Heads up – Embassy 4 – January 2008

Turkey – A traditional diplomat

With a diplomatic career spanning 37 years, Yigit Alpogan, Turkey’s new Ambassador to London, has experienced it all – diplomatic rows, détente and a touch of the surreal.

Returning from his first long-distance posting to Tokyo, Alpogan was sent
to Nicosia in 1974.

“I got there right after the Turkish operation. The Green Line was already there and the island was divided,” he recalls. Turkish diplomats did not travel south and, as the only mission in the north, it was a rather lonely diplomatic circuit.

He also remembers a tense posting in Athens as Greece and Turkey eyeballed each other across the Aegean; and Geneva, where at the Economic Commission for Europe, diplomats on either side of the iron curtain got a rare chance to meet up and size each other up.

Back then, he would never have predicted the Cold War would end and he would be posted as Ambassador to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, in 1995, at a time when most people would struggle to find the former soviet state on the map.

Returning to Ankara in 1998 as Director General of Bilateral Affairs and then deputy undersecretary, Turkey’s relationship with Greece dominated the next six years of his career.

Turning a row about the handover of rebel Kurdish leader Abdulla Ocalan into an opportunity, Alpogan helped steer a broad-based dialogue in which Turkey and Greece began to bury the hatchet, ending “30 wasted years” as he calls it.

By the time he was sent to Greece as Ambassador in November 2001, relations had warmed – bilateral trade was blossoming and his only headache was the endless preparations for the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Then the Ambassador made history when, as part of reforms encouraged by the EU, he was appointed the first civilian Secretary General of Turkey's all-powerful National Security Council in 2004. He used his diplomatic skills to establish contacts with his counterparts in a number of countries, including the US, Russia, Iran and France.

Now in London, the push for EU membership will be a priority, especially as Britain is Turkey’s strongest supporter for membership.

“There is impatience in Turkey about our application,” says Alpogan. “When the EU decided to start accession negotiations with Turkey in 2004 people were jubilant. Today, because of adverse reactions or negative statements coming from different quarters within the EU, public enthusiasm about joining the EU sometimes falters.”

Yet the Turkish state is still in favour of full membership – and nothing less, emphasises Alpogan. EU reforms will continue, he adds, and rejects suggestions that Turkey is turning its back on secularism.

“We totally reject the notion that Turkey is an example of a moderate Islamic democracy,” insists the Ambassador. “Turkey is a secular democracy, where 99% of the population happens to be Muslim.”