OPCW Director-General
Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü
- Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü
H.E. Mr Ahmet Üzümcü was appointed Director-General of the OPCW in December 2009 by the 14th Session of the Conference of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention and began his term of office on 25 July 2010. Immediately prior to this appointment he served as the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Turkey to the United Nations Office at Geneva.
Ambassador Üzümcü is a career diplomat with vast experience in multilateral diplomacy. During the past decade he has represented Turkey at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Council, the Conference on Disarmament, the United Nations and other international organisations in Geneva. Ambassador Üzümcü chaired the Conference on Disarmament for four weeks in March 2008 and attended various disarmament-related meetings and conferences in Geneva, Brussels and elsewhere. He has a thorough understanding of and considerable expertise in political-military affairs, disarmament and proliferation issues.
Previously, Ambassador Üzümcü served as Deputy Undersecretary of State for Bilateral Political Affairs. From June 2002 to August 2004, he was the Permanent Representative of Turkey to the NATO Council in Brussels. He held the post of Ambassador of Turkey to Israel from 1999 to 2002. From 1996 to 1999, he headed the Personnel Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ankara. Prior to that, he served in various posts at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as at the Turkish delegation to NATO (1986-1989), the Turkish Embassy in Vienna (1979-1982) and as a Consul in Aleppo, Syria (1982-1984).
In addition to his diplomatic experience, Ambassador Üzümcü served in an international capacity as a staff member of NATO’s Political Directorate from 1989 to 1994, where he contributed to work on NATO’s Partnership for Peace initiative in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War and travelled extensively in Eastern European countries and the former USSR.
Ambassador Üzümcü was born in Armutlu, Turkey on 30 August 1951 and holds a Bachelors Degree in International Relations with a specialisation in Public Administration from the Faculty of Political Sciences, Ankara University. He speaks English and French fluently, is married and has a daughter.
Geneva School of Diplomacy Awards Ambassador Üzümcü a Honorary Doctorate for Lifetime Achievements in Arms Control and Disarmament
On 26 June 2010 Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü of Turkey received an honorary doctorate from the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations for lifetime achievements in arms control and disarmament.
According to the Geneva School of Diplomacy, Ambassador Üzümcü received this degree —Doctor of International Relations, honoris causa— for his “lifetime achievements in the field of arms control, his diplomatic pre-eminence in the UN Conference on Disarmament over many years, his contribution to arms control as his country's representative to NATO and for the unusually broad and comprehensive support, from the international community, for his recent elevation to Head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons”.
Ambassador Üzümcü received his degree along with Ambassador Dáithí O’Ceallaigh of Ireland —who chaired the conference that produced the Convention on Cluster Munitions— and Ambassador Yuri Nazarkine of Russia, who was Russian Chief Negotiator of the START Treaty aimed at lowering the levels of deployed nuclear weapons of the major nuclear powers.
