On 17 June 2020, the United Nations General Assembly elected Volkan Bozkir of Turkey as President of its seventy-fifth session, which runs from September 2020 to September 2021. (See Press Release GA/12250.)
Following his almost 40 years of foreign service, Bozkir received 178 of the votes in a secret ballot. Armenia, Greece and Cyprus, while initially supportive, decided later to oppose the candidacy, allegedly due to diplomatic conflicts.
“Elected by the full support from the overwhelming majority of U.N. member states, Ambassador Bozkır is expected to take office as the president of the 75th U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 15, 2020, for a duration of one year,”
Mr. Bozkir has served for 39 years in Turkey’s foreign service. He was elected to Parliament in 2011, and over the next nine years held a range of positions including Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Chairman of the Turkey-United States Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Caucus, Chairman of the Turkey-Australia Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Group and Co-Chairman of the Turkish-Russian Civic Forum.
From 2014 to 2016, he served as Minister for European Union Affairs and Chief Negotiator.
He has served as a Member of Parliament for İstanbul’s second electoral district since the 2011 general election. Volkan Bozkır is a career diplomat and a defendant of the Turkish position regarding the Armenian Genocide but also its anti-terror laws. While being the Turkish Minister for the European Union (EU) and also the leading negotiator in the Turkish accession talks to the EU denied there existed an Armenian Genocide. After the EU issued a draft for the Turkey progress report in 2015 including a demand that Turkey accepts that there existed an Armenian Genocide he declared that Turkey wouldn’t answer a EU report containing the term Genocide. Also in 2015, he criticized Pope Franciscus for including the term Genocide in a sermon he held in a mass at the basilica of St.Peters in Rome.
As the EU demanded that Turkey adapts its anti-terror regulations according to EU normatives. Bozkır opposed the demand stating the anti terror laws regulations are already in line with the EU demands. As the EU Parliament voted for the accession talks to be suspended in march 2019, Bozkır, as the head of committee for foreign affairs in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey condemned the vote.
On September 22, US President Donald Trump and then Xi Jinping gave speeches, after UNSG Antonio Guterres’ failed speech. Now a re-heating of the frozen conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, not surprising with Turkish hatchetman Volkan Bozkir atop the General Assembly, saying nothing and blocking the Press that asks.
On September 25 and 26, amid continuing censorship, there were rights of reply. On the 25th, Azerbaijan trashing Armenia, and India versus Pakistan, which was the first to descend into citing the Nazis.
On the 26th, after the speech of Belarus, replies by Armenia against Azerbaijan, and Indonesia bullying Vanuatu for daring to mention West Papua. This is today’s UN – totally corrupt.
Mr. Bozkir has been awarded the Order of the Star of Romania, the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic with the rank of “Knight”, and the 100th Anniversary Medal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
Source: UN.org , Inner City Press