In line with the government’s efforts to thaw the ice between the state and ethnic and religious minorities, Davutoğlu planned to appoint a Turkish-Armenian as the country’s permanent representative to a leading international organization, officials confirmed on Tuesday.
World Bulletin / News Desk
In line with the government’s efforts to thaw the ice between the state and ethnic and religious minorities, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu planned to appoint a Turkish-Armenian as the country’s permanent representative to a leading international organization, officials confirmed on Tuesday.
However, because the academic Davutoğlu had in mind prefers to continue his career in academia, the planned appointment did not take place, a senior diplomat told Cihan news agency.
Had he accepted, the academic would have been appointed Turkey’s permanent representative to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the same diplomat said.
Davutoğlu himself already disclosed his intention on Saturday in İstanbul at a closed session of the Wilton Park conference on “Turkey’s policies of engagement in the contemporary world,” the diplomat confirmed, while noting that the minister did not, however, disclose the name of the academic he planned to appoint.
“We don’t solely want to continue our efforts for normalization with Armenia, but we also want to launch a new opening to our citizens of Armenian ancestry. Accordingly, we wanted to appoint an Armenian as envoy to the OECD. However, he did not accept the proposal because he is busy with his academic research,” the diplomat quoted Davutoğlu as saying at the conference.
The Armenian AZG daily, meanwhile, cited an anonymous senior Turkish Foreign Ministry official as saying that the academic was likely to be Doran Acemoğlu, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Acemoğlu, born in İstanbul in 1967, is among the 10 most cited economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc and was in 88th place on Foreign Policy’s list of the 100 Top Global Thinkers of 2010.
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