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Turkey — Lobbying and Influence in the United States

Turkey — Lobbying and Influence in the United States

Turkey is a NATO treaty ally whose Erdoğan-era government has run aggressive, sometimes criminal, U.S. influence operations, now sharpened by a 2023–25 TURKEN-linked spending surge.

Turkey belongs in this section for a specific reason. It is a NATO treaty ally of the United States. It is also a country whose Erdoğan-era government has run aggressive, and at times criminal, U.S. influence operations. Readers need both facts on the page at once.

Why this page matters now

Turkey is a NATO member. CRS report R41368 describes a long security partnership that includes Incirlik Air Base and Article 5 commitments. The State Department frames the bilateral relationship the same way. That baseline cooperation is real and should not be mixed up with Erdoğan-era influence work.

At the same time, the government in Ankara has pressed U.S. policy in ways that go well beyond normal diplomacy. The Halkbank sanctions-evasion case is still live in the Southern District of New York. The 2016 Flynn episode remains the most visible example of a registered agent working on a Turkish-linked brief. And in 2023–2025, TURKEN-linked spending through Washington jumped sharply. Those facts make the public record worth inspecting now.

What the FARA record clearly shows

The DOJ FARA eFile system shows a long Turkish paper trail. Ballard Partners has registered work for the Embassy of the Republic of Türkiye and for Türkiye Halk Bankası (Halkbank). Mercury Public Affairs has filed on Turkish-linked briefs. The Gephardt Group filed on Turkish work in earlier years. OpenSecrets’ Turkey country page aggregates that filing history and shows a nine-figure cumulative spend over the past decade.

The 2023–2025 period stands out. Filings tied to the TURKEN Foundation, TÜRGEV, and Ensar — all linked to the Erdoğan family or close networks — show a sharp jump. Turkish Minute reported in November 2025 that TURKEN alone spent more than $48 million on U.S. lobbying in 2025, with combined TURKEN/TÜRGEV/Ensar spending near $77.5 million across 2023–2025. That is a private foundation network, not an embassy. The scale is what makes it notable.

The 2016 Flynn episode

Before he served as National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn’s firm took on a Turkish-linked contract. The Boston Globe reported in March 2017 that Flynn Intel Group received about $530,000 from Inovo BV, a Dutch firm tied to a Turkish businessman, between September and November 2016. On November 8, 2016 — Election Day — Flynn published an op-ed in The Hill attacking the cleric Fethullah Gülen, who Ankara blamed for that year’s coup attempt. Flynn Intel Group filed a retroactive FARA registration on March 8, 2017. BuzzFeed News later reported court filings that said the work was supervised by Turkish government officials.

Readers should treat the Gülen question with care. Ankara’s framing of the coup is contested. The Washington Post covered that dispute at the time. The page reports the paid-agent facts and leaves the political dispute to the sourced record.

Rafiekian and Halkbank

Flynn’s business partner Bijan Rafiekian was tried in 2019. A federal jury convicted him on charges of acting as an unregistered agent of Turkey. A federal judge later vacated the conviction, and DOJ did not retry the case. That is important. A vacated conviction is not a proven verdict. It is a prosecution that did not hold up. Readers should not cite it as settled guilt.

The Halkbank case is different. United States v. Türkiye Halk Bankası A.Ş. is a criminal prosecution in the Southern District of New York tied to alleged sanctions evasion. Ballard Partners has registered FARA work for Halkbank. The case remains in active litigation.

Where the evidence stops

This page does not claim that every Turkish diplomat runs a covert operation. It does not claim that NATO cooperation is a cover story. It does not claim that TURKEN’s 2023–2025 spending is by itself illegal. FARA is a disclosure regime. It captures a lot. It does not capture everything. And vacated convictions and acquittals are not evidence of misconduct.

The record is strong enough to support a narrower point. Turkey has maintained a sustained, professional U.S. influence footprint through more than one channel. Some of that work has crossed into criminal territory. The 2023–2025 TURKEN surge deserves the same daylight that analysts already give to Gulf spending.

The right takeaway

Turkey is a NATO ally that Washington needs to work with. It is also a country whose current government has run aggressive, and sometimes criminal, influence operations in the United States. Both things can be true. The public record supports saying so plainly, while treating acquittals and vacated convictions honestly.

Sources used on this page