US Turkish-Islamist Businessman’s Group Runs Pro-Turkish Nagorno-Karabakh Ad

Armen­ian-Amer­i­can media is report­ing that a US-based Turk­ish Islamist businessman’s group has spon­sored a bill­board sup­port­ing Turkey and Azer­bai­jan in the Nagorno-Karabakh con­flict. Accord­ing to the Armen­ian Mir­ror-Spec­ta­tor report:

Feb­ru­ary 13, 2021 PHILADELPHIA, Penn. (Face­book) – A bill­board recent­ly appeared on the I‑95 North free­way before the cen­tral Philadel­phia exit stat­ing “Azer­bai­ja­nis (and Turks) are ready to live in har­mo­ny with Arme­ni­ans. ‘How about Arme­ni­ans?’.” It also states “paid for by MÜSAİD USA,” which is an orga­ni­za­tion of Turk­ish-Amer­i­can busi­ness­men and industrialists.

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MÜSİAD USA is the US branch of MÜSİAD, a Turk­ish businessman’s group found­ed in 1990 which aims to cre­ate a syn­the­sis of busi­ness and Islam­ic con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues. It pro­fess­es not to be a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion yet has sup­port­ed the AKP finan­cial­ly, been sup­port­ed by Pres­i­dent Erdoğan, and MÜSİAD lead­ers have left their posi­tions to become AKP politi­cians them­selves. MÜSİAD’s lead­er­ship has includ­ed trustees of Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood orga­ni­za­tions and coor­di­nat­ed dona­tions for the 2010 Gaza Flotil­la. In addi­tion to the US, MÜSİAD has offices through­out Turkey and many in Europe. MÜSİAD USA’s cur­rent pres­i­dent is Murat Güzel, a founder of the orga­ni­za­tion and a board mem­ber at the Turk­ish Amer­i­can Nation­al Steer­ing Com­mit­tee. In Octo­ber 2020, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that he appeared on a Sep­tem­ber 2019 DNC Com­mit­tee mem­bers list.

In Novem­ber 2020, GIOR post­ed an analy­sis of the var­i­ous state actors, includ­ing Turkey, who are attempt­ing to influ­ence the glob­al per­cep­tion of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.