When Turkey’s Volkan Bozkir steps down as President, United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) this month, completing his one-year term, he will leave behind a controversial legacy that would be forgettable, except that it may set some bad precedents.
Presidentship of the UNGA is one of the highest positions a diplomat of any nation can aspire to occupy. It is prestigious and carries loads of responsibility of carrying 200 odd nations along. But Mr Bozkir has erred on more than one occasion. He earned the epitaph of being “representative of Turkey.”
It is natural for a diplomat to speak for his country for which he/she is also trained. But once an international post is taken, and that too, at the UN, these impulses have to be tampered. Mr Bozkir did not always do that.
Critics in diplomatic circles say that he became a part of President Erdogen’s charmed circle and an extension of the Turkish Foreign office the way he went about his task. In some UN circles in New York, the speculation was that either he was in complete awe of Erdogen, or expected another big post or both.
For one, he became part of Erdogen’s campaign to pitch Turkey as a rival of Saudi Arabia and other key OIC member-nations. Jury is out on Turkey’s own role in dividing the Muslim ummah when the Middle East is on fire and Palestine is baring Israel’s onslaught.
Erdogen developed friendship of convenience with Pakistan who would go to any extent to get someone to talk on his country’s one obsession, India and Kashmir. This was after he had visited India and well-received. Like Erdogen who has been to Pakistan four times in the last few years, Bozkir, too, visited twice. An ecstatic Pakistan prompted him and he made a controversial remark about Pakistan being “duty bound” to speak on the Kashmir issue. And when India hit back hard, he scampered to say that his remark had been “taken out of context.” He did not deny the letter and spirit, though.
Erdogen has been vocal on Kashmir, not just to please Pakistan, but to spite Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The two Gulf nations have cold-shouldered Pakistan’s Kashmir pitch because they do not want to harm relations with India that, they think, has acted within its own norms and territory when it annulled the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and along with Ladakh, created three union territories to be ruled directly from New Delhi.
This has taken the wind out of the Pakistani sails and has made it act in a manner that annoyed the Gulf nations to the extent that the Saudis demanded back one billion dollars they had loaned Pakistan.
So lop-sided is Pak-Turkey campaign that compares Kashmir with Palestine, while the latter never speaks on Kashmir and maintains cordial ties with India.
Another angle for Erdogen-Bozkir is the growing relationship with China. The Turkey-China-Pakistan circuit want to work unitedly in Afghanistan as the US withdraws from there.
Bozkir has gamely spoken on issues like genocide and corruption on both of which, he drew applause from Khan who has jeopardized relationships with the Gulf region that largely stands with Saudi Arabia.
Bozkir has also spoken in terms that annoyed Bosnia, Cyprus and Armenia. He has been partisan wherever Muslims’ interests are involved, forgetting that the high UN office he holds requires him to be neutral.
Bozkir, along with UNSG Antonio Getteres chaired the May 5 meeting of the “Interactive Dialogue to commemorate and promote International Day of Multilaterlism and Diplomacy of Peace. His remarks angered among others, the Armenians and Cypriots.
Armenia protested saying: “There are several problems with Mr. Bozkir’s statement. First of all, he responded to Armenia’s remarks more like a Turkish diplomat than as President of the General Assembly, in violation of the norms of his UN position.”
Armenia’s UN Ambassador Mher Margaryan submitted on May 10, 2021, a letter to the UN Secretary General, to be circulated as an official UN document, expressing concern that Mr. Bozkir was “misusing” the May 5 meeting to deliver “an irrelevant, unsolicited interpretation” of the Genocide Convention. Amb. Margaryan stated that Mr. Bozkir’s “misplaced remarks… must be seen in the context of the official politics of denying the occurrence of the genocide of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire consistently promoted by the government of Turkey, as demonstrated by the fact that Mr. Bozkir’s remarks came to be immediately publicized by the state-run news agencies of that country framed in support of the official denialist narrative. Clearly, Mr. Bozkir’s actions are incompatible with the Code of Ethics for the President of the General Assembly.”
