Armenian Reporter:

Defense contractors join Turkish lobbying effort in pursuit of arms deals

Published: Wednesday September 16, 2009

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The Defense Department's request last week for congressional approval of the sale of $8 billion worth of PAC-3 missiles to Turkey was the latest victory for a disparate group of interests including defense contractors, finance and energy corporations, trade groups, the Turkish government, and a well-financed network of domestic advocacy groups. Intersecting interests have led them to join forces and lobby on a number of issues, including the characterization of distant historical events.

Turkey and the domestic advocacy groups that promote the interests of Turkish-Americans did so to protect the Turkey's image, while U.S. companies sought to bolster their own bottom lines. The efforts appear to have been successful for all the parties.

The Turkish government has consistently lavished millions each year on well-connected Washington lobbying firms - including those employing former House leaders - which contacted offices of the lower chamber 1,468 times, according to an analysis of data from Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker of disclosures filed in 2008 by firms under the Foreign Agent Registration Act - nearly twice that of the second-highest country, Libya.

Turkey's efforts have now been augmented by a domestic effort launched by a Turkish-American entrepreneur. Yalcin Ayasli founded Hittite Microwave in 1985 as a one-man company with a grant from the U.S. Air Force, and built the electronics company into a firm worth $1.2 billion, with half of its products sold overseas, according to a company presentation. The company had $180 million in revenue in 2008, according to SEC filings.

Since 2004 Hittite Microwave has received roughly $30 million in contracts directly from the government - mostly to sponsor research and development - and has also done business with Lockheed Martin and other prime contractors, many of whom use Hittite electronics in their jets and other equipment, sold to both the U.S. military and Turkey.

The Turkish Coalition of America

In 2007 Ayasli transferred $30 million in stock to fund a new endeavor, the nonprofit Turkish Coalition of America. The organization is headquartered in a Washington suite that has also been listed as the address for the Turkish Coalition USA PAC, the lobbying firm of Lydia Borland (who has represented the Turkish government), and the law firm of Bruce Fein and Associates. (Bruce Fein comprises half of the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund).

The family of Hittite founder Ayaslin contributed nearly half a million dollars to federal politics in 2007-2008, donating near the maximum amount to the House campaign committees for both parties, but largely neglecting the Senate.

TCA is headed by Lincoln McCurdy, who served as a U.S. diplomat in Istanbul from 1980 to 1984, and also functions as treasurer of the political action committee; he draws an additional retainer as Ayasli's "personal advisor" on "political matters," in his own words. From 1989 to 2004, McCurdy led the American Turkish Council, a lobbying organization funded by membership dues from defense and energy companies with an interest in Turkey, and whose executive ranks include Borland.

In addition to the advocacy done through the ATC (which also funds trips to Turkey for congressional staff), a handful of its members - Citigroup, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, Chevron, Textron, United Technologies, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, which spent a combined $80 million lobbying Washington last year - lobbied Congress directly on the genocide resolution and other issues important to Turkey; the Aerospace Industries Association, a trade group, helped coordinate the effort.

A matter of historical record

For Turkey and its allies, perception has been everything when it comes to the nearly century-old killings that left more than a million Armenians dead as the Ottoman Empire collapsed. The country has lobbied House and Senate and the executive branch to oppose congressional resolutions to label the incidents genocide, and funded academic programs that bolster the country's image and downplay the role of the government in the killings.

Those programs include the Institute for Turkish Studies at Georgetown University, which received an initial $3 million disbursement from Turkey in 1982 and continues to draw annual financial support from the government, and is chaired by Nabi Sensoy, Turkey's ambassador to the United States. In 2006, a board member, Donald Quataert, resigned from the institute, claiming that after he acknowledged in an academic review that the Armenian killings met the definition of genocide, Sensoy told him Turkish authorities had threatened to revoke the institute's funding. Sensoy disputed the allegations. [See Lou Ann Matossian's story, "Institute of Turkish Studies chair was ousted for acknowledging Genocide" (Armenian Reporter, May 31, 2008) and her investigative report, "Politics, scholarship, and the Armenian Genocide" (Armenian Reporter, July 19, 2008. -Editor]

The Turkish American Legal Defense Fund, financed by TCA, aggressively pursues those who threaten the country's reputation, including suing the Southern Poverty Law Center and David Holthouse, a journalist who prepared a report for the nonprofit, for upward of $8 million on behalf of an academic. In that case, the Foreign Agents Registration Act is at issue. Holthouse suggested that, as part of a group of professors who have enjoyed endowed positions at universities financed directly by the government of Turkey and who have expressed views on the killings outside of the academic mainstream, he was acting as a foreign agent. If true, the academic would be required to file detailed disclosures with the U.S. Justice Department.

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