After brawl between Turkish security personnel and protesters near the ambassador’s Washington residence, senator says US should eject envoy

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The US senator John McCain has called for Turkey’s ambassador to the US to be removed from the country following a brawl outside his Washington DC residence this week.

A bloody fight erupted between Turkish security personnel and protesters on Tuesday during Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s visit to Washington.

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Video released on Thursday by Voice of America’s Turkish service appeared to show Erdoğan watching the melee from the embassy driveway.

“We should throw their ambassador the hell out of the United States of America,” McCain said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

He went on to call for a diplomatic response from the US, and said the government should press charges against Turkish officials involved in the brawl.

“These are not just average people that did this beating. This is Erdoğan’s security detail,” said McCain. “Somebody told them to go and beat up on these peaceful demonstrators, and I think it should have repercussions, including identifying these people and bringing charges against them.

“After all, they violated American laws in the United States of America, so you cannot have that happen in the United States of America. People have the right in our country to peacefully demonstrate and they were peacefully demonstrating.”

The incident came amid lingering tensions between the two Nato allies over the role of Kurdish fighters in the campaign against Islamic State.

Turkey has criticised the US’s decision to directly arm the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria, which the Turkish government has long argued is a terrorist outfit affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK).

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On Thursday, the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, called for the removal of Brett McGurk, the US diplomat coordinating the international coalition fighting the Islamic State group. “Brett McGurk is definitely giving support to the PKK and YPG. It would be useful if this person was replaced,” Çavuşoğlu told NTV television.

Last week, Erdoğan called the US decision to arm Kurdish militants in Syria a “threat to Turkey”. But the US said this move was necessary to recapture Raqqa.

Erdoğan’s meeting with Trump this week in Washington DC was meant to ease tense relations between the allies, but Ankara’s attempts to get the US to end its support for the YPG were rebuffed.

Relations have been further complicated by the brawl, which erupted between a small group of anti-Erdoğan protesters and the Turkish government’s security officials outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington DC on the day of the meeting.

Video of the incident showed men in suits and with earpieces punching and kicking at anti-government protesters. DC’s Metropolitan police chief, Peter Newsham, said on Wednesday that police had a good idea of most of the assailants’ identities, which they were investigating with the state department and Secret Service.

The US state department said it was “concerned by the violent incidents involving protesters and Turkish security personnel” in a statement on Wednesday. “Violence is never an appropriate response to free speech, and we support the rights of people everywhere to free expression and peaceful protest,” the statement said.

The Turkish embassy said late Wednesday that the protesters were “affiliated with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party)“ and had begun “aggressively provoking Turkish American citizens who had peacefully assembled to greet the president”.

“The Turkish Americans responded in self-defense,” the embassy said. “We hope that, in the future, appropriate measures will be taken to ensure that similar provocative actions causing harm and violence do not occur.”

In a letter on Wednesday, the House committee on foreign affairs asked the US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, to bring criminal charges against the perpetrators of the attacks.

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“Alarmingly, this behavior is indicative of the broad crackdowns on political activists, journalists and religious freedom in Turkey that have greatly harmed Turkish democracy in recent years,” the letter said. “To send a clear message that these acts of violence will not be tolerated, I ask that you immediately look into this matter and bring all appropriate criminal charges before these individuals leave the United States.”

Erdoğan has overseen a crackdown on thousands of members of the press, civil service and academia following an attempted coup in 2016, though Trump did not mention this during his visit.

Later on Thursday, McCain, a Republican, and senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, wrote a letter to Erdoğan expressing their “grave concern” about the protest violence.

“The violent response of your security detail to peaceful protesters is wholly unacceptable and, unfortunately, reflective of your government’s treatment of the press, ethnic minority groups and political opponents,” the letter said.

They condemned his staff for violating US constitutional freedoms of assembly and of the press and urged Erdoğan “to hold accountable those members of your staff who violently attacked peaceful protesters in our nation’s capital”.