Pete Session’s Occupied Cyprus Junket Bolsters Dictators, Undermines Peace

Imagine if a sitting United States congressman flew directly into Russia-occupied Donetsk at the invitation of companies strip-mining its coal, exporting its timber, and running captured Ukrainian factories into the ground. Or, if at the invitation of Chinese businessmen, he visited Filipino islands China occupies in the South China Sea in violation of international court rulings and met exclusively with local Chinese officials transplanted onto the islands while dining on fish poached from Filipino waters.

In each case, there would be outrage at the notion that a sitting representative would make an end run around longstanding American policy to puff up dictators, endorse their puppet states, and whitewash theft and conquest. Yet that is essentially what Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) did on Aug. 3 when, against State Department advice, he visited Turkey-occupied northern Cyprus on a junket sponsored by the Turkish Cypriot Chamber of Commerce.

While it is legal to visit northern Cyprus, and thousands of American tourists do every year, they do so by flying into Cyprus, getting their passport stamped by the internationally recognized Cypriot government, and then taking day trips into the Turkish-occupied zone. Such a procedure emphasizes the sovereignty of the Cypriot government rather than the pretenses of the occupation government Turkey established in the years after its invasion and land grab. It is for this reason that Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) wisely chose to cancel his foray into northern Cyprus.

Sessions, therefore, became the first American politician to eschew such norms and fly directly into the unrecognized Turkish proxy state. His trip could not have come at a worse time for peace and security. Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan is riding high after consolidating power in a deeply flawed election. He disputes the 100-year-old Lausanne Treaty that set modern Turkey’s borders and seeks to recast Turkey more as a Middle Eastern state than a European one as Turkey’s centenary nears. Erdogan also increasingly talks about taking Turkey’s half-century occupation of Cyprus to the next level by recognizing occupied Cyprus as an independent state. Whether purposely or through naivete, Sessions has become Erdogan’s useful idiot.

Why would Sessions seemingly normalize a land grab that Erdogan also threatens to extend to Greece’s Aegean islands? Why would he support the businesses of an occupied zone that knowingly, illegally, and repeatedly seeks to loot Cyprus’s offshore resources and pump them into Turkey’s treasury? Was Sessions even aware that Erdogan’s adviser and mini-me, Egemen Bagis, once threatened to use the Turkish navy against Americans working for energy companies in U.S.-recognized Cypriot waters?

Only the honorable member can explain, but perhaps the changing character of the Congressional Turkey Caucus might be to blame. Two decades ago, the Turkish embassy in Washington represented Turkey as a democracy. It understood that not every congressman, think tanker, journalist, or academic who covered Turkey would be a partisan supporter of Turkey’s ruling party. With time, however, as Erdogan consolidated dictatorial control, he insisted Turkey’s embassy treat himself as equivalent to the state. To interact with the opposition was not to express dissent in a democracy, but rather an affront to Turkey itself.

The Congressional Turkey Caucasus in theory exists to promote U.S.-Turkey ties and issues of concern to Turkish Americans. It should not exist to rubber-stamp dictatorship. Sessions would advance U.S.-Turkey ties far more productively if, rather than encouraging irredentism, a dictator’s erratic whims, and Europe’s longest occupation, he stood in solidarity with those in Washington, Brussels, Athens, Nicosia, and even Ankara who say enough is enough.

Congress has a role to play to promote peace in the Eastern Mediterranean. Alas, Sessions’s stunt was deeply irresponsible, did nothing to advance diplomacy, and was manna for expansionist dictators everywhere.