[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 180 (Tuesday, November 12, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6492-S6494]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Turkey and Syria

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I start by thanking the Democratic 
leader for his leadership in raising those important issues before the 
Senate this afternoon.
  I bring another issue before the Senate, that being my strong 
opposition to President Trump's shameful decision to invite Turkish 
President Erdogan to the White House tomorrow. It is a decision that 
has alarmed our allies and comforted our adversaries. It is a decision 
that undermines our values and our national security interests, and it 
is a decision that sends a terrible message to the world about how to 
get invited to President Trump's White House.
  In just the last 5 weeks, Turkish President Erdogan has taken the 
following actions: No. 1, he has launched an attack on a key ally of 
ours--in fact, the key ally--in our fight against ISIS terrorists, that 
being the Syrian Democratic Forces, led by the Syrian Kurds. No. 2, 
President Erdogan and his forces have killed over 200 in these attacks, 
displaced over 300,000, and enabled the release of over 100 ISIS 
prisoners. No. 3, Erdogan is using jihadi proxies that include a lot of 
al-Qaida elements, and they are committing gross human rights abuses, 
including what the Trump administration has acknowledged as being war 
crimes. There are also reports that the Turkish-backed proxy forces are 
using the chemical agent white phosphorus. No. 4, Erdogan and his 
forces have violated the so-called safe zone agreement that was reached 
by Vice President Pence in Ankara a few weeks ago. After President 
Erdogan entered into that agreement with Vice President Pence, which 
has been violated, he turned around and decided to cut a separate deal 
with Putin and Russia, thereby giving Russia even more leverage than it 
already had in Syria.
  In addition, Erdogan boasted that he organized a hit squad to 
assassinate the top commander of our Syrian Kurdish allies, General 
Mazloum. President Erdogan did that even after President Trump 
acknowledged that our Syrian Kurdish allies had given us important 
information that had helped us to kill ISIS leader Baghdadi. In fact, 
Erdogan has compared the military leader of our Syrian Kurdish allies--
those who bore the brunt of the fight against ISIS--with the ISIS 
leader whom we just killed, Baghdadi. President Erdogan did all of that 
in just the last 5 weeks.
  What did President Trump do?
  Instead of calling upon the House and the Senate to pass the economic 
sanctions bill that had been introduced, he rewarded Erdogan for all of 
those actions with a coveted White House meeting.
  That is not the way we should be treating somebody who has just spent 
the last 5 weeks thumbing his nose at the United States, undermining 
our interests, endangering our allies, strengthening Russia, Assad, and 
Iran, and increasing threats to our ally Israel.
  It sends a terrible message to the world: Go ahead and undermine the 
national security interests of the United States, and the President of 
the United States will invite you over for dinner.
  I have teamed up with Senator Graham and others on a bipartisan 
basis, and I want to thank the Presiding Officer for her support on 
that sanctions legislation to hold Turkey accountable.
  Here is what Senator Graham said about President Erdogan just 3 weeks 
ago: ``If you want to get Erdogan's attention, you have to treat him 
like the thug he is.'' That is Senator Graham speaking. Yet Erdogan, 
time and again over the last 5 weeks and before, has essentially spit 
in the eye of the United States, and now he is coming to Washington for 
a White House meeting. This is very difficult to explain. I am not sure 
any of us has the answer as to why President Trump is doing this.
  The Washington Post had an article on October 17 headlined ``In 
Turkey's President, Trump seems to have found a soul mate.'' If you 
read through the article, you can see that President Trump does seem to 
have an affinity for President Erdogan of Turkey, and clearly President 
Erdogan likes to get on the phone with President Trump because whenever 
he does, President Erdogan seems to get his way.
  Now he will come for a face-to-face meeting, and I am sure President 
Erdogan expects to get his way again. Why would he think that? Well, 
because the last time they talked, President Erdogan clearly took away 
from the conversation that it was just fine with President Trump if 
Turkey attacked our Syrian Kurdish allies. President Erdogan clearly 
believed he had the green light. In fact, after they hung up from that 
phone call, President Erdogan sent his forces and used proxy forces to 
attack our Syrian Kurdish allies, and President Trump tweeted that we 
were withdrawing some of our Special Forces from the area--Special 
Forces that had helped deter Turkish aggression against our Syrian 
Kurdish allies.
  It is very rare for retired senior military leaders in the United 
States to criticize a sitting Commander in Chief, but the betrayal of 
our Syrian Kurdish allies and the terrible message that sent around the 
world about the unreliability of the United States compelled many of 
those former leaders to warn about the consequences. I think it is 
important for the Senate to hear some comments from people who are 
respected for what they have done for our country.
  ADM William McRaven, former commander of the U.S. Special Operations 
Command, who worked with our Syrian

