LISTEN: Ezidi Relief Fund Founder LUCY USOYAN Shares Her Account of the Violent Protest Outside the Turkish Embassy

Listen as Larry spoke with Ezidi Relief Fund Founder Lucy Usoyan regarding her account of the anti-Erdogan protest outside the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Usoyan’s account of the incident is below:

Usoyan: Yes, we were walking towards Massachusetts Avenue towards the ambassador’s house. So once we arrived we had a fairly relatively small group 10 – 15 people. We came to do peaceful protest to raise our voices to raise awareness to Erdoğan and express our feelings of what he is doing that we are not happy. We also had two little children with us. So once we arrived we heard very offensive messages and chantings and stuff like, since we had Kurds amongst us, so they were chanting like, [inaudible] ‘You have no country, we have two countries and one is Turkey one is US’. Once we heard that we began to chant ‘One USA’. So I went to the front to see how secure and safe it is because I have a feeling it’s not safe to be there since there were not many police officers. Like at that point it was only a few traffic regulators, it was about five people. And then while I was observing and I thought I had to go back and tell our team to leave because something is feeling wrong. While I was thinking that way, I saw another group marching to the main group that was in front of the house, I mean Turkish group and that was a group of around five people. They were dressed completely differently, special security officers or something like that. They were wearing like khaki t-shirts and light brown pants and I could see it was the military boots they were wearing. And they also we very clean cut. They were physically very fit and they were wearing sunglasses. So they just emerged to the group, the existing group in front of the embassy and they just ran against us and they you know, they attacked us. And next thing I know, I was on the ground. While I was on the ground I just felt someone beating me.

#Erdoğan‘ın korumaları kavgaya karıştı https://t.co/gsi1iQ68Ye #amerikaninsesi pic.twitter.com/Jv3g5E7AVA

— Amerika’nın Sesi (@VOATurkish) May 17, 2017