Ihab bin Ali Al -Saeed - special for Al -Jazeera Net
Washington - An investigative review conducted by Al Jazeera Net of financial documents belonging to a US government agency that had previously been accused of unauthorized political funds and of fomenting social unrest in several countries revealed that this organization provides undeclared political funding to local and US organizations operating inside Turkey, including funding provided in 2020 and 2021 to create a “network of agents of change” in the country where elections next year.
A review of two documents from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) - an American foreign political funding organization operating out of Washington - showed that it provided grants and funds amounting to $2.6 million in 2021 to political activists Turks went in the form of grants to finance political and social activities inside Turkey.
The value of the grant funding ranged between 40 thousand and 720 thousand dollars per organization, and those grants and funds were provided to 9 organizations working in Turkey on political issues and affairs, despite the Turkish government's efforts to prevent this kind of undeclared foreign political funding.
The review also revealed that undisclosed funding to local political organizations in 2020 was over $2.5 million.
The document intentionally conceals the names of local Turkish organizations, apparently to preserve the security of these organizations from possible Turkish government tracking of illegal funding.
The National Endowment for Democracy had previously raised controversy for playing a pivotal role in financing secular opposition movements in Egypt and Tunisia during the Arab Spring.
The National Endowment for Democracy previously sparked controversy for playing a pivotal role in financing secular opposition movements in Arab countries (American press)
Funding "critical issues" in Turkey
One of the documents shows attempts to interfere in Turkish domestic politics by supporting political parties to influence legislative procedures.
According to the document that outlined the end of the work for the endowment for the year 2021, the organization provided an amount of 147,000 dollars to fund an “undeclared” organization for “structural reforms in key institutions and legislation in Turkey.
The document said the grant was to "strengthen the rule of law and encourage good governance and accountability by advocating structural reforms in key institutions and legislation."
"The organization will focus in particular on reforms related to legislative oversight, the executive branch, the political parties law, the electoral law, and the constitution-making process," she added.
“The grant beneficiary will conduct a series of workshops and public events, publish reports, and lead advocacy efforts that include a media campaign and outreach to target stakeholders,” she said.
In another grant, the organization provided $290,800 to an unnamed Turkish organization concerned with "defending independent media," and stated that the money was partly used to create an online platform that serves journalists and concerned citizens "in order to support and discuss independent media and the challenges facing journalists and the freedom of The press in Turkey.
Many suspect that the organization is a hidden front for the US intelligence agency (French).
While foreign media organizations receive American support through organizations such as the government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, the United States imposes severe internal restrictions on media organizations it considers linked to other countries, as the US Department of Justice in 2020 registered some news channels as a “foreign agent” and subjected them to To submit reports on its activities every 6 months.
The document referred to a third funding of $40,000 to a Turkish organization working to "support freedom of assembly and freedom of association."
According to the document, "the grant recipient will conduct targeted advocacy in cooperation with like-minded organizations and share its monitoring findings with national and international human rights organizations," the document said, saying that the grant aims to "promote and defend freedom of assembly in all seven regions of Turkey."
A fourth grant of $40,000 went to an organization that the document described as working to "promote democratic ideas and values and advance public policy debate through digital interpretive media platforms."
The document said it would "collaborate with members of Turkish academia and civil society to produce a series of informative informative videos and podcasts on critical social and political issues in Turkey."
"The grant recipient will organize online discussions on democracy-related topics of interest to young people and will regularly post text and infographic content on her Instagram account," she added.
The American Endowment for Democracy also provided larger sums to political organizations headquartered in America, which in turn distributes smaller grants to activists and political organizations working inside Turkey, including a grant of $700,000 given to the International Republican Institute to “support political dialogue and involve youth in political decision-making, The institute will conduct public opinion and policy research and present findings to the main political parties in Turkey.
The endowment document - obtained by Al Jazeera Net - added, "The Institute will continue to promote evidence-based policy discussion among high-level political party leaders, and bring together those who are professionally involved in Turkey's relationship with the West."
The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs also received $720,000 in 2021 to spend in Turkey to “support democratic practices at the local level,” where the project will help “establish effective mechanisms for participation in decision-making processes.”
It provided $600,000 in support to the Center for International Private Enterprise with the aim of "building strong networks of agents of change to protect the space for democracy." However, the document that referred to the grant in a few lines did not explain what was meant by "elements of change."
In 2020, the same center received an amount of $700,000 to fund projects “enabling independent voices to address the closure of the democratic space” in Turkey without specifying the mechanisms for this empowerment. And $300,000 in just two years.
Many countries prohibit the work of these American organizations for trying to influence the elections and internal political processes and for receiving hidden US government funding. In the Arab region, Egypt had refused to license American non-governmental organizations and warned them against falling under the law, while Washington responded by saying that these countries are trying to silence The voices of its most critical opponents.
And former US President Ronald Reagan founded the American National Endowment for Democracy in the eighties, to help America break Russian influence in the world, but accusations arose about the organization that it was a cover for intelligence activities to destabilize the host countries, and recently the endowment - which is based in Washington, DC - has become close to conservative circles. Hardliners and from the Zionist political movement, especially during the rule of President George W. Bush.
Ronald Reagan founded the American National Endowment for Democracy (Images) in the 1980s.
Although he provides his funding under names such as democracy, human rights, freedom and transparency, many countries have accused him of being behind political turmoil over several years, and that he hides the names of the recipients of the money at the same time he pays funding in order to increase transparency in the host countries.
An employee of the USAID (one of the other arms of US foreign funding) named Allen Weinstein had spoken in an interview with The Washington Post in the September 22, 1991 issue of the Waqf Organization's activities, saying that "much of what it does Today it was done secretly 25 years ago by the CIA."
The endowment organization received more than 90 million dollars from the US Congress as a budget for the year 2021, and the organization said that it spent 50 million of them on 630 projects and grants divided into 85 countries in which it worked.
accusations of sowing chaos
Independent American institutions said that the American Endowment Organization has close links in fact to American foreign policy, as the Institute for Public Policy Studies - an independent investigative research institution based in Albuquerque, New Mexico - issued a report on the history and work of the endowment in which it said that it faced accusations - for example Example- By moving groups hostile to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez even after he won a democratic referendum in August 2004.
Ministers from Venezuela also said that the endowment played a role in pushing for a military coup attempt in 2002, as it intervened in Panama in the eighties, and in Costa Rica when the endowment funded opponents of President Oscar Arias despite his Nobel Peace Prize.
In another report, the head of the National Endowment for Democracy, Karl Gershman, who heads the endowment for a long time, stated that he specializes in "the politics of sectarian conflicts since the mid-1970s."
The Institute for Public Policy Studies added that since Gershman assumed the position of head of the Waqf in the mid-1980s, he became involved in the politics of the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union.
The institute pointed out that Gershman has a long-term association with a number of the largest promoters of America’s military invasion of Iraq in 2003, such as Elliott Abrams and Frank Gaffney, all of whom belong to the neo-conservative movement, which is known to place the security and continuity of Israel in the Middle East as its most important priority, and works to perpetuate American policy by in order to serve that interest.
However, Gershman said that the allegations of his organization's links with the American intelligence agency "CIA" (CIA) are propaganda from authoritarian and dictatorial countries to prevent the spread of democracy and transparency in it, and that the National Endowment for Democracy strongly denies all these accusations, and says that it only promotes democracy, human rights and freedom. And he achieved actual successes in this regard.