On a recent afternoon in a popular cafe in Washington’s Adams Morgan neighborhood, Murat Yasa, a veteran Kurdish activist, tears up, his burly frame shaking as he recalls the orgy of violence that erupted outside the residence of the Turkish ambassador to Washington on May 16, 2017. Yasa, a 61-year-old US citizen, was among a group of Kurdish men and women who had gathered in Sheridan Circle to demonstrate against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Turkish leader was in town to meet with President Donald Trump that day and the group was peacefully protesting Turkey’s repression of their brethren with a volley of salty accusations. “Baby killer,” Yasa shouted as Erdogan’s sedan pulled into the driveway.
It wasn’t long before Yasa found himself semi-conscious in hospital along with nine other protesters after Erdogan’s bodyguards and thugs for hire set upon them. One yelled “Die Kurd” as they kicked and struck the demonstrators with discernible glee. Lucy Usoyan, a young Yazidi woman who was repeatedly hit on the head, fell unconscious, despite Yasa’s best efforts to shield her. The images captured on video and later subjected to forensic scrutiny leave no doubt as to what had transpired. “I didn’t know if I would ever see my children again,” Yasa said. “I thought I was dying.”
Nineteen months on, Yasa, who runs a floor-laying business in Virginia, suffers from dizzy spells and memory loss. His hands are unsteady. He is, he said, an altered man. But Yasa’s desire for justice is unwavering, with potentially bruising effects on Turkey’s already turbulent relationship with the United States.
In May, Yasa and a dozen and a half fellow victims filed a civil action lawsuit in US federal court against Turkey. They are demanding at least $300 million in compensation on multiple counts ranging from bodily harm to psychological trauma — including, in at least one case, damage to conjugal relations.
Prominent Washington litigator Steven Perles, who has won more than $6 billion in civil lawsuit judgments, has taken up their cause. Perles made national headlines when he helped land a $2.6 billion verdict against Iran for its alleged role in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing that killed 241 US service members and a $1.5 billion ruling against Libya for numerous bombings, hijackings and other acts of terrorism in the mid-1980s.
A wiry figure full of nervous energy, Perles sounds every bit as tenacious now as he was then. During an interview at his sprawling offices on Connecticut Avenue, Perles told Al-Monitor that the tort case against the Republic of Turkey rests on the Foreign Sovereignties Immunity Act, which stipulates seven violations for which foreign governments can be sued in US courts. “I’d love to see Turkey argue that under US law, ‘We are entitled to beat up people on the streets of Washington, DC,’” Perles said. “No dictator gets to come to my country and beat up citizens of my country on my watch. I’ll take that argument all the way to the Supreme Court.”
Turkey has breezily denied any wrongdoing, branding the protesters as “terrorists” and the actions of its security forces as “self-defense.” Its reaction to the legal case so far has been to act as if it doesn’t exist. Turkey’s toothless media, which is almost fully controlled by Erdogan’s business cronies, has followed suit. A rare mention of the affair came when Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu made a point of visiting the only two offenders to be arrested, both Turkish Americans, in their jail cell in the United States. Eyup Yildirim of New Jersey and Sinan Narin of Virginia faced a maximum of 15 years in prison for their actions, including stomping on Usoyan’s head. Hailing the pair as his “brothers,” Cavusoglu declared he brought them “love and greetings from Turkey.” Photographs of the encounter were splashed across the Turkish press. The pair walked free in late April of last year after striking a plea agreement.
In November 2017, federal prosecutors dismissed charges against seven members of Erdogan’s security detail who had been indicted by a federal grand jury that July on a slew of charges, including aggravated assault, conspiracy and hate crimes. Although the men had already left the country, the warrants seemed to carry a powerful message that foreign agents could not act with impunity on US soil. Then in February 2018, the cases against four others were quietly dropped, leaving only four guards on the hook.
Coming just before then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s first official trip to Ankara that same month, a strong whiff of diplomatic appeasement hung in the air. The Trump administration was trying to secure the release of North Carolina pastor Andrew Brunson and to calm Turkish fury over its continued support for the Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG). The militants are an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been waging a bloody fight with Ankara since 1984.
Did Armenian American’s so-called “friends” in Congress protest the dismissal of charges by the Feds against the Turkish attackers?
And what are they doing about it now?
Are they supporting this lawsuit in some way?