{"id":19986,"date":"2010-06-22T16:18:18","date_gmt":"2010-06-22T14:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=19986"},"modified":"2023-07-25T15:02:22","modified_gmt":"2023-07-25T12:02:22","slug":"turkeys-hollow-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2010\/06\/22\/turkeys-hollow-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey’s Hollow Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pic\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Freedom’s Edge<\/h2>\n

Turkey’s Hollow Prize<\/h1>\n

Clau<\/span><\/cite>dia Rosett<\/span><\/cite>, 06.18.10, 11:21 AM EDT<\/p>\n

Washington’s Woodrow Wilson Center dishonors its own public service award.<\/h2>\n

Canada Free Press
\nJune 19 2010<\/p>\n

By Claudia Rosett Friday, June 18, 2010
\n– Forbes<\/p>\n

It’s time Congress pulled the plug on Washington’s taxpayer-subsidized
\nWoodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, which has turned
\nitself into a global joke. With Turkey’s leaders coquetting as the new
\nbest bedfellows of Iran and embracing the terrorists of Hamas, the
\nWilson Center has just bestowed its `Public Service’ award on Turkey’s
\nforeign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu.<\/p>\n

In tandem with rewarding Davutoglu for catalyzing `the development of
\nTurkey’s foreign relations,’ the Wilson Center also honored a Turkish
\nbusiness tycoon, Ferit Sahenk, with its Woodrow Wilson Award for
\nCorporate Citizenship. The two winners received their prizes at a
\nbanquet held Thursday evening at the plush Four Seasons Hotel in
\nIstanbul.<\/p>\n

In a June 8 press release the Wilson Center’s president, former
\ncongressman Lee Hamilton, explained that Davutoglu and Sahenk had been
\nchosen because `These two leaders personify the attributes we seek to
\nhonor at the Woodrow Wilson Center.’ I mean no insult to Sahenk’whose
\nprizeworthy business skills I don’t question’but it’s hard to escape
\nthe conclusion that the chief attributes the Wilson Center has just
\nsought to honor in Istanbul are antagonism toward American values
\n(Davutoglu) and enormous amounts of money (Sahenk).<\/p>\n

Created in 1968 by an act of Congress, the Wilson Center describes
\nitself on its website as a `nonpartisan institute,’ a `living,
\nnational memorial’ to President Woodrow Wilson, charged with
\n`symbolizing and strengthening the fruitful relations between the
\nworld of learning and the world of public affairs.’ Functioning as a
\n`public-private partnership,’ the Wilson Center in recent times has
\nbeen receiving roughly one-third of its yearly operating funds from
\nthe U.S. government (in other words, from U.S. taxpayers). Thus
\ncredentialed by Congress and anchored in federal subsidies, it
\nattracts the rest of its money from a global array of public and
\nprivate sources. Its current annual expenses are budgeted at more than
\n$37.3 million.<\/p>\n

Housed on prime real estate, just blocks from the White House, the
\nWilson Center occupies, ironically enough, a lavishly appointed
\neight-story wing of the Ronald Reagan International Trade Building. It
\nhas a big vestibule with polished granite and marble floors, some of
\nWilson’s words chiseled in stone, and multiple levels of roomy offices
\nand meeting rooms, ample armchairs, a cafeteria and a private library.
\nAll this is supposed to serve the Center’s aim `to shed the light of
\nthe timeless on the timely.’<\/p>\n

>From this perch, with atrocious timing, the Wilson Center last August
\ninvited Davutoglu to receive its public service award this June, `in
\nrecognition of his lifelong service to the Turkish public.’<\/p>\n

This is a bizarre spin on Davutoglu’s major role in steering the
\nTurkish state away from its former democratic allies such as the U.S.
\nand Israel and toward its current collaboration with the tyrannies of
\nSyria and Iran, and the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hamas. Author of
\na treatise titled `Strategic Depth,’ proposing a sweeping rethink of
\nTurkish policy, Davutoglu has been a core player in Turkey’s
\nincreasingly anti-Western slant since Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
\nErdogan and his Islamic AK Party won power in 2002. In May 2009
\nDavutoglu became foreign minister. Since then, Turkey’s shift toward
\nIran has achieved warp speed.<\/p>\n

In recent weeks Turkey’s leaders have backed a flotilla led by a
\nterror-linked Turkish foundation, IHH, aiming to break Israel’s
\nblockade against weapons reaching Iranian-backed terrorists in Gaza.
\nLast month Turkey tried to deflect new sanctions on Iran, partnering
\nin Tehran on a farcical uranium swap proposal with Brazil’s President
\nLuiz Inacio Lula da Silva (winner last year of the Wilson Public
\nService award) and Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (candidate for
\nnext year’s Wilson award?). This month, in the United Nations Security
\nCouncil, Turkey, along with Brazil, spurned the U.S. and voted against
\nnew sanctions on Iran.<\/p>\n

