The US State Department has sent a strongly worded brief asking a federal appeals court to uphold a ruling that Turkey can be held liable for the assaulting of protesters that took place on the day of a White House meeting between Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan and former US president Donald Trump nearly four years ago, Law&Crime reported on March 10.

“Both the Turkish agents (along with supporters of President Erdogan) and U.S. law enforcement separated the protesters from the Ambassador’s Residence at which President Erdogan had arrived,” counsel for the Justice Department and the State Department wrote in an 18-page legal brief on March 9.

“Yet the Turkish agents ‘crossed [the] police line’ separating them from the protesters in order ‘to attack the protesters’ ‘violently,’ and they took that aggressive action without any indication […] ‘that an attack by the protesters was imminent,’ […] and without any finding by the district court of some other reasonable basis for perceiving a threat to President Erdogan,” the friend-of-the-court brief continues, summarising a federal judge’s findings of fact. “There is no basis in the district court’s account of the facts to regard the ‘attack’ by Turkish agents as protective in nature.”

Separately, Nordic Monitor, a media outlet that opposes the Erdogan regime, reported on March 11 how in 2015 a Turkish prosecutor levelled an allegation of conspiracy against White House press secretary Jen Psaki, citing her remarks about anti-government protests in Turkey as criminal evidence as he laid out the case that there was a global conspiracy against Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). 

In a phone interview, an attorney for the anti-Erdogan protesters that were assaulted in Washington described to Law&Crime the State Department’s support as the Biden administration reasserting US advocacy for human rights.

“It seems to me that this administration may be signaling politically that we are reinforcing the notions of democracy in this country, after a long time of maybe democracy being beaten up a little bit,” attorney Andreas Akaras, from the firm Bregman, Berbert, Schwartz & Gilday, LLC, told the journal.

Beseiged

On the day that Erdogan first visited the Trump White House on May 16, 2017, protesters gathered outside of the Turkish Ambassador’s Residence. They were later besieged by the Turkish leader’s security detail. Voice of America broadcasts and other viral videos captured grisly scenes of guards punching, beating and kicking demonstrators.

The melee injured 11 people.

“A few of them are still sort of intellectually in shock that this occurred in the United States,” Akaras continued. “It’s beyond anything they could imagine.”

Prosecutors brought charges against 15 Turkish security officials in relation to the events. Eleven of those cases were later dropped. But civil claims have moved forward. In February, they overcame a motion to dismiss when a federal judge ruled that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) did not shield alleged assaults on peaceful protest on US soil.

“The Turkish security forces had the discretion to protect their president,” Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee, wrote on February 6, 2020. “They even had the discretion to err, to some degree, in their determination as to the nature of force required to protect President Erdogan. However, the Turkish security forces did not have the discretion to violently physically attack the protesters, with the degree and nature of force which was used, when the protesters were standing, protesting on a public sidewalk.”

A three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit solicited the Biden administration’s views on the case, setting a March 9 deadline.

The Biden administration’s brief, signed by high-ranking attorneys with the Justice Department and State Department, without equivocation stated that the lower court’s ruling should be upheld, while stating that the FSIA’s shield of immunity only extends so far.

“The actions the Turkish agents took after the initial attack leave little doubt that they were using force for a purpose outside their proper protective function,” the brief states.

Akaras, commenting on bipartisan backing for his clients in Congress, told Law&Crime that their case transcends politics and goes to a question of values.

“So that the short of this case begs the question of drawing the boundary of saying: ‘Look, Turkey, this is a step too far. You know, you get away with this crap in your country. It’s not going to work here,'” Akaras was quoted as saying.

“There’s something special sometimes about people who immigrate because they really feel the liberties we have because they have a comparative point, right?” Akaras added. “So if you come from Turkey, and you know that you’re going to get beat up on the street, you don’t so easily go out and protest. Whereas here, though, you cherish that. You’re able to see: ‘My God!’ So my clients constantly remind me of this notion of freedom because they, in a sense, are able to breathe more freely in the U.S.”