Merve Kavakçı to be appointed as ambassador to Kuala Lumpur

Sevil Erkuş - ANKARA

Merve Kavakçı, who was banned from parliament in 1999 after she joined an oath ceremony in parliament wearing a headscarf following her election as a lawmaker from now defunct Virtue Party (FP), will be appointed as ambassador to Kuala Lumpur.  

Kavakçı was denaturalized from her citizenship when it was revealed that she acquired U.S. citizenship without permission before she ran for elections. 

Her citizenship was recently given back to her after a decision from the Council of Ministers, which was published in the Official Gazette on July 3. 

Formerly a lawmaker from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Murat Mercan will also be appointed as Turkey’s ambassador to Tokyo. Mercan was among the founding members of the AKP, and served as a term president at the parliament’s foreign affairs commission and as deputy minister of energy and natural resources. 

Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu personally started notifying the ambassadors. He informed 16 diplomats out of the list of 30 ambassadors as of July 26. The list of 16 ambassadors are as follows: Serap Özcoşkun for La Paz,  Kemal Demirciler for Manama, Ersin Erçin for Seoul, Murat Mercan for Tokyo, Şebnem Cenk for Malabo, Mustafa Yurdakul for Islamabad, Ceren Yazgan for Tbilisi, Başak Türkoğlu for Valetta, Hasan Ulusoy for Sofia, Oğuzhan Ertuğrul for Kabul, Ahmet Muhtar Gün as U.N. Permanent Representative to Vienna, Süphan Erkula for Libreville, Emre Yunt for Stockholm, Levent Gümrükçü for Brussels, Süleyman Gökçe for Guatemala, Ela Görkem for Santa Domingo, and Akif Oktay for Budapest.