I know it’s Friday, and this brawl took place on Tuesday, but if you haven’t seen the footage then you might not understand just how violent what transpired really was.

The drama started when people gathered to protest the visit by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president who is not exactly popular with everyone back home.

He loves a little heavy-handedness, so my guess is that he won’t be too bleak with the brutal assaults that accompanied his visit.

The Guardian reports:

The first sign things could turn violent outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington came when a group of men in trim suits and slick ties approached the small group of demonstrators…

Footage from Tuesday’s protest shows extraordinary scenes of violence in the Washington sunshine. The attackers – who included members of Erdoğan’s security detail – run amok, beating and kicking protesters…

Erdoğan [watched] the melee stone-faced from the embassy driveway.

I bet he had to work really hard to stifle a massive grin.

An account from protester Ceren Borazan:

“I ran in the opposite direction from our friends and got caught by one of the security guards. He put me in a headlock to the point where he popped a blood vessel in my eye,” Borazan wrote on Facebook. “He held me and threatened to kill me.”

The Turkish Embassy taking a slightly different view:

The embassy said that the protestors were “affiliated with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party)“ and had “began aggressively provoking Turkish-American citizens who had peacefully assembled to greet the President”.

“The Turkish-Americans responded in self-defense,” the embassy said. “We hope that, in the future, appropriate measures will be taken to ensure that similar provocative actions causing harm and violence do not occur”.

Onlookers say it was actually a small, peaceful protest consisting of people who were “not an intimidating bunch”.

This isn’t the first time the president’s security forces have behaved like animals – CNN with one that gained international attention:

In May 2014, after the deadliest industrial accident in Turkish history, a top aide to Erdogan was photographed kicking a protester who was being held down by armed officers dressed in camouflage uniforms…

And why many don’t really dig his vibe:

In the 15 years that Erdogan has served as prime minister and president of Turkey, there has been a broad trend to crack down on freedom of the press and expressions of public dissent.

Turkey is frequently ranked as the world’s top jailer of journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

You know who else hates the press? Of course you do:

The Intercept below:

Casting aside his predecessor’s concerns about human rights abuses and the suppression of free speech in another nation, Donald Trump lavished praise on another autocratic foreign leader on Tuesday, calling it “a great honor to welcome the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to the White House.”

Just remember that no one has ever been treated more unfairly than Donald Trump – ever:

You couldn’t make it up.

[sources:guardian&cnn&theintercept]