[[Page S6493]]

Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS, said: ``He's''--referring to 
President Trump--``obviously left our allies the Kurds on the 
battlefield. . . . We feel like we've betrayed them. He's undermined 
our NATO allies . . . the international community has lost faith in 
America.'' That is from Admiral McRaven.
  GEN Joseph Votel, former commander of U.S. Central Command and also 
somebody who has personal experience working alongside our Syrian 
Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS, said: ``This policy 
abandonment threatens to undo five years' worth of fighting against 
ISIS and will severely damage American credibility and reliability in 
any future fights where we need strong allies.''
  General Petraeus, former commander of U.S. Central Command and former 
commander of NATO's mission in Afghanistan and in Iraq, said: ``Well, I 
think we have abandoned our Syrian Kurdish partners. They took over 
10,000 losses as the defeat of the Islamic State was carried out.''
  Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of Defense under President Trump 
and former commander of U.S. Central Command, said: ``In this case, if 
we don't keep the pressure on, then ISIS will resurge.''
  Secretary Mattis made it clear that by abandoning our Syrian Kurdish 
allies, we gave more oxygen to ISIS. In fact, we learned over the 
weekend that ISIS was claiming responsibility for the murder of an 
Armenian Catholic priest and his son. Their funeral services are today.
  Another former high-level U.S. military commander who has spoken is 
ADM James Stavridis. He is the former commander of U.S. European 
Command and NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. Here is what he 
had to say: ``This is heart-rending for anybody who has shed blood, who 
has deployed forward. . . . I'm getting so many inputs from all around 
the military . . . they know how this hurts at a very personal level. . 
. . It's not only the betrayal of the Kurds, it is the way it is going 
to allow those embers on the floor of the forest fire that we thought 
were out to kind of re-flash.'' He is saying, in other words, giving 
more oxygen to the ISIS embers that we were working toward 
extinguishing.
  Gen. John Allen, former commander of NATO International Security 
Assistance Force and U.S. Forces--Afghanistan, was even blunter: 
``There is blood on Trump's hands for abandoning our Kurdish allies.''
  Those are from former top U.S. military leaders, patriots who fought 
with our Syrian Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS.
  There is also a statement from Brett McGurk. So who is Brett McGurk? 
Brett McGurk was the Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to 
Counter ISIS. He had that position under the previous President and for 
President Trump for a time. Here is what Brett McGurk had to say: 
``I've worked for three presidents and participated in a number of 
foreign leader calls. I cannot recall a President that seems to 
believe--and then parrots--whatever a foreign leader tells him on the 
phone. Such information is often false, intended to influence more than 
inform.'' Yet what we saw was that when President Trump hung up on that 
phone call with President Erdogan, he essentially green-lighted that 
operation. That is why President Erdogan likes to get President Trump 
on the phone directly or talk to him directly, which he is going to get 
a chance to do tomorrow.
  Probably the most damning of all the comments I have heard--and this 
was not unique, but it was unique in the way it was characterized--came 
from the mother of a cadet at the Naval Academy. What was interesting 
is that she has been a loyal supporter of President Trump. She 
supported him, she voted for him, and she stuck with him, but after the 
betrayal of our Syrian Kurdish allies, she said that she no longer 
could trust him and that she worried that her son at the Naval Academy 
would essentially be left to the whims of a Commander in Chief whom she 
could no longer trust. That was all before President Trump invited 
President Erdogan to the White House.

