04-03-2009, 03:19 AM
The American-Turkish Council (ATC) was created in 1994 as the U.S.-based counterpart to the Turkish-U.S. Business Council, a "bilateral business council" that aims to foster commercial relations between the United States and Turkey. It grew out of the "consolidation of the Turkish desk of the U.S. Chamber [of Commerce] with the American Friends of Turkey." (1, 2) According to its web site, "As one of the leading business associations in the United States, the American-Turkish Council (ATC) is dedicated to effectively strengthening U.S.-Turkish relations through the promotion of commercial, defense, technology, and cultural relations. Its diverse membership includes Fortune 500, U.S. and Turkish companies, multinationals, nonprofit organizations, and individuals with an interest in U.S.-Turkish relations. Guided by member interests, ATC strives to enhance the growing ties between the United States and Turkey by initiating and facilitating efforts to increase investment and trade between the two countries." (2) According to its 2005 annual report, current ATC board members include Brent Scowcroft, the board chairman and former national security adviser for George H. W. Bush; George Perlman of Lockheed Martin; Elizabeth Avery of Pepsico; Ozer Baysal of Pfizer; Andy Button of Boeing; Richard K. Douglas of General Electric; Sherry Grandjean of Sikorsky; John R. Miller of Raytheon; and Selig A. Taubenblatt of Bechtel. ATC's advisory board also includes representatives of a number of high-powered defense, pharmaceutical, consulting, and technology firms, including General Atomics, United Defense, Motorola, and the Cohen Group. Daniel Pipes is a former ATC board member. (1, 4) Highlights After years of maintaining a surprisingly low profile-given its purportedly influential position inside the beltway-the American-Turkish Council has in recent years been the subject of growing media scrutiny as a result of allegations made by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds regarding suspect activities of council members. According to a September 2005 Vanity Fair article, Edmonds alleges that one of her FBI colleagues with close ties to the ATC routinely refused to translate conversations she was monitoring of close associates she had in the council. The FBI, which had been targeting members of the council as well as officials at the Turkish Consulate in Chicago as part of a counter-intelligence investigation, eventually fired Edmonds when she complained about her colleague's negligence, arguing that she was having a "disruptive effect" on their investigation. (5) David Rosen, author of the Vanity Fair piece, writes that some of the FBI wiretaps Edmonds had access to involved conversations among council members and Turkish officials about bribing elected officials and " contained what sounded like references to large-scale drug shipments and other crimes." One official who figured prominently in the conversations was Cong. Dennis Hastert. Rosen reports that FBI wiretap targets boasted "that they had a covert relationship with a very senior politician indeed-Dennis Hastert, Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House since 1999. The targets reportedly discussed giving Hastert tens of thousands of dollars in surreptitious payments in exchange for political favors and information." Rosen points to Hastert's about-face in 2000 regarding the then-proposed House resolution calling for recognition of the Armenian genocide in Turkey, which was mentioned in the FBI-monitored conversations. After publicly backing the resolution, Hastert abruptly withdrew his support, arguing that President Clinton was concerned it would harm U.S. interests in Turkey. More recently, in September 2005, another influential figure connected to ATC, former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, stepped in to try to block a new congressional resolution on the Armenian genocide. Writing as "Chairman of the American-Turkish Council," Scowcroft argued in a letter to Hastert: "Whatever people individually decide on the merits of these resolutions, it is important to note the real world consequences of their adoption. When the French Senate passed such a resolution, it cost France over $1 billion in cancelled contracts and lost business opportunities. Enactment of genocide language would jeopardize our ability to achieve strategic interests with Turkey and in the region. Furthermore, it is quite likely that the business interests of several of our American members would be jeopardized by passage of such prejudicial legislation. The American-Turkish Council strongly believes that the events about which H. Con. Res. 195 and H. Res. 316 speak are matters for historians to decide-not politicians. Unfortunately, these