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MHP labels security scuffle in NY second ‘hooding' incident
The incident took place on Tuesday as President Barack Obama was preparing to leave a panel discussion at the fifth annual Clinton Global Initiative, which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was also scheduled to attend a short time after Obama's departure.
A group of security agents and police officers converged on a corner of the tent housing Obama's limousine yelling and shouting and appeared to use force to move individuals away from the tent.
Following the incident, instead of attending the event at the Sheraton Hotel in midtown Manhattan, Erdoğan chose to return to The Plaza Hotel, where he has been staying.
The Secret Service later put forward a language barrier as the reason for the fracas, saying that the Turkish security agents accompanying Erdoğan did not heed verbal instructions to stop proceeding toward the president's limousine because of their inability to understand English, The Washington Times reported.
The Turkish government rejected the explanation on Wednesday, saying that its security agents were accompanied by a Secret Service team that was escorting them to the same hotel that Obama was leaving and that the Secret Service detail with Erdoğan brought them near the Obama limousine without telling the main US security contingent guarding the president, the daily said.
“I condemn the treatment of the prime minister. This is a second hooding incident. In response to such treatment, it would be better if the prime minister had returned to Turkey instead of returning to his hotel,” Oktay Vural, deputy chairman of the MHP'S parliamentary group, told reporters at a press conference in İzmir.
The infamous “hooding incident” occurred in a period of tense US-Turkish relations after the Turkish Parliament refused on March 1, 2003, to allow tens of thousands of US troops to use Turkey as an entry point for their military operations in Iraq. On July 4, 2003, dozens of US soldiers raided an office used by the Turkish special forces in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya and took 11 Turkish soldiers into custody over allegations that they were planning to assassinate the governor of Kirkuk. The soldiers were led out of their headquarters at gunpoint with hoods over their heads, leading the media to dub the affair the “hooding incident.” After enduring 60 hours in US military custody, the soldiers were set free following strongly worded protests from Ankara. The incident nourished anti-American sentiment in Turkey, further inflaming the public's anger over the US invasion of neighboring Iraq.
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