Oops, they did it again. In a repeat of their scandalous behavior outside the Brookings Institution last year, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s thuggish security guards managed to literally leave a bloody mark behind the Turkish president’s lightning trip to Washington May 16, beating up protesters in the heart of the capital.

Footage of bloodied men and women wandering dazedly around Sheridan Circle just outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence, where Erdogan was holding court with assorted former US officials, think tankers and business types, has provoked widespread outrage and a sense of despair among protesters, who said they felt that Turkey’s culture of impunity had been carried to American soil.

Eyewitnesses said the brawl erupted when Erdogan’s security detail attacked protesters carrying pennants of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG), who are the United States’ top ally in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria.

Lucy Usoyan is a Yazidi-American volunteer at the Washington office of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) and also does fundraising for the Yazidi Relief Fund. She told Al-Monitor, “I was exercising my democratic rights, chanting slogans peacefully when Erdogan’s guards attacked me.” Usoyan said she fell to the ground “and they began kicking me in the head and on my back and then I lost consciousness. I can’t understand why they kept hitting me after I fell to the ground.”