resolutions express, as matters of law and fact, issues that remain widely disputed by scholars, historians, and legal experts." (6) Some writers argue that ATC is part of a U.S. effort to maintain a tight grip on the so-called New EuroAsia, a region that includes "the 'Stans,' Ukraine, Chechnya, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Belarus, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech, Croatia, and Poland." National security blogger John Stanton, who daringly calls ATC one of the most powerful NGOs in the United States, argues that through groups like ATC, U.S. elites hope to ensure access to oil supplies and to markets for weapons and other products, reign in countries like Russia and Iran, and counter-balance the growing influence of the European Union. Pointing to the impressive corporate and policy elite membership of the ATC and similar associations (like the American-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce), Stanton claims, "Theirs is the voice that matters and is the one that is heard on television and radio networks through the mouths of news-readers, senators, congressmen, presidents, and military leaders. It is in and through such Associations that U.S. political, economic, and military policy is made and the American public subsequently 'educated' to support policies that are not, and could not, be debated in public because of their illegality, audacity, complexity, and, arguably, necessity." (7) On the other hand, while ATC and its ilk may wield considerable influence through their extraordinary membership rolls, the voice of American elites is not as monolithic as Stanton and others imply. In ATC's case, for example, its head-Scowcroft-had been attacking, as early as 2002, the idea of going to war in Iraq. But his voice, in that case at least, was not the one that mattered. (8) Funding ATC is a member-funded organization. Corporate members who gave at least $9,500 (the "Golden Horn Club") in 2004 include Bechtel, Boeing, BP, ChevronTexaco, Coca-Cola, Frito Lay, General Atomics, General Dynamics, GE, Hyatt, Lockheed Martin, Motorola, Northrop Grumman , Pepsi, Pfizer, Raytheon, Textron, United Defense, and United Technologies/Sikorsky. "Bosphorus" members, who pay an annual fee of at least $3,000, include Archer Daniels Midland, BAE Systems, Bank of America, and the Cohen Group. "Marmara" members ($750 annual fee) include Delta Airlines, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, Shell, Turkish Airlines, and Vestel Defense Industries. ATC also has a long list of non-corporate sponsors in its Marmara Club, including the American Enterprise Institute , the America-Georgia Business Development Council, the American-Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian-Turkish Business Council, the Freer Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institute, Georgetown University, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs , the Brookings Institution, the Eisenhower Institute, the Nixon Center, the U.S.-Algeria Business Council, the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce, the U.S.-Greece Business Council, the U.S.-Russia Business Council, and the University of Chicago. (1) Right Web connections # American Enterprise Institute # Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs # Northrop Grumman # Daniel Pipes Contact Information American-Turkish Council 1111 14th Street NW Washington DC 20005 Phone (202) 783-0483 Fax (202) 783-0511 Email atc@the-atc.org Web www.americanturkishcouncil.org Sources 1) American Turkish Council http://www.americanturkishcouncil.org/ 2) Turkish-U.S. Business Council http://www.turkey-now.net/?mID=1&pgID=20 (Accessed on October 9, 2005) 3) "American-Turkish Council," Source Watch: A Project of the Center for Media and Democracy http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?tit...sh_Council (Accessed on October 10, 2005) 4) "Daniel Pipes: Prophet," Lifestyles Magazine, June 2000 http://www.danielpipes.org/article/98 (Accessed on October 6, 2005) 5) David Rose, "An Inconvenient Patriot," Vanity Fair , September 2005 http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/con...0919roco03 6) September 9, 2005, letter from Brent Scowcroft to Denny Hastert criticizing proposed Armenian genocide resolution http://www.americanturkishcouncil.org/da...astert.pdf 7) John Stanton, "Inside the American Turkish Council," SmirkingChimp.com http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php...ed&order=0 8) See, for example, "Washington Goes to War" by Jim Lobe, Foreign Policy In Focus , August 20, 2002 http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0208war.html (Accessed on October 11, 2005)
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