I’m at a cocktail reception in Ankara, and right beside me is our Ambassador to Ankara, Namık Korhan!
The first subject Mr. Korhan and I discussed was the “appointment crisis.”
The Appointment Crisis:
As you may recall, the appointment of Namık Korhan to Ankara had caused a crisis between Turkey and the TRNC: The TRNC Ministry of Foreign Affairs had proposed Undersecretary Namık Korhan for the post of ambassador to Ankara. However, our President, Mehmet Ali Talat, had not approved the Foreign Ministry’s appointment decree. As a result, the TRNC Embassy in Ankara had been downgraded to chargé d’affaires level for quite some time.
Hasan Erçakıca, the TRNC Presidential Spokesperson at the time, described the prolonged dispute between the TRNC Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Presidency in a statement: “There has been insufficient consultation regarding the appointment of the Ambassador to Ankara. The government is expected to address this shortcoming.”
At the end of this process, Namık Korhan was finally appointed to the TRNC Embassy in Ankara, the TRNC’s only embassy, and the crisis came to an end.
The crisis had come to an end!
But what was the atmosphere in Ankara like during the crisis?
I put this question to Namık Korhan at the reception.
Mr. Korhan’s answer was simple but sufficient.
“Of course, it wasn’t a pleasant situation! The reaction at the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs was apparent in the early days.”
The reaction was inevitable!
After all, for months, the TRNC’s only embassy had gone without an ambassador because of the dispute between the TRNC Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Presidency; Talat was not approving the Foreign Ministry’s list on the grounds that the appointment had been made without consulting him, and this was bringing a crisis in its wake.
And now there is another crisis, with the same offices once again as the actors!
On one side is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and on the other is the Presidency.
With the negotiation process in Cyprus gaining serious momentum(!), there is no doubt about the importance of the President’s visit to Ankara!
This means that the government will have no say in the decisions made during these high-level visits, which no government representative has attended!
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Hüseyin Özgürgün, explaining why he did not travel to Ankara with President Mehmet Ali Talat, said, “There is no crisis,” and stated yesterday that he could not take part in the visit because he had not been consulted beforehand and had a busy schedule.
As I noted above, Mr. Erçakıca explained the reason for the appointment crisis by saying, “There has been insufficient consultation regarding the appointment of the Ambassador to Ankara. The government is expected to address this shortcoming.” Now, because of the same lack of consultation, there is a “crisis over non-attendance.”
It seems that the “government addressing the shortcoming in consultation” that Mr. Erçakıca spoke of months ago has still not come to pass!
Given that the government has changed, I think the Presidency needs to take significant steps on “consultation” and address this shortcoming.
Otherwise, this “lack of consultation” between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Presidency seems likely to cause many more crises.
In other words, unfortunately, this latest incident will be “neither the first nor the last!”
Until Friday, I hope…
Pay attention to your surroundings, keep them clean, and please be courteous in traffic!