'Turkey's Role in an Emerging Network World'

House of Lords, Monday 8th February 2010

Speaker Biographies Michael Ancram QC MP is the first Chairman of Global Strategy Forum. He was first elected to Parliament in 1974 and is the MP for the constituency of Devizes in Wiltshire. He has held the posts of Deputy Leader, Shadow Foreign Secretary and Shadow Secretary of State for Defence. In 1993, he was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office, and in January 1994 was appointed Minister of State at the same office. As such, he was responsible for the negotiations leading to the Northern Ireland Peace Process, and was the first British minister to meet with Sinn Fein and the IRA for 25 years. He continues to study peace processes and the practice of talking to terrorists today, with particular reference to the Middle East peace process. He maintains a keen interest in international affairs and on stepping down from the Front Bench in 2005, he was appointed to the Intelligence and Security Committee, on which he continues to serve. He is Chairman of Global Strategy Forum, an independent, non-party political forum, dedicated to the promotion of fresh thinking and active debate on foreign affairs, defence and international security issues, which he founded in May 2006. He is the author of 'Turkey: A New Bridge in a Network World?’ which was published by Global Strategy Forum in December 2009 HE Egemen Bagis was first elected to Parliament in 2002 as a deputy of Istanbul. He was appointed as Minister for EU Affairs on January 2009 and has been working for full membership negotiations of Turkey since then. Egemen Bagis was the party's Vice Chairman in charge of Foreign Affairs, and as a Vice Chairman he had been a member of AK Party's Central Executive Committee, the party's highest body until 2009. He was the party's contact person for international relations and diplomacy. He directed and coordinated the party's national and international network and local branches on foreign policy matters. He also coordinated the flow of key global developments to the party leadership. Egemen Bagis's current titles include: Minister for EU Affairs and Chief Negotiator; AK Party, Member of the Central Decision Making and Administrative Committee; and Member of the Parliament, representing Istanbul. Between the years 2002-2009, Mr. Bagis served as: AK Party Vice Chairman in charge of Foreign Affairs and Representative Offices; AK Party, Member of the Central Executive Committee; Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan; Chairman of Turkey-USA Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Caucus; Chairman of NATO-PA Subcommittee on Transatlantic Relations; Deputy Chairman of the Turkish Delegation to NATO Parliamentary Assembly. As a patron of arts, he served as the founding Chairman of the Advisory Board for "Istanbul 2010 Project", under which Istanbul was chosen as a European Capital of Culture for the year 2010. He is also a founding board member of two prominent museums, the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art and the Santral Museum of Art & Industry. In June 2006 he was also awarded the Italian Cavaliere State Recognition. In the 1990s, he was the President of the Federation of Turkish American Associations in New York. He is the only President in this organization’s history who was unanimously re-elected for two terms. He has also served as the Advisory Board member of Turkish Citizens Abroad, a government body based in Ankara. Bagis was born in Bingol, Turkey, in 1970. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Human Resources Management as well as a Master of Public Administration degree, both from the Baruch College of The City University of New York. Dominic Grieve QC MP was born in 1956. He was educated at Westminster School and Magdalen College Oxford, where he studied Modern History. He was called to the Bar in 1980. He was elected Member of Parliament for Beaconsfield in 1997. He has been Secretary of the Conservative Backbench Committee on the Constitution, Legal Affairs and Northern Ireland. He was a Member of the Select Committee on Environmental Audit and the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments from 1997-1999. In June 1999 Mr Grieve was appointed Conservative spokesman for Scotland and in September 2001 he was appointed Conservative spokesman for criminal justice and community cohesion as part of the Shadow Home Affairs team. From 2003 to 2009 Mr Grieve was Shadow Attorney General. The Leader of the Opposition appointed him to Shadow Home Secretary in June 2008, and in January 2009 he became the Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, continuing with his frontbench role in criminal justice matters, constitutional affairs and ethnic diversity. Mr Grieve has been a local councillor in Fulham in the 1980s, and Chairman of the Research Committee of the Society of Conservative Lawyers as well as a lay visitor to police stations. He has been a Member of the London Diocesan Synod of the Church of England and is a deputy Church Warden. His areas of strong political interest include Law and Order, Constitution, European Union, Defence, Environment and Foreign Affairs. Lord Hannay of Chiswick, GCMG, CH