“Lots of people have purchased loads of summer time houses and fishing boats and put their grandkids by faculty by mendacity about Armenia and mas
“Lots of people have purchased loads of summer time houses and fishing boats and put their grandkids by faculty by mendacity about Armenia and masking up for Azerbaijan,” he mentioned.
The Armenian Nationwide Committee and one other group, the Armenian Meeting of America, tried to place strain on Mercury by holding protests exterior its workplaces in Washington and Los Angeles and urging Mercury’s shoppers to chop ties with the agency if it stored representing Turkey.
The marketing campaign had an impact. Kathryn Barger, the chairwoman of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and Hilda Solis, a supervisor and former Labor secretary within the Obama administration, wrote to Mercury on Wednesday to induce the agency “to instantly sever any enterprise ties with the Republic of Turkey.” (Mercury is a contractor to Los Angeles County, which is residence to a big Armenian inhabitants.)
California state Meeting Speaker Anthony Rendon and 16 different state lawmakers instructed Mercury on Thursday they wouldn’t have interaction with the agency so long as it represented Turkey. And the Los Angeles Neighborhood Faculty District knowledgeable Mercury that it could “start to train the 30-day termination clause” in its contract if Turkey remained a shopper.
Mercury declined to remark. The Turkish embassy didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The Armenian strain marketing campaign comes as Washington has began to show its focus towards the preventing.
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) launched a decision earlier this month condemning Azerbaijan and Turkey’s function within the battle, which has drawn 67 co-sponsors. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met individually on Friday with the Armenian International Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and Azerbaijani International Minister Jeyhun Bayramov in an effort to finish hostilities.
The trouble remembers the push to persuade Washington lobbying corporations representing Saudi Arabia’s authorities to chop ties with the dominion in 2018 after Jamal Khashoggi was murdered within the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The Washington Submit, the place Khashoggi had been a contributing opinion author, threatened to bar two lobbyists from writing columns for the paper until their corporations stopped working for Saudi Arabia.
The strain finally led 5 lobbying corporations to sever ties with the dominion.
Turkey and Azerbaijan aren’t bereft of lobbying energy now with out Mercury, which Turkey employed in January on a contract scheduled to run by the top of the yr, in keeping with a duplicate filed with the Justice Division. The agency was charged with serving to to arrange occasions that might let Turkey “join with public coverage stakeholders” and with advising the Turkish authorities on media relations.
Turkey additionally retains the lobbying corporations Capitol Counsel and Greenberg Traurig whereas Azerbaijan’s authorities retains BGR Group, in keeping with disclosure filings. The international locations’ lobbyists embody former Reps. Invoice Delahunt (D-Mass.), Charles Boustany (R-La.), Randy Forbes (R-Va.) and Albert Wynn (D-Ma.).
The Armenian authorities, in the meantime, employed former Senate Majority Chief Bob Dole final month for assist in Washington.
One other former lawmaker, former Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.) of the Livingston Group, stopped representing Azerbaijan’s authorities final week, in keeping with a disclosure submitting, though it’s unclear whether or not Livingston was truly lobbying for the nation.
Asmar Yusifzada, a spokesman for Azerbaijan’s embassy in Washington, wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO that the nation hadn’t had contact with Livingston in additional than a decade.
Livingston didn’t reply to a request for remark. Capitol Counsel and Greenberg Traurig declined to remark.
Hamparian mentioned he deliberate to ramp up strain on BGR Group now that Mercury has capitulated. However BGR may be a more durable goal: The agency mentioned in an announcement that it “intends to proceed its illustration of Azerbaijan.”