Who is Feridun Sinirlioglu, Turkey’s candidate for UN chief?
The Turkish president's confidant enters the race for UN chief with decades of diplomatic experience marked by both praise and scrutiny.
ANKARA — Feridun Sinirlioglu, Turkey’s candidate for UN secretary-general and a close confidant of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, enters the deadlocked race with nearly 45 years in diplomacy, including more than a decade at the United Nations and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe that has drawn both praise and scrutiny.
Turkey formally nominated the veteran diplomat, who currently heads the OSCE, late on Friday. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Saturday that Ankara put forward Sinirlioglu after the selection process stalled, despite initially holding back out of respect for expectations that the next UN chief would come from Latin America, whose candidates include frontrunner Rebeca Grynspan of Costa Rica. In the UN’s informal practice of regional rotation, Latin America and the Caribbean last held the post through Peru’s Javier Perez de Cuellar, who served from 1982 to 1991.
Sinirlioglu’s nomination followed Friday’s inconclusive Security Council straw poll, in which Grynspan led with 11 votes followed by Argentina’s Rafael Grossi with nine, Guyana’s Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett with eight and the UAE’s Lana Nusseibeh with seven, according to Reuters.
“Our goal is to provide a diplomatic contribution aimed at overcoming the impasse,” Fidan told journalists on the sidelines of a G20 foreign ministers meeting in Atlanta.