  What we should be doing is passing tough economic sanctions. What we 
should be doing is holding Turkey and President Erdogan accountable for 
undermining our security and helping to give new oxygen to ISIS. That 
is why the House of Representatives passed a bipartisan sanctions bill 
by a whopping veto-proof vote of 403 to 16. That is why Senator Graham 
and I have introduced bipartisan sanctions legislation in the U.S. 
Senate, which has more than 14 bipartisan cosponsors and growing. I do 
want to thank the Presiding Officer for her efforts to hold President 
Erdogan accountable with this legislation. There is also other 
legislation introduced by Senator Menendez and Senator Risch.
  Here is what I know: The most important thing is that this body, the 
Senate, should act right now. We have the House bill sitting at the 
desk. We have the bill introduced by Senator Graham and me sitting at 
the desk. Right now we should just pass those sanctions bills and send 
a message to President Erdogan that while he may be going to the White 
House tomorrow, he does not have support in the Congress.
  I have talked about Erdogan's actions for the last 5 weeks. I would 
like to take us back 5 years from the period we are in right now. In 
the fall of that year, mid-September 2014, ISIS terrorist forces were 
encircling the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani. Kobani is a town on the 
Syrian side of the Turkey-Syria border. ISIS was laying siege to that 
town. They had already taken a lot of the surrounding villages, and 
they were closing in on this last Syrian Kurdish stronghold.
  The Syrian Kurds were totally outnumbered by ISIS, and the Syrian 
Kurds asked the United States for help. It took us a little longer than 
it should have--took us weeks, not days--but we agreed to help supply 
our Syrian Kurdish allies with weapons and equipment in the fight 
against ISIS.
  We asked Turkey if they would help us supply weapons to the Syrian 
Kurds because Kobani is right there on the Syria-Turkey border. Turkey 
refused. President Erdogan said no. So the United States, at greater 
risk to our own forces, had to airdrop weapons and supplies into Iraq 
from U.S. aircraft, and with that help, our Syrian Kurdish forces were 
able to stop ISIS from taking over Kobani and began to push them out 
and, again with our help, primarily from the air, pushed them out. In 
that fight over the last 5 years, the Syrian Kurds have lost over 
11,000 men and women, soldiers and others. That is what they have lost 
in the fight with us against ISIS.
  Turkey, on the other hand, not only did not lift a finger in that 
fight, but for the past 5 years and even more the years before, they 
turned a blind eye to ISIS fighters transiting through Turkey, so ISIS 
was growing stronger as a result of their negligence.
  I want to close by responding to those who say: Well, you know what, 
Turkey is a NATO ally, and so we should invite President Erdogan over 
to the White House.
  I see on the floor my friend and colleague, Senator Durbin from 
Illinois, and he, along with myself and others, has made this point 
repeatedly. We would like Turkey to be a strong NATO ally. Over the 
years of NATO alliance, they have in the past been a good partner, but 
under President Erdogan's leadership, they have taken Turkey in a very 
different direction.
  The issue is not whether the United States wants Turkey to be a 
member of NATO; the question is, Does Turkey really want to stay in the 
alliance? Because everything they have done shows they are violating 
the values and principles of our alliance.
  President Erdogan decided to purchase the Russian-made S-400 anti-
aircraft system against our strong objection. This is a system that 
would have put our F-35 pilots at risk and undermined NATO security. 
President Erdogan said he didn't care. He went ahead with the S-400 
purchase, and those S-400s are sitting in Turkey right now.
  He was willing to work with Russia, Iran, Assad to undermine our 
interests in the area. We have talked today about how he attacked our 
Syrian Kurdish allies. He has repeatedly threatened the European 
Parliament, European Union, with releasing refugees if they do not 
cooperate with him and don't turn a blind eye to the fact that he has 
locked up more journalists than any other country on earth, including 
Iran, Egypt, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia.

[[Page S6494]]

  So, Madam President, the fact that the President of the United States 
has invited Erdogan to the White House, after everything Erdogan has 
done to undermine our values and security, is a shame on the United 
States. It will undermine our national security interests. It has 
already alarmed our allies and heartened our adversaries.
  It is important that all of us--all of us in this House and Senate--
on a bipartisan basis, speak out--as we have been doing--against the 
shameful chapter in our American foreign policy and national security.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The gentleman from Iowa is recognized.