| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Politix |
| The Wilson Center Honors a Turkey |
| 2010-06-17 |
| The U.S. taxpayer-funded Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, led by former Congressman Lee Hamilton, is giving out its annual award for public service Thursday, and the winner is ... Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu! Davutaoglu "personifies the attributes we seek to honor at the Woodrow Wilson Center," Hamilton said in announcing the event, adding that his "contributions have been numerous and significant." The Turkish foreign minister has been in the news a lot lately, such as when he said the Israeli incident aboard the Gaza flotilla "is like 9/11 for Turkey." He was also a key figure in the Brazilian-Turkish drive to head off new U.N. sanctions on Iran by striking an 11th-hour fuel-swap deal, an agreement the Obama administration has dismissed as inadequate and unhelpful. House Foreign Affairs Middle East subcommittee chairman Gary Ackerman, D-NY, wrote to Hamilton Wednesday to express his "deep concern and dismay" over the award to Davutoglu. "Turkey's foreign policy under Foreign Minister Davutoglu's leadership is rife with illegality, irresponsibility and hypocrisy," he wrote, citing Turkey's denial of the Armenian genocide, its occupation of northern Cyprus, Turkey's vote against new Iran sanctions, and what Ackerman described as the ongoing "demonizing" of Israel as exhibited during the flotilla crisis. "A foreign leader who represents and defends this kind of foreign policy, one who has championed Turkey's most odious efforts to deny to others the human dignity that Turkey rightly expects for its own people, is not a worthy recipient of the WWC Public Service Award," Ackerman wrote. The center was created in 1968 by an act of Congress as a private/public partnership, and U.S. taxpayers contribute about a third of the center's annual revenue |
| Posted by:charger |
| #1 U.S. taxpayers contribute about a third of the center's annual revenue STOP PAYING THIS?????? Let the private sector pay for this dribble |
| Posted by: armyguy 2010-06-17 15:21 |