Group linked to Turkish unrest subsidized Ohio lawmaker's trips

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer

COLUMBUS - More than 150 state legislators from around the country, including Ohio's speaker and three other current and former lawmakers, accepted subsidized junkets from a Turkish opposition group that the country’s government now blames for an attempted coup.

State lawmakers who rarely get involved in foreign policy matters were courted with international trips. In Ohio, Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, R-Clarksville; Sen. Bob Peterson, R-Sabina; and former Rep. Peter Beck, R-Mason, traveled to Turkey in December 2011 for an eight-day trip, which included visiting farms to discuss livestock trade and sightseeing excursions to Istanbul. Former Rep. Tracy Heard, D-Columbus, took a separate trip to Turkey that year.

The invitations came from a group associated with a powerful religious movement that recently fell out with the government in Turkey, a pivotal U.S. ally that serves as the gateway to the Middle East. Though followers of the movement deny having supported the failed coup, Turkey has asked the United States to extradite its leader, Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive Islamic cleric who lives in a compound in the woods of Pennsylvania.

The Center for Public Integrity documented the extent of the trips nationally. In Ohio, a group called the Niagara Foundation paid $1,540 to $2,006 for each Ohio lawmaker’s trip, which the legislators disclosed on ethics forms. “It was related to trying to get more livestock exchange, so a very policy-based trip,” said Rosenberger spokesman Brad Miller.

Read more: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2017/02/09/gulen-group-linked-to-turkey-coup-attempt-subsidized-ohio-lawmaker-trips/97691248/