A pro-Kurdish advocacy group has hired its first lobbying firm to urge the Biden administration and the new Congress to keep the Kurds a priority when dealing with Middle East policy, lobbying news website Foreign Lobby Report said this week.
New York-based nonprofit Justice for Kurds hired law firm Covington & Burlington “advocate for policies promoting the interests of the Kurdish people,” who are spread across several Middle East countries including Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran, Foreign Lobby Report said.
Justice for Kurds (JFK) is a not-for-profit advocacy group that seeks to educate and raise public awareness for the Kurdish cause, politics, history, culture and societies in America and abroad, the advocacy group said in its website.
Senior Counsel, Stephen Rademaker from the law firm Covington & Burling, a former assistant secretary of State under President George W. Bush, spoke over the job definition. “I think now that we have a new administration, there’s opportunity to hopefully correct some of that and make sure that the traditional US support for the Kurdish people throughout the region continues”, Rademaker told Foreign Lobby Report. “It’s very hard to find a Republican or a Democrat in Washington that has anything but good things to say about the Kurds”, he added. Lobbying on the account is also former House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the same report said.
A Franco-American initiative, Justice for Kurds was established in 2017 by celebrity French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and American billionaire investor and Electrum Group chairman Thomas Kaplan. Its bipartisan advisory council has more than 100 prominent members.
Justice for Kurds’ lobbying hire comes as Turkey’s state-owned Defence Industry Technologies (SSTEK) has hired Washington-based law firm Arnold & Porter for lobbying efforts to get back into the F-35 stealth jet fighter programme, lobbying news website Foreign Lobby Report said on Thursday.
https://ahvalnews.com/kurdish-lobbying/kurdish-advocacy-group-lobbies-biden-reboot-syrian-kurds
