Update | US House of Representatives condemn security detail of Turkish president as row escalates

House Republicans and Democrats tossed aside the diplomacy usually reserved for a NATO ally and unanimously approved a measure Tuesday that underscored their fury over attacks by the Turkish president’s bodyguards against peaceful protesters.

Lawmakers voted 397-0 to pass a resolution that condemned the clash in Washington last month and called for the members of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s security detail who were involved in the melee to be brought to justice. More than 30 House members didn’t cast votes.

Representative Ed Royce of California, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, called the violence an “act of suppression on American soil” and an affront to the First Amendment rights of US citizens. Yet the conduct of Erdogan’s armed bodyguards has gone largely unchallenged, said Royce, who sponsored the resolution.

House Speaker Paul Ryan had demanded that Erdogan and other Turkish leaders condemn and apologise for the “brutal behaviour against innocent civilians exercising their First Amendment rights.”

Pressure also has been mounting on the Trump administration not to let the violence on US soil go unpunished. A bipartisan group of senators also had urged Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to order the Turkish government to waive any claims to immunity for the bodyguards.

If the Turkish government won’t agree, Tillerson should revoke the diplomatic credentials of Serdar Kilic, Turkey’s ambassador, and rescind visas for other unspecified Turkish government officials, according to the lawmakers, led by Senator Claire McCaskill.

But Turkey pushed back, taking offence at the mounting criticism.