was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. He entered the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1959, and was initially posted to positions in Tehran and Kabul, and later in the Eastern Department in the Foreign Office in London. Starting in 1965 and continuing into the early 1970s, he was involved in the discussions that led to the UK's entry into the European Communities. He was Secretary to the UK delegation to the European Community (EC) and was in 1970 appointed 1st Secretary to the team negotiating the UK's entry into the EC. From 1973 to 1977, he was Chef de Cabinet for Sir Christopher Soames, Vice-President of the Commission of the EC, and from 1979 to 1984 was Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office for the European Community. From 1984 to 1985, Lord Hannay was Minister at the British Embassy in Washington and from 1985 to 1990, he held the post of Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the EC. From 1990 to 1995, Lord Hannay served as the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations. Following his retirement from the diplomatic service he was the British Special Representative for Cyprus between 1996- 2003 and a member of the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, which submitted its report in December 2004. In 2001 he was created a life peer. He has been pro-Chancellor of the University of Birmingham since 2001. In 2003 he was made a Companion of Honour. He was appointed Chair of UNA-UK in January 2006. His book, New World Disorder: The UN after the Cold War was published in 2008 and was written both as a memoir of his time as Ambassador to the United Nations and as an examination of the role of that institution in the 21st century following his participation on the Secretary General's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change which looked at reform of the UN. Lord Howell of Guildford is Shadow Deputy Leader of the Lords and Shadow Minister for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs. His first job was in HM Treasury from 1959-60, then he was a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph from 1960-64. In 1964 he contested his first seat in the general election, and in 1966, he was elected MP for Guildford. He was made a life peer in 1997. Lord Howell is the former Secretary of State for Energy, and later for Transport in Margaret Thatcher's first Cabinet. He was Minister of State in Northern Ireland (1972-74) and has held several other Government posts. He was Chairman of the International Energy Agency Ministerial meeting in May 1979. From 1987-97, he was Chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. He is also adviser to the Conservative Opposition leadership on European Reform. Since June 2005, he has been Shadow Deputy Leader of the Lords. In earlier years, he worked closely with both Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher and is credited by several authorities with having invented the idea of privatisation in the late 1960s. In 2001, he was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure by the Emperor of Japan for his work in furthering UK-Japan relations. He is the author of several books, including the best selling The Edge of Now, published in 2000 and writes columns for The Japan Times, the International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal. Dr Ibrahim Kalinis Chief Advisor to the Prime Minister of Turkey and a fellow at the Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University. He received his PhD from George Washington University. As a broadly trained scholar of Islamic studies, he teaches courses on Islamic philosophy and Islam-West relations. He focuses on post-Avicennan Islamic philosophy with research interests in Ottoman intellectual history, interfaith relations, comparative philosophy, and Turkish foreign policy. He has contributed to several encyclopedia including MacMillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2nd Edition, Encyclopedia of Religion 2nd Edition, Biographical Encyclopedia of Islamic Philosophy and the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. Dr. Kalin has published widely on Islamic philosophy and the relations between Islam and the West. His book Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Sadra on Existence, Intellect and Intuition (Oxford University Press, 2010) analyzes Mulla Sadra’s (d.1641) attempt to recast knowledge in terms of existence and its modalities. His book Islam and the West (published in Turkish) has won the 2007 Writers Association of Turkey award for best book. He has also co-authored a major study on the Turkish perceptions of the West. In addition, he writes about and comments on Turkish foreign policy. Dr. Kalin has lectured on contemporary issues in various parts of the world and travelled extensively in both the Islamic and Western countries. He was a faculty member at the Department of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross (2002-2005), Worcester, MA. Dr. Kalin is the founding-director of the SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research based in Ankara, Turkey and served as its director from 2005 to 2009. Suat Kiniklioglu MP was born in Duisburg, Germany in 1965. He completed the