It’s all caught on video: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arriving at the Turkish ambassador’s residence during a 2017 visit to the United States. Across the street in Sheridan Circle, just half a mile from Dupont Circle, Americans of Kurdish, Armenian, and Turkish descent protested Turkey’s human rights abuses and its denial of the Armenian Genocide. Erdogan whispers something to the head of his detail, and his security guards, joined by a few Turkish American thugs, attack the protestors, hospitalizing several.
What transpired next was and continues to be shameful. Most of the bodyguards who participated in the assault fled back to Turkey. Not every bodyguard had diplomatic immunity. Still, the State Department not only let all of them depart the country, but neither it nor the White House made any serious effort to compel their return to face criminal charges. Nor did the first-term Trump administration seek meaningful consequences against Erdogan.
Diplomats might argue that Turkey’s importance had to take priority, but much more was at stake than justice for a couple dozen American victims. By demonstrating that Erdogan could attack Americans in the heart of Washington, D.C., with impunity, the White House telegraphed to other dictators and despots from China’s Xi Jinping to Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki to Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev that they could target Americans in America. The People’s Republic of China designates certain students to spy on their peers. Eritrean diplomats talk about regime loyalists in America as a “fourth front” they use to control and extort the diaspora, not only harassing them in the United States, but also extorting them by imprisoning or threatening to harm relatives who may remain in Eritrea. Aliyev’s bodyguards replicated the Sheridan Square incident in front of the U.S. Institute of Peace during the first meeting of the Gaza Board of Peace on Feb. 19, 2026.
While Trump and President Joe Biden avoided holding Erdogan’s guards to account, Washington, D.C. lawyer Andreas Akaras would not take inaction for an answer and sued the Turkish government and its brownshirts. While the State Department dragged its feet, Akaras won at every stage, eventually triumphing at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
That is not enough. On Nov. 10, 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry allowed Turkey to place a statue of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, outside the ambassador’s residence and beside a public sidewalk. Turkey meant the statue to commemorate the 75th anniversary of his death from cirrhosis of the liver due to his alcoholism. A camera monitors the statue 24/7 to prevent vandalism or pranks.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the anti-Kerry. He puts Americans first. Accordingly, he should install a bronze plaque or historical marker next to the statue and abutting the Turkish ambassador’s residence, commemorating the attack on Sheridan Circle and Erdogan’s shameful role in it.
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Future generations of Americans and Turks should understand what happened and who triumphed: Erdogan ordered an attack on Americans to project strength and an image of impunity back home. He and all other dictators should understand Americans will not forget, and the stain on their legacy should be permanent.
As the 10th anniversary of the Sheridan Circle assault nears, Rubio should invite its victims back to witness the unveiling of a permanent memorial to an autocrat’s outrage, their triumph, and the fact that, unlike in Turkey, no one stands above the law.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.