In all this Davutoglu has been a prime player, at one point likening
\nthe deaths of eight weapons-wielding Turkish `peace activists’ in the
\nterror-linked Gaza flotilla to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that
\nkilled thousands of innocents in the U.S.<\/p>\n

These were just some of the offenses cited by Rep. Gary Ackerman (D.,
\nN.Y.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South
\nAsia, in a June 15 letter urging Lee Hamilton to rescind the Wilson
\nCenter award to Davutoglu. Describing Turkey’s foreign policy under
\nDavutoglu as `rife with illegality, irresponsibility and hypocrisy,’
\nAckerman highlighted Turkey’s continuing denial of the 1915 Armenian
\ngenocide and its current backing for both the genocidal regime in
\nSudan and the Holocaust-denying regime in Iran.<\/p>\n

Apparently that’s all OK with the Wilson Center, where `our
\nnonpartisan work’ seems headed these days toward the global surrender
\nof any principles whatsoever. A press officer there explained in an
\nemail this week that `Awardees are not chosen for their political
\nviews.’<\/p>\n

But it seems they are sometimes chosen for their fundraising
\npotential. On that score, the spokeswoman in the same e-mail wrote
\nthat `These Awards Dinners have been critical for helping to raise
\nsome of the funding the Wilson Center needs.’ She continued, `In 2009,
\nthe Center identified Istanbul as an international city where a
\nfundraising event of this kind would be viable.’<\/p>\n

Davutoglu’s co-honoree in Istanbul Thursday evening, Ferit Sahenk,
\nhappens to be one of the wealthiest men in Turkey. Head of the Dogus
\nHolding business conglomerate founded by his father, Sahenk shows up
\non the Forbes list of World Billionaires with a net worth of $2.1
\nbillion.<\/p>\n

With the Wilson Center giving Sahenk its Award for Corporate
\nCitizenship, have Sahenk or any of his Turkish cohorts pledged money
\nto the Wilson Center? When I asked that question of the Center on
\nThursday afternoon, apparently no one could say , despite 12
\n`development’ workers listed on the staff. I was passed along to
\nanother spokeswoman, who said she would look into it, but `People have
\nto jump through hoops to get this information.’<\/p>\n

The way the Wilson Center puts it, Congress has been urging them `to
\nraise more funding from private sources.’ Another way of looking at
\nit, however, is that with Congress continuing to pour in money, the
\nWilson Center has been able to leverage its congressionally created
\nand subsidized status into an ability to raise additional tens of
\nmillions all over the map’but to keep growing, it wants yet more.
\nAmong the top donors listed in the Center’s 2008-09 annual report,
\nchipping in amounts for that period ranging from $100,000 to $2.5
\nmillion apiece, are several that are themselves funded by U.S. tax
\ndollars. These include the U.S. Agency for International Development,
\nthe U.S. State Department and the United Nations Development Program
\n(which receives hundreds of millions annually from the U.S.
\ngovernment).<\/p>\n

Other top donors include: George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the
\nCarnegie Corporation of New York, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Exxon
\nMobil Corporation, the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the
\nEmbassy of Mexico, Brazil’s Grupo EBX , South Korea’s LG Electronics,
\nthe Fellowship Fund for Pakistan and `Anonymous.’ United Airlines is
\nlisted as `The Official and Exclusive Airline Sponsor of the Woodrow
\nWilson Awards and the Woodrow Wilson Center.’<\/p>\n

Now comes the Davutoglu award, with its message that the Wilson Center
\nin bestowing its favors is willing to treat even the most flagrantly
\nanti-American views (and deeds) as irrelevant, while collecting money
\naround the globe. Why should Congress keep fueling this morally blank,
\nmisleading and venal exercise with millions of American tax dollars?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Freedom’s Edge Turkey’s Hollow Prize Claudia Rosett, 06.18.10, 11:21 AM EDT Washington’s Woodrow Wilson Center dishonors its own public service award. Canada Free Press June 19 2010 By Claudia Rosett Friday, June 18, 2010 – Forbes It’s time Congress pulled the plug on Washington’s taxpayer-subsidized Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, which has turned itself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":22047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2317,145,997,1571,78,1099,151,120,204,1153],"class_list":["post-19986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenian-question","tag-genocide-resolution","tag-barack-obama","tag-davos","tag-ahmet-davutoglu","tag-ergenekon","tag-ethocide","tag-genocide","tag-gulen","tag-nagorno-karabakh","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}