Turkish Air Force Academy in 1986 and worked as a Liaison Officer in the Turkish Air Force until 1989. After leaving the Air Force, Mr Kiniklioglu studied at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and obtained a BA in Political Science (High Honors). He has a Masters degree in International Relations from Bilkent University, Ankara. Mr Kiniklioglu worked in a number of embassies in Ankara as political consultant before setting up the Ankara Centre for Turkish Policy Studies in 2002. He became editor of the English-language quarterly journal Insight Turkey. In 2004 he was invited to be a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington. Following his fellowship he became founding director of the German Marshall Fund office in Ankara which he set up in 2005. He joined the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in 2007 and entered the Turkish Parliament in the July 2007 general election. Mr Kiniklioglu writes a weekly column at Today’s Zaman an English-language daily and is a frequent contributor to international media outlets such as the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. Mr Kiniklioglu currently holds the positions of AK Party Central Executive Committee Member, AK Party Deputy Chairman of External Affairs and Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Turkish Parliament. Also he is director of the Center for Strategic Communication (stratim), a non-governmental organisation in order to facilitate strategic communication for Turkey both at home and abroad. Besides his mother tongue he speaks English, German and Russian. Nursuna Memecan MP is a member of the Turkish Parliament representing Istanbul. She is a member of the Turkish delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the Secretary General of the Turkish-American Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Group, the Head of the Working Group of the Turkish-Italian Cooperation Protocol of the Turkish Parliament. She is currently the Deputy Chairman of the Communications Department of Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AK Party (Justice and Development Party). She holds an MBA from Temple University, USA, and a BS degree in Industrial Engineering from Bogazici University, Turkey. She is a graduate of Robert College-high school, Turkey. Her work experiences include software engineering, investment banking, public relations and most recently, licensing and publishing. Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne was born in Oxford in 1941 and was educated at St Mary’s School, Wantage, and the Royal Academy of Music, where she was awarded with an ARCM and LRAM in 1961. Before entering politics, Baroness Nicholson worked as a Computer Software Developer, Systems Engineer and a Computer Consultant (1962-1974). She was made Director of International Development (1974-1977), then Director of Fundraising (1977-1985) for Save the Children UK, and has worked as a Consultant for Dr Barnardos, Westminster Children’s Hospital, The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme and the Foster Parents Plan. Baroness Nicholson serves in the House of Lords, having been made a Life Peer in 1997, and takes the Liberal Democrat Whip. She was the Member of Parliament for Devon and West Torridge (1987-1997), and Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party (1983-1987). Baroness Nicholson was elected as a Member of the European Parliament for the South East region of England in June 1999. She was re-elected in June 2004 and served until 2009. Baroness Nicholson is the Founder and Executive Chairman of the AMAR International Charitable Foundation, which was set up in 1991 to provide emergency aid for refugees in southern Iraq, and the Iraqi marshlands, in response to the acute humanitarian crisis that was taking place. She is the Co-founder of the AMAR-UNESCO Standing Conference, which promotes understanding between European and Islamic civilisations. Baroness Nicholson is the President of the Caine Prize for African Writing, and a Trustee of the Booker Prize for English Fiction and the Booker Prize for Russian Fiction. Baroness Nicholson has been appointed, since 2002, as the World Health Organization Envoy on Health, Peace and Development. She is also the Patron of, or holds honorary positions in, over fifty charities. Mehmet Öğütçü works for BG Energy Holding Group as director, international government and corporate affairs. Prior to this position, he was with the OECD leading the Global Forum on International Investment and regional outreach programmes, INV (2000-2005) and he covered China and Asia-Pacific for the IEA from 1994-2000. Öğütçü served as a career diplomat in Ankara, Beijing, Brussels and Paris from 1986-1994 on economic, energy and commercial diplomacy matters. He is an occasional lecturer at University of Dundee, and LSE Enterprise Executive Programme on Turkey, China, India, Eurasia/Russia, and Middle East with a focus on energy geopolitics, investment strategies, economic and trade diplomacy. He is an international advisory board member of the Windsor Energy Group and the European Policy Forum. He is also the deputy chairman of the Forum Istanbul, dubbed ‘Turkey’s Davos’. He is a regular contributor to several newspapers and