Turkey has nominated a serious candidate for the top United Nations post, one which Feridun Sinirlioglu must not be allowed to hold. Selecting a Turkish U.N. secretary-general would transform the U.N. into a puppet show for Turkey’s authoritarian regime led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Given Ankara’s flagrant violations of international law, appointing Sinirlioglu would be an insult to the rules-based international order.
The U.N. was founded in 1945 and consists of 193 member states. Its mission is to maintain international peace and security, provide humanitarian assistance to those in need, protect human rights, and uphold international law. As the U.N.’s chief administrative officer, the secretary-general represents the organization’s values and serves as a voice for all humanity, particularly the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations. The position therefore demands unwavering independence, impartiality, and a commitment to upholding the principles of the U.N. Charter.
This is not the job for a Turkish candidate, who has represented and defended Ankara’s indefensible views on the world stage for decades.
On Friday, Turkey nominated Sinirlioglu, the eighth secretary general of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, appointed in December 2024. He briefly served as Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2015. Before that, he built a long and distinguished career as a diplomat in Turkey’s foreign ministry.
In short, he has played a significant role in representing Ankara’s policies and priorities, raising questions about his ability to maintain the independence expected of a U.N. secretary-general. While Turkey has faced multiple criticisms over its domestic and foreign policy, Sinirlioglu has never publicly distanced himself from Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party policies and has instead represented the government in several important diplomatic roles.
One key policy area is Cyprus. Turkey invaded the island in 1974 and, in 1984, declared the territory it occupies as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, an entity which only Turkey recognizes. As an employee of the Turkish foreign ministry, Sinirlioglu has helped uphold one of the biggest violations of national sovereignty, something the U.N. Security Council has denounced numerous times. As U.N. chief, there is sufficient alarmism to suspect that Sinirlioglu would push a policy agenda over Cyprus: the formal recognition of the TRNC, which would be a big win for Erdogan, and a major loss for international law.
Another issue is Sinirlioglu’s support of other states that violate international law. As OSCE chief, he has called Russia an “important partner” and thanked Moscow’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, for engaging in a “frank and productive” conversation about the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Defenders of the rules-based order should not be enabling states which violate national borders and terrorize innocent people, a principle which Sinirlioglu has chosen to ignore.
As Turkey’s U.N. ambassador, Sinirlioglu also played a pivotal role in Ankara’s effort to redraw the boundaries of the Eastern Mediterranean, illegally and unilaterally. In letters to the U.N. secretary-general between July 2021 and 2022, he argued that Greece’s sovereignty over these islands depended on keeping them demilitarized under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty. Greece rejected the claim as legally baseless, warning it threatened regional peace and stability. To be clear, Turkey has refused to sign the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and instead is seeking to expand its maritime borders at the expense of Greece, Cyprus, and possibly other countries along the Mediterranean littoral under its “Blue Homeland” doctrine. As the U.N. chief, how can Sinirlioglu be expected to uphold established maritime law when he has devoted his career to undermining it?
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Finally, Sinirlioglu’s close association with the Turkish government’s policies also raises questions about the value he ascribes to human rights. In 2021, Turkey withdrew from the Istanbul Convention, an international agreement aimed at preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence signed by 45 European countries. The Turkish government terminated the convention despite widespread societal and international criticism. By any measure, Erdogan’s governance of Turkey since 2003 has been characterized by devastating blows to the rule of law, freedom of expression, and citizens’ rights, something on which, once again, Sinirlioglu has had nothing to say.
As a senior diplomat, Sinirlioglu certainly has a resume that makes him qualified to hold the top U.N. job, but that is necessary but not sufficient. He has also represented a country which consistently and proudly violates established international norms, laws, and practices. A representative of the Erdogan regime has no business running the U.N.
Sinan Ciddi is a senior fellow and director of the Turkey program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, where Helin Unal is a research fellow.