say that the men captured on camera assaulting the protesters were bodyguards of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The men allegedly had accompanied the controversial Turkish leader as part of his official retinue during his visit to the United States.

The US is communicating its concern to the Turkish government “in the strongest possible terms,” the State Department said in a statement about the attack.

Twelve people were injured after protests outside of the Turkish ambassador’s residence, DC Police Chief Peter Newsham announced in a press conference. One of those injured was a police officer, while all nine people hospitalized have been released. Two arrests have been made in connection to the attack, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

According to Newsham, “there could be a diplomatic immunity issue.”

The video depicted counter-demonstrators in dark suits descending on the protesters, some from the direction of the embassy.

“It was a pretty aggressive assault by people who were very well prepared. I think they were security or bodyguards or part of that contingent that traveled with President Erdogan,” said Aran Hamparian, the executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, who took the now widely-circulated video.

​”They think they can engage in the same sort of suppression of protest and free speech that they engage in in Turkey,” said Flint Arthur, one of the protesters. “They stopped us for a few minutes… but we still stayed and continued to protest Erdogan’s tyrannical regime.”

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser called the fighting a “violent attack on a peaceful demonstration” and an “affront to DC values and our rights as Americans.”

“I strongly condemn these actions and have been briefed by Chief Newsham on our response,” she said in a statement. “The Metropolitan Police Department will continue investigating the incident and will work with federal partners to ensure justice is served.”

Reports say scuffles broke out on two separate occasions, at first instigated by a supporter of Erdogan wearing yellow, who allegedly pushed a woman down during an argument. Shortly thereafter, a brawl broke out but was disrupted by the DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).

When Erdogan’s presidential security detail arrived, police had the Turkish nationalists and Kurdish protesters separated. Clashes again broke out after a man wearing a suit broke through the MPD’s cordon and attacked a Kurdish man. After police lost control, a multitude of pro-Erdogan protesters rushed their opponents.

“Yesterday, we witnessed what appeared to be a brutal attack on peaceful protesters,” Newsham said, adding that some of the pro-Erdogan group had firearms on them, compounding the difficulty faced by MPD officers.

Turkey’s Anadolu state news agency reports that Erdogan’s guards rushed in to disperse the protest because MPD “did not heed Turkish demands to intervene.”

While the MPD is powerless to arrest or detain members of Erdogan’s security detail due to agreements such as diplomatic immunity, they can be charged for those crimes, allowing officers to arrest them should they return to the United States in an unofficial capacity. The president also has the power to ban them entirely.

RT spoke with Ruken Isik, a Ph D student studying the Kurdish women’s movement in Turkey and Syria at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and a mother of two.

“I was able to grab my 4-year-old son, tucked him under my arm and ran away,” Isik said. “They could not grab me but grabbed my female friend.”

“In the US, you’d never, never expect to be attacked by Turkish President Erdogan’s security guards. And we were there, it was a peaceful protest, suddenly they attacked us,” Isik told RT. “These security guards already left the country and we are shocked because we were attacked on American soil. The US police could not protect us because the security guards were so violent. They were even attacking the American police.”

Isik went on to say that woman and the elderly seemed to be the first targets in the attack.

“We’ve been protesting in DC for a long time. You can ask the secret service, the DC police, they all know us. We are peaceful protesters,” she added.

Isik told RT that one of the woman attacked in the incident, whom she spoke with on the phone, was interviewed by the police and Secret Service, and has been talking to her lawyer about opening a lawsuit.

Though under a different US administration, Erdogan’s last visit to Washington, DC was also not without incident. Last year, Erdogan’s security officers fought with journalists as he delivered a speech praising democracy in Turkey. They physically removed one journalist from the audience and threw a female reporter to the sidewalk.

The same year, Erdogan was heckled by female protesters in Ecuador, leading to their violent expulsion.

In 2011, Erdogan’s security detail brawled with United Nations security officials, which ended in one being sent to the hospital in New York City.

The Turkish Embassy in DC accused the protesters of belonging to groups affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is a US-designated terrorist organization based in Turkey and Iraq.

Isik, a self-described activist, told RT that she was protesting due to the imprisonment of journalists, academics, and leaders of the Turkey’s Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the third largest parliamentary party in Turkey.

Since July 2015, Turkey initiated a controversial military campaign against the PKK in the country’s southeastern Kurdish region after Ankara ended a two-year ceasefire agreement. Since the beginning of the campaign, Ankara has imposed several round-the-clock curfews, preventing Kurdish civilians from fleeing regions where the military operations are being conducted.

The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population. Nearly 40,000 people have been killed in the resulting conflict since then.

In March 2017, the Turkish security forces accused by UN of committing serious abuses during operations against Kurdish militants in the nation’s southeast.

Observers say the crackdown has taken a heavy toll on the Kurdish civilian population and accuse Turkey of using collective punishment against the minority. Activists have accused the security forces of causing huge destruction to urban centres and killing Kurdish civilians.

In November 2016, HDP’s co-leader Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, have been imprisoned in Turkey along with 11 other HDP lawmakers on accusations of links to Kurdish separatists of PKK who have waged an insurgency against the Turkish state.

The government accuses the HDP of having links to the PKK, a charge that the HDP denies.

Thousands of officials from the HDP have been detained since 2015.

http://ekurd.net/erdogan-bodyguards-attack-kurdish-2017-05-18