A former Pentagon official is making the case that Turkey's nomination of its own candidate for UN Secretary-General sho...

A former Pentagon official is making the case that Turkey's nomination of its own candidate for UN Secretary-General should be dead on arrival, as long as Turkish forces occupy Cyprus. Michael Rubin, director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, published the argument on October 31, 2026. His target is Feridun Sinirlioglu, the current OSCE Secretary-General and a former interim Turkish foreign minister, who Rubin calls "Erdogan's man" and a "long-time loyalist." Turkey formally submitted Sinirlioglu's nomination on October 30, in a letter from Erdogan transmitted by Turkey's UN envoy to the presidents of the General Assembly and the Security Council. The nomination comes as a live succession race heats up. Antonio Guterres's second term as UN Secretary-General expires on December 31, 2026, and the Security Council's latest straw poll ended inconclusively that same day. A candidate needs at least nine votes from the 15-member Council and must avoid a veto from any of the five permanent members. Rubin writes that Erdogan and his aides have privately canvassed all five permanent Security Council members and claim there is no objection from anyone but France. Rubin asserts Erdogan believes he can force Emmanuel Macron's acquiescence "either through bribery or coercion," though that charge is Rubin's own characterization, not an established fact. On Sinirlioglu personally, Rubin is withering. He calls his OSCE tenure "lackluster at best" and points to a July 2026 incident in which Russian pranksters, one posing as Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, asked Sinirlioglu to help remove the head of the Armenian church, Karekin II. According to Rubin, Sinirlioglu replied, "OK, I'll do my best; I'll try." Rubin's core argument goes beyond the individual candidate. He writes that Turkey is "occupying European Union territory" and that so long as it does, no Turk should hold any leadership position at the UN or any international organization. He also rejects the claim that protecting Cyprus's Muslim minority justified Turkey's 1974 intervention, arguing that the bulk of the military action came afte...