Murat Özçelik

Özçelik started working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1983. Between 1990 and 1992, he served as the Cabinet Chief for Turgut Özal, the then-President of Turkey. After serving at numerous other positions, he became the department manager at the Office of Information in 2005, serving concurrently as the foreign affairs deputy spokesperson. On 16 November 2011, he was appointed as the Undersecretary of Public Order and Security. Following a public statement by Özçelik, in which he claimed that he was being pressured into not doing his job the way he wanted and that he wanted to resign, the government removed him from the position on 17 May 2012. He was subsequently appointed as an advisor at the Foreign Ministry and subsequently retired there.[2]

In January 1997, Özçelik became the first Turkish Consul General at Shanghai, a position in which he served until 22 September 1998.

Özçelik was always one of the trusted career diplomats that top level government officials knew and worked with. He served as Turkey’s special representative in Iraq from 2007 to 2011 and then as Turkey’s ambassador to Baghdad. During this period, he was in the close circle of advisors that contacted the Iraqi Kurds and prepared the ground to improve strategic relations between Turkey, Iraq and the Iraqi Kurds. Reconciliation with the Iraqi Kurds inaugurated a period of economic and political cooperation that is counted among Turkey’s most significant foreign policy wins in the Middle East.[3]

Pro-status quo Turkish nationalists within the CHP were uneasy with Özçelik’s foreign policy activism in urging reconciliation with Iraqi Kurds. He was targeted by allegations launched by hawkish CHP nationalists that claimed he sympathised with the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). In an attempt to discredit his credibility within the CHP, far-right Turkish media claimed that he, his family and his friends voted for the HDP in the June 2015 general election. This claim was rejected by Özçelik as false.[9][10]