The Atlantic.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan saw clashes unfold just before he entered the Turkish ambassador’s residence.
While the video’s implications are still unclear, many reporters have drawn their own conclusions on social media:
The violence began Tuesday in response to anti-Erdogan protests organized by Kurdish Americans, the Armenian National Committee of America, and supporters of the Peoples’s Democratic Party, a pro-Kurdish political party in Turkey. Hours earlier, Erdogan met with President Trump at the White House to discuss the arming of Kurdish rebels in Syria, among other issues. Witnesses say the attack broke out suddenly when Erdogan’s guards and supporters began charging at protesters. In Tuesday’s video, one protester can be seen being repeatedly kicked in the face. Lucy Usoyan, an Armenian-American activist, told VOA that protestors were chanting “Long live U.S.A., long live Kurdistan and Armenia” just before they were attacked. “I saw blood everywhere,” Usoyan told the news outlet. “For a second, I thought that I [was] not in the capital of the U.S., but in Turkey, being beaten by Erdogan supporters.”
Altercations in Washington, D.C. are not a first for Erdogan. A little over a year ago, members of his security detail were accused of manhandling and cursing at reporters outside an event at the Brookings Institution, a D.C.-based think tank. At the time, Erdogan was delivering a speech in which he referred to the protests happening outside. “They are shouting,” he said, “but they don’t know what’s going on back in Turkey.”
