Türkiye’s freshly appointed Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Friday named ambassadors to nine missions worldwide, including one to Moscow and one to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
Tanju Bilgiç, the spokesperson for the Turkish Foreign Ministry and General Manager of Information, has been assigned to the Russian capital, taking over the post from Mehmet Samsar who had been representing Ankara in Moscow since 2019.
Bilgiç, 51, is the author of two books on the use of foreign policy in human rights. He previously served as branch manager and department head at Türkiye’s Foreign Ministry offices in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and Greece in 2011 and 2014.
Bilgiç was also Türkiye’s ambassador to Belgrade between 2016 and 2021.
For its Algeria Embassy, Türkiye assigned assistant professor Mücahit Küçükyılmaz, who has been serving as the deputy chair of Türkiye’s Press Bulletin Authority since February 2022.
Küçükyılmaz, 45, helmed the Presidential Corporate Communication Directorate in 2015 and served as presidential advisor to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan since 2019.
Fidan also named a new ambassador for the Paris mission: Yunus Demirer, who held the same post in the Slovenian capital Bratislava since 2021, as well as Saudi Arabia between 2013 and 2017 and Iraq between 2011 and 2013.
Meanwhile, Rauf Alp Denktaş, the grandchild of TRNC’s first president Rauf Denktaş, became the new Turkish representative to Warsaw, the Polish capital.
Denktaş is a high-profile figure, both due to his lineage and several top posts he held over the past two decades. He joined Türkiye’s Foreign Ministry in 2001 and served in various foreign offices since then, including as spokesperson at the Turkish Embassy in Washington D.C. and the assistant general manager at the Multilateral Economic Affairs Department in Ankara.
Additionally, Ankara introduced new envoys to Paraguay, Ukraine, Morocco and Spain. Yavuz Gül became the new ambassador to Paraguay’s Asuncion, while Mustafa İlker Kılıç was assigned to Morocco, and Mustafa Levent Bilgen to Kyiv.
Nüket Küçükel, the only woman in the bunch who also held posts in several foreign offices for Türkiye, was appointed as theaAmbassador to Madrid, as Nevzat Uyanık was appointed as Türkiye's permanent representative for the International Civil Aviation Organization.
