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From Peace to Hit-Piece: Turkey’s New Lobbying Strategy Against Armenian Americans
By Taniel Koushakjian
FLArmenians Editor
Hit-Piece
On February 22, the Turkish Institute of Progress (TIP) retained Mercury Public Affairs, LLC to lobby on its behalf in Washington, D.C. According to the filing, Mercury will lobby specifically on “Turkish-US relations.” Two days later, Mercury’s Vice Chairman, Adam Ereli, a former U.S. Ambassador and Deputy Spokesperson at the State Department, penned a hit-piece on Armenia entitled “Putin’s Newest Satellite State,” on Forbes’ opinion page. However, Forbes originally neglected to mention the fact that Ereli’s firm is under contract with the anti-Armenian lobby group.
This is not the first time a high-priced Washington lobbyist has used the stroke of the pen to attack Armenian Americans. In 2014, Brenda Shaffer wrote a piece in the New York Times opinion page entitled “Russia’s next land grab.” The title sounds familiar. The story’s byline for Shaffer states that she “is a professor of political science at the University of Haifa and a visiting researcher at Georgetown.” However, Shaffer did not disclose her role as a paid consultant to Azerbaijan’s state-run oil company SOCAR. After the Times realized they had been duped, the editor’s rightly appended the story with the following statement: “This Op-Ed, about tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan, did not disclose that the writer has been an adviser to Azerbaijan’s state-run oil company. Like other Op-Ed contributors, the writer, Brenda Shaffer, signed a contract obliging her to disclose conflicts of interest, actual or potential. Had editors been aware of her ties to the company, they would have insisted on disclosure.”
Hours after this article was posted on the Armenian Agenda, the by line at the top was moved to the bottom and a new description was added at the top acknowledging TIP as a client of Mercury. This is the right thing to do and I hope other publications will be aware of seriousness of the issue in future.
Peace?
The Turkish Institute of Progress, a New York based Turkish lobby group is the latest player trying to prop up Turkey by putting down Armenian Americans. The group was established months prior to the centennial anniversary of the Armenian Genocide to “provide a forum for dialogue in pursuit of peace and cooperation between Turkey and the international community,” according to its website.
Instead of outright opposing Armenian Genocide recognition efforts by American human rights activists, the Turkish lobby’s genocide denial strategy shifted its approach to the issue on the centennial anniversary. TIP’s other hired public relations firm, Levick, tried to get a counter genocide resolution introduced that “focused on the next 100 years” by Rep. Curt Clawson (R-FL) who had been recruited to introduce the bill by Clawson’s predecessor, Congressman Connie Mack (R-FL), now a lobbyist for Levick.
A pushback from Clawson’s own constituency thwarted the TIP’s efforts, and the resolution, H. Res. 226, was instead introduced by Rep. Jeff Sessions (R-TX). The bill currently has two cosponsors.
I am personally aware of the Turkish government’s coordinated anti-Armenian effort with TIP, Levick, and now Mercury, as I was in Clawson’s district on April 12, 2015. I was invited to give a presentation on the Armenian Genocide at the Holocaust Museum and Education Center of Southwest Florida in Naples. Upon my arrival to the Holocaust Museum, I was shown an intimidating letter by Ozgur Kivanc Altan, Consul General of the Republic of Turkey in Miami addressed to the Holocaust Museum demanding that they cancel my presentation.
From Peace to Hit-Piece
The Turkish lobby’s strategy of genocide denial cloaked as peace has now turned to attacking the Republic of Armenia itself in order to mask Azerbaijan’s $4 billion dollar arms purchase from Russia, not to mention Azerbaijan’s gross abuse of human rights, corruption scandals, jailing of journalists, and drift away from democracy and towards authoritarian rule.
The article originally appeared in the Armenian Agenda and is available here.
Koushakjian Talks Armenia, Christian Persecution in the Middle East with Republican Presidential Candidate Marco Rubio
On Tuesday, January 12, Florida Armenians Editor Taniel Koushakjian spoke with Florida Senator and Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio in Washington, D.C. Koushakjian thanked Rubio for his cosponsorship of S. Res. 140, the Armenian Genocide resolution currently pending in the Senate.
[RELATED: How Florida Representatives Voted to on the Bill to Pause the Syrian Refugee Program]
They also discussed the plight of Christians in the Middle East and the need for the U.S. to declare Islamic State (aka ISIS or ISIL) attacks on Christians as genocide. Rubio pointed out that he is also an original cosponsor of S. Res. 340, which would label ISIS attacks on Armenians, Assyrians, Yezidis, and other religious minority groups in Iraq and Syria as genocide. ISIS “is conducting genocide against Christians, Yezidis, and others in region,” Rubio said two days later at the Republican presidential debate on Thursday, January 14.
Dr. Susan Harper to Present ‘Genocide and American Humanitarianism: Lessons from World War I and Its Aftermath’ in Sarasota
The Sarasota World Affairs Council (SWAC) will host Dr. Susan Harper for an informative presentation on the Armenian Genocide entitled ‘Genocide and American Humanitarianism: Lessons from World War I and Its Aftermath’ at New College of Florida, in Sarasota, FL. The event will take place on Tuesday, January 26 at 6:30 PM in the Sainer Auditorum.
Susan Harper is a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She was Senior Officer at The Pew Charitable Trusts, a graduate of Yale University, and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. She will discuss the role that the genocide in Armenia played in setting the precedent that has affected American response to genocide in all conflicts since World War I. The knowledge and compassion of Americans in reaction to the catastrophe in Armenia were not successful in stopping the killings, and a terrible precedent was born in 1915, which has haunted the United States and other Western countries throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
Harper has researched and presented on the Armenian Genocide for almost two decades.
During the 19th Library of Congress Vardanants Day Armenian Lecture Series at the Library of Congress last year, Dr. Harper presented “American Humanitarianism in the Armenian Crucible, 1915-1923.”
During that presentation, Harper reported her findings about physician missionaries who as part of the overall Near East Relief effort traveled to Armenia and other countries to deliver medical aid in the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide. Harper’s presentation focused on the contributions of Dr. Mabel Elliott who tended to the medical needs of refugees in Armenia, Turkey and Greece, and who authored one of the compelling accounts of the era, “Beginning Again at Ararat.”
Held on May 7, 2015 the Vardanants Day lecture coincided with the opening day of events organized by the National Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide Centennial Committee and the Ecumenical Service held at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. later that evening.
In addition, Dr. Harper previously participated in the conference organized in September, 2000 by the Armenian National Institute and the Library of Congress where she presented a paper on the missionary Mary Louise Graffam who witnessed the Armenian Genocide. Her and other presenters’ papers were published by Cambridge University Press in “America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915,” under the editorship of Dr. Jay Winter.
The Sarasota World Affairs Council lecture with Dr. Susan Harper is free for the general public, but reservations are suggested. RSVP to 941-487-4603 or info@sarasotawac.org. A reception with the speaker will follow for SWAC members.
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