Ambassador Series: What We All Can Do
April 27, 2021
This blog post was written by Jacob Frazier. Jacob is the blog editor with the Alhambra US Chamber.
On April 11th, the Alhambra US Chamber held another engaging Q&A with former Turkish Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü. The event was moderated by the Ambassador’s esteemed daughter, Irmak Üzümcü and the ambassador told a variety of colorful stories about his career as a diplomat and administrator of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). But what shone through all his stories was how powerful having a sense of purpose can be in creating a meaningful life and change the world for the better.
Ambassador Üzümcü attended many different schools in preparation for a career that would take him to a variety of places. He studied in a school run by Jesuits and then a French school in a new city in Turkey. He then transitioned to studying international relations and political science at Ankara University and graduated with his degree, meeting his wife through a governmental research position and starting a family. The work he and his wife did required them to move a lot, which he says gave his kids a strong cultural understanding and resilience. Already he had shown the value of pursuing a goal, which in his case was a career in foreign service, to bring us and the people around us strength. It did so not by lessening the challenges they faced, but by giving them the power to overcome those challenges and come out stronger.
Working as an ambassador brought Mr. Üzümcü close to some of the most important issues his country has faced in recent times. He discussed working between Turkey and the EU to try and smooth over conflicts regarding the surge in refugees from Syria, between Turkey and Syria over the related issue of separatist conflicts in the country, and between Turkey and Israel, who have a stronger relationship than the other countries mentioned. Despite working on issues with monumental world significance, Ambassador Üzümcü credited his success to simply staying up to date on the issues and trying to bring people together. He also emphasized the importance of communication as a key diplomatic skill. These skills can benefit anyone in their career, and they created a virtuous cycle to help the ambassador accomplish his goals. Because he was driven by the purpose of improving relations between the EU and Turkey, he had a reason to strengthen his skills in order to work with others. Through his diligent work in developing these skills, he pulled himself into circles that enabled him to accomplish his purpose at a bigger and bigger scale.
This is true not only for the leaders with a high profile like the ambassador himself and the world leaders he worked with, but also for those who do not crave the spotlight or who might be still working their way up the leadership ladder. Seeking common ground is not usually the flashiest option, but it is often the best one and is the best one for diplomats according to Ambassador Üzümcü. Working for consensus allowed him to smooth over conflicts of interest between his own country and those of the EU, enabling the countries to work together more effectively on the refugee crisis.
Ambassador Üzümcü considers his greatest accomplishment to be one he shares with others: leading the OPCW to winning the Nobel Peace Prize. The organization worked to call a ceasefire on chemical weapons use between nations, working with Pope Francis and others to make the world safer. It is telling that he considers his greatest accomplishment to be part of a moral cause, since his sense of purpose shone through to earn him the votes of the member states and drove him to make a positive impact on the world. This sense of morality drove him to gain the knowledge he needed to make that impact. The credit he gives to the people he worked with also shows that a person’s sense of morality, rather than their desire to be important, is what enables them to change the world. Each of us can apply this principle to make life better for ourselves and those around us.
Ambassador Üzümcü’s Q&A was peppered with other examples illustrating the value of purpose and the power each individual has. When an incident arose in the Turkish government, he said the central governmental figures are not the only ones with the responsibility to fix things, and he says there are issues with the Turkish government that will require people with strong purpose to fix. Each of us knows about such problems at every level of society, and the ambassador’s life and Q&A show that as we work to accomplish our goals of making things better, our knowledge of how to do so will grow.
If you are interested to learn more about the life of an ambassador and life in general, join us for the next Ambassador Series Q&A! The next event can be found here and although registration through the link is required, the event is always free to attend!
