AKP Parliamentary Committee Meets with Turkish Community in New Jersey

Turk­ish media is report­ing on a par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee from Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Erdoğan’s AKP par­ty meet­ing with mem­bers of the Turk­ish com­mu­ni­ty in New Jer­sey. Accord­ing to the Anadolu Agency report:

The AK Par­ty deputies in the USA met with Turk­ish com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Pater­son, New Jer­sey, lis­tened to their prob­lems and exchanged views. AK Par­ty Deputy Chair­man and Head of For­eign Rela­tions Bur­sa Deputy Efkan Ala, AK Par­ty Adıya­man Deputy Muhammed Fatih Toprak, Istan­bul Deputy Zafer Sırakaya, Elazığ Deputy Ömer Ser­dar and AK Par­ty USA rep­re­sen­ta­tive Halil Mut­lu attend­ed the meet­ing. Mak­ing a state­ment to AA, Efkan Ala said, “We are meet­ing with our cit­i­zens and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions in var­i­ous states of the USA. Our main goal is to lis­ten to them, take their ques­tions and eval­u­a­tions, and find solu­tions to their prob­lems.” said. [Trans­lat­ed by Google]

Read the rest here.

Accord­ing to the arti­cle, Ala said that the notes tak­en at the meet­ing would be con­veyed to Pres­i­dent Erdoğan.

Halil Mut­lu was, until recent­ly, the co-chair of the Turk­ish Amer­i­can Nation­al Steer­ing Com­mit­tee, a Turk­ish-Amer­i­can influ­ence orga­ni­za­tion. GIOR recent­ly report­ed on Mut­lu becom­ing the US rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the AKP.

The Turk­ish Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty (Turk­ish: Adalet ve Kalkın­ma Par­tisi; AKP) is the cur­rent rul­ing par­ty in Turkey led by Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The par­ty was found­ed in 2001 by politi­cians from Islamist polit­i­cal par­ties who were banned for vio­lat­ing Turkey’s sec­u­lar order, pro­claim­ing them­selves as prac­tic­ing “con­ser­v­a­tive democ­ra­cy” and reject­ing the Islamist label. The par­ty nar­row­ly sur­vived an attempt to close it via the courts for vio­lat­ing Turkey’s sec­u­lar­ism laws in con­nec­tion with its lift­ing of a ban on head­scarves at uni­ver­si­ties. The AKP sub­se­quent­ly passed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments weak­en­ing the inde­pen­dence of the mil­i­tary and judi­cia­ry. The AKP has close ties with the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and oper­ates abroad with rep­re­sen­ta­tive offices in Europe, notably in Bel­gium. It has announced its intent to open offices in oth­er west­ern countries.