The State Department on Wednesday criticized an attack by Turkish security officials against protesters outside Turkey’s embassy in Washington, D.C.
“Violence is never an appropriate response to free speech, and we support the rights of people everywhere to free expression and peaceful protest,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Wednesday. “We are communicating our concern to the Turkish government in the strongest possible terms.”
The protest and violence that followed coincided with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to the White House on Tuesday. Several Senate lawmakers asked Trump to rebuke Erdogan for cracking down on dissidents in his home country, but the president focused on potential for cooperation in counterterrorism efforts — a diplomatic approach a time of unusual tension between the United States and Turkey.
Erdogan’s increasingly-authoritarian behavior inspired a small protest outside the embassy, however, that Turkish security officials scattered violently. “Yesterday afternoon, we witnessed what appeared to be a brutal attack on peaceful protesters at the Turkish ambassador’s residence,” Washington, D.C., police chief Peter Newsham told reporters Wednesday.
That’s consistent with the “continuing erosion of human rights” that Senate lawmakers criticized in their letter to the president ahead of his Erdogan meeting.
“Erdogan and his allies have mounted an assault on the rule of law, particularly using sweeping state of emergency authorities to stifle fundamental rights including free speech, undermine the independence of the judiciary, and quash any opposition to their undemocratic actions,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., wrote in a letter signed by 17 senators. “They have thrown thousands of Turks in jail, including dozens of journalists, and left many of their citizens and even Americans in Turkey, fearful for their own futures.”
Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain issued his own sharp rebuke. “This is the United States of America,” he tweeted. “We do not do this here. There is no excuse for this kind of thuggish behavior.”