journals and he has a distinguished publications record, including ‘Turkey’s 2023 roadmap: The future begins now’ (2007, Etkilesim Publishing). HE Kursad Tuzmen is the Vice Chairman of the Justice and Development Party in Charge of Foreign Affairs, and is a member of the Turkish Parliament representing Mersin. He was born in Ankara in 1958 and received his BS degree on Management in 1981 at the Middle East Technical University, and MBA at Illinois University in 1991. He has completed studies on “foreign trade and free zones” in Ireland, Denmark, Egypt, Singapore and South Korea through various scholarships, and holds numerous publications on foreign trade. Alongside his political life, he fulfilled several executive duties at IGEME (1997-2002), Turk Eximbank (1999-2002) and WEPZA (World Economic Processing Zones Association) (1995-present) and has engineered their policies. He started his career as a bureaucrat in 1984 as an Expert in the Department of Free Zones in the Undersecretariat of Treasury and Foreign Trade. Later, Mr. Tüzmen worked as the Head of Department (1991-1993), Deputy General Director of Free Zones (1993-1994), General Director of Free Zones (1994-1997) and Deputy Undersecretary of Foreign Trade (1997-1999) at the same organisation. From 1999-2002, he became the undersecretary of Foreign Trade after serving as a bureaucrat for 15 years, leading to several “Bureaucrat of the Year” awards in three consecutive years (1999-2001). After the foundation of the AK Parti, Mr. Tuzmen started his political career as a member of the Turkish Parliament, representing Gaziantep, and has also worked as a State Minister in Charge of Foreign Trade (2002-2009) and Minister for Environment (2003). In 2003, he was elected as the “Minister of the Year” by a national magazine. Mr. Tuzmen is also a professional scuba-diver, water polo player, a holder of PPL licence as a pilot, and national swimmer with many awards. He speaks English and German. Lord Wallace of Saltaire was born in Leicester in 1941. He read history at Kings College, Cambridge from 1959-1962, where he was President of the Cambridge University Liberal Democrats in 1962. He studied for three years at Cornell in the USA, and then finished his Cornell PhD , on the Liberal Revival 1955-66, while a student of Nuffield College, Oxford. He was made a Peer in 1995 and became a spokesman on Foreign Affairs and Defence. In 1996 he became a member of the Select Committee on the European Communities; and he was Chairman of its Sub-Committee on Justice and Home Affairs from 1997-2000. In 2001 he became the Party's main frontbench spokesperson in the Lords on Foreign Affairs. In November 2004 he was elected joint Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrat Peers. He returned to the Federal Policy Committee as the Lords representative in 2005, and has served on several policy groups. He has been chair of the advisory board of the liberal think tank, CentreForum, for five years. Professionally, he moved from Manchester to become Director of Studies of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, from 1978-1990. He then held a five-year appointment as Walter Hallstein Senior Research Fellow at St. Anthony's College, Oxford. He was also involved in setting up the International Relations Department at the Central European University, where he was visiting professor from 1993-96. In 1995 he moved to the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics; since 2005 he has been Emeritus Professor, which allows him to focus primarily on the Lords. He has published several books including The Transformation of Western Europe (1990), Regional Integration: the West European Experience (1995), Rethinking European Order (with Robin Niblett, 2001), and Non-State Actors in Global Politics (with Daphne Josselin, 2001). HE Yasar Yakis was born in 1938. He studied Political Science in the Ankara University. He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1962. In 1988, he became the Ambassador of Turkey to Riyadh and in 1995, he became Ambassador of Turkey to Cairo. In 1988 he was Permanent Representative of Turkey to the United Nations Office in Vienna. In 2000 he became the Senior Policy Adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He lectured on "Turkey's Foreign Policy" in the Bilkent University and "Water Diplomacy" in the Hacettepe University in 2000-2001. In August 2001, he became the founding member and Vice Chairman of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in charge of international relations. He was elected as a Member of Parliament on 3 November 2002 and re-elected on 22 July 2007. He was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the 58th Turkish Government (2002-2003). He was a Member of the European Convention to draft the European Constitution and he has been Chairman of the EU Commission in the Turkish Parliament and member of Turkey-EU Joint Parliamentary Committee since 2003. He speaks French, English and Arabic. He received the Decoration of King Abdulaziz (1st degree) in 1992 and the Decoration of "Ordine della Stella della Soliderietà Italiana – Commendatore in 2007. He received the Decoration of Legion d'Honneur (Officier) in 2009.

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