Foreseeing Mr. Bozkir’s conflicting allegiances, the Permanent Representatives of Armenia and Cyprus at the UN, Mher Margaryan and Andreas Mavroyiannis, sent a joint letter on June 2, 2020, to the UN Secretary General objecting to Bozkir’s nomination to his current post.
The joint letter, circulated to all UN member states, reminded them that Mr. Bozkir had assured the UN: “(a) to represent solely the Office to which he is elected, based on the Charter of the United Nations and the body of resolutions, decisions, rules and practices that will bind him as President of the General Assembly; and (b) to treat all Member States equally, upholding the spirit of multilateralism and the rules-based international order, at the core of which is the United Nations.”
Ambassadors Margaryan and Mavroyiannis pointed out that Turkey, the country nominating Mr. Bozkir, “threatens peace and security in its entire region by consistently violating the Charter of the United Nations and international law, including United Nations sanctions regimes, in order to realize its aspirations for regional domination. It does so by displaying a pattern of aggressive behavior towards its neighboring countries, encroaching on their territory, undermining their sovereignty and territorial integrity, questioning their sovereign rights and instrumentalizing the plight of refugees and migrants for political ends. By imposing and sustaining an illegal land blockade on Armenia for almost three decades, Turkey effectively impedes the transit through and access to the sea of the neighboring landlocked country.
“Turkey’s persistent policies of denying and attacking the memory and the dignity of the victims of the genocide committed in the Ottoman Empire 105 years ago continue to pose a security threat for Armenia and the wider region. Turkey invaded Cyprus and has continued to occupy more than a third of its territory for almost 50 years; continues to deny its very existence by insisting on not recognizing it, having unilaterally proclaimed an illegal, secessionist entity in the area that it occupies, which it tries to oppose the sole legitimate Government, despite the clear condemnation of its actions by the Security Council; is responsible for egregious violations of human rights in Cyprus, which it continues to deny despite being condemned by the European Court of Human Rights; and continues to violate Cyprus’ sovereignty and sovereign rights on land, sea and air on a daily basis. It is for these reasons that our delegations object to the election of Mr. Bozkir by silence procedure and request that the election of the President of the General Assembly at its seventy-fifth session be held by secret ballot.”
“Despite his UN position, Mr. Bozkir is acting as the representative of Turkey. Forgetting his commitments to the UN, Mr. Bozkir had a ‘Pavlovian’ response to the mention of the Armenian Genocide by Armenia’s representative. It is important to note that he has denied the Armenian Genocide several times while serving as a Turkish diplomat.
“On May 5, 2021, Mr. Bozkir parroted the oft-repeated Turkish line that “the crime of genocide needs to be determined by a competent judicial body.” He was indirectly reacting to Pres. Biden’s recent acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide. First of all, the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey) was the first country to hold court-martial trials regarding the Armenian massacres (the term genocide was not yet coined) in Istanbul, in 1919-1920, sentencing to death the masterminds of the Armenian mass killings. Secondly, Pres. Biden along with the US Congress and over 30 Parliaments around the world have acknowledged the Armenian Genocide, not as a legal judgment, but as a political affirmation of the crime of genocide.
By claiming that “genocide needs to be determined by an appropriate judicial body,” Mr. Bozkir is ignoring UN’s own records. For example, the UN War Crimes Commission prepared a lengthy report in 1948, accusing the Turkish Government of committing the Armenian massacres. The UN report described these massacres as “crimes against humanity,” which cover “inhumane acts committed by a government against its own subjects. Mr. Bozkir is also ignoring the fact that the UN Sub-commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities adopted a report in 1985 in which the Armenian Genocide was mentioned as an example of genocide. I was present at that session and spoke in support of the UN report.
“Since the Genocide Convention was adopted by the UN, its acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide is an authoritative statement.”
The Armenians and Cypriot diplomats ended their protest letter on this note of disgust:
“Fortunately, Bozkir’s one-year term at the UN will be over in a few months. By acting as a spokesman for Turkey, he is trying to secure another Turkish diplomatic post as he will soon be out of his current job.”
