The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the world’s largest regional security organization, agreed Friday on former Turkish diplomat Feridun Sinirlioğlu, a close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as its next secretary-general, after a meeting in Malta marred by outrage over Russia’s participation, Agence France-Presse reported.
The 57-nation OSCE has been paralyzed since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and has been without a secretary general since September.
Ian Borg, Malta’s foreign minister, told reporters the OSCE faced “fundamental geopolitical divisions and institutional paralysis.”
He said the agreement on a new secretary-general and three other top posts had been “no easy feat” but hailed it as proof that members could come together.
Borg did not rule out a deal on the budget — which has not been agreed since 2021 — by the end of the year.
Sinirlioğlu, who has served as foreign minister and as Turkey’s ambassador to Israel and the United Nations, said he hoped to act as “a bridge and a facilitator” between participating states.
Taking over the post from Germany’s Helga Maria Schmid, he also called on Russia to release three OSCE officials held in Russian-controlled Ukraine since 2022.
The Malta meeting was dominated by criticism of Russia, represented by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, on his first trip to a European Union country since the invasion.
Ukraine boycotted last year’s OSCE meeting in North Macedonia over Lavrov’s presence.
Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga was present in Malta, but he and several allies walked out during Lavrov’s address.
Poland has led calls for Russia to be excluded from the OSCE, but Borg said it was vital to keep talking.
“I’d rather have the other … [members] telling Russia at the same table to stop this war,” he said.
“It’s easy to discuss and agree among friends,” he added, but it was important also, “especially with the backdrop of raging wars, to engage with those who started and can stop the war immediately.”
Malta took the 2025 chairmanship at the last minute after Russia blocked NATO member Estonia.
Finland, which joined NATO last year, is chair for 2025.
The OSCE was founded in 1975 to ease East-West tensions during the Cold War, and now counts members from the United States to Mongolia.
It helps coordinate issues such as human rights and arms control, but Moscow has accused the group of being politicized by the EU and NATO.
A career filled with controversy
Sinirlioğlu, who was the permanent representative of Turkey to the United Nations from 2016 to 2023, also briefly served as Turkey’s foreign minister in an interim government from August 2015 to November 2015. He is known as a close ally of Erdoğan, whose name has been associated with many controversies including one involving the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
A report on the Nordic Monitor news website in July concerning cooperation between Turkey and Greece to have Sinirlioğlu elected as the next OSCE secretary-general, accused him of having a long history of conducting secretive operations for Erdoğan, including discussions on a false flag operation to justify a military invasion of Syria in 2014.
According to Nordic Monitor, when Sinirlioğlu was appointed by UN Secretary-General António Guterres as the special coordinator for Afghanistan in April 2023, his appointment raised significant concerns due to his alleged involvement in covert negotiations with ISIL and other clandestine activities that benefitted financially from ISIL-controlled oil.
In 2014 Sinirlioğlu was implicated in a plot involving the deliberate surrender of the Turkish consulate general and consulate staff in Mosul to ISIL, resulting in them being held hostage by ISIL. This move was allegedly part of a strategy to facilitate negotiations with ISIL, leading to the release of ISIL detainees from Turkish prisons and financial gains from smuggled oil. Öztürk Yılmaz, the then-consul general in Mosul, accused the Turkish government of selling out the hostages to benefit from ISIL oil in Syria. He revealed that his numerous attempts to get Turkish authorities to launch airstrikes on advancing ISIL troops were ignored and that emergency cables he sent to Ankara disappeared, suggesting that Sinirlioğlu was involved in a cover-up of the situation.
Sinirlioğlu was also actively involved in Turkey’s campaign to question Greece’s sovereignty over certain islands in the Aegean Sea in 2021, until a Turkish-Greek rapprochement in 2023.
He accused Greece of violating the demilitarization of islands in the Aegean Sea as required by the Lausanne and Paris peace treaties and lodged a complaint against Greece at the UN during his tenure as Turkey’s permanent representative.
Ankara supported Maria Telalian, legal adviser to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs and head of the legal department, for the directorship of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), in exchange for the support given Sinirlioğlu by Athens.