RECOMMENDED READING: ‘Erdogan’s long arm in the US: Turkish Influence Operations Among American Muslims”

Last year, the Lon­don-based Inves­tiga­tive Jour­nal released a 161-page detail­ing Turk­ish influ­ence oper­a­tions in the US writ­ten by Dr. Ahmet S. Yay­la, for­mer chief of the Turk­ish Nation­al Police Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Divi­sion. Accord­ing to the Inves­tiga­tive Journal’s descrip­tion of the report:

His report focus­es on under­stand­ing the mind­set of Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, and a look into the behind-the-scenes fund­ing of not only Turk­ish but also Amer­i­can Mus­lim non­prof­its in the Unit­ed States. The essen­tial analy­sis breaks down the strate­gic changes in Turk­ish for­eign pol­i­cy since 2011. It helps to explain Turkey’s delib­er­ate drift away from the West and NATO and rap­proche­ment with Mus­lim Broth­er­hood affil­i­ates and oth­er polit­i­cal Islamist move­ments. Pre­vi­ous­ly on a rev­e­la­to­ry episode of TIJ Talks, Dr. Yay­la explained the extent of Turkey’s sup­port of extrem­ist groups dur­ing Erdogan’s rule and revealed that he had to leave Turkey in objec­tion to Erdogan’s con­tin­u­ous nur­tur­ing of ISIS and Al Qae­da. Dr. Yay­la is cur­rent­ly work­ing as fel­low at the The Pro­gram on Extrem­ism at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. The Inves­tiga­tive Jour­nal orga­nized a con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton DC on Novem­ber 11th to launch the report and dis­cuss its find­ings dur­ing the ongo­ing Turk­ish inva­sion of Syria.

The report details sev­er­al of the activ­i­ties and his­to­ry of sev­er­al orga­ni­za­tions con­nect­ed to Turk­ish Pres­i­dent  Erdoğan and the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment oper­at­ing in the US includ­ing the Diyanet and the Turk­ish Her­itage Orga­ni­za­tion, as well as Turk­ish influ­ence with­in US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (part of the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood) groups  such as the US Coun­cil of Mus­lim Orga­ni­za­tions.

While the GIOR finds the report to con­tain much valu­able infor­ma­tion, we rec­om­mend some degree of cau­tion as there are mul­ti­ple edit­ing mis­takes as well as an over-reliance on ques­tion­able, ide­o­log­i­cal­ly right-wing sources.

Down­load the full report here.