Rubio should recognize Erdogan’s attack on peaceful Americans |
It’s all caught on video: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arriving at the Turkish ambassador’s residence during a 2017 visit to the United States. Across the street in Sheridan Circle, just half a mile from Dupont Circle, Americans of Kurdish, Armenian, and Turkish descent protested Turkey’s human rights abuses and its denial of the Armenian Genocide. Erdogan whispers something to the head of his detail, and his security guards, joined by a few Turkish American thugs, attack the protestors, hospitalizing several.
What transpired next was and continues to be shameful. Most of the bodyguards who participated in the assault fled back to Turkey. Not every bodyguard had diplomatic immunity. Still, the State Department not only let all of them depart the country, but neither it nor the White House made any serious effort to compel their return to face criminal charges. Nor did the first-term Trump administration seek meaningful consequences against Erdogan.
Trump must not lose the battle for the Strait........