ANC-International on Feridun Sinirlioğlu’s candidacy for U.N. secretary-general
The Armenian National Committee-International (ANC-International) calls on the members of the U.N. Security Council, and the governments of all U.N. member states, to reject Türkiye’s nomination of Feridun Sinirlioğlu for the post of U.N. secretary-general.
The secretary-general must be an impartial guardian of the U.N. Charter and the world’s first voice against mass atrocities. Sinirlioğlu’s record shows the opposite: decades spent advancing one government’s agenda, including the denial of the Armenian Genocide in the U.N.’s own official record.
On Oct. 16, 2020, as Türkiye’s Permanent Representative to the U.N., Sinirlioğlu signed a letter to the secretary-general.In it, he asserted that the events of 1915 were not genocide and remain a matter of “legitimate debate.” He sent that letter three weeks into Azerbaijan’s assault on Artsakh. In it, he dismissed reports of foreign fighters in the conflict zone as “baseless,” although Russia, France and the United States had confirmed that Syrian mercenaries were being deployed there. The letter also accused Armenian diaspora organisations, without evidence, of moving fighters to the front “under the cover of charity.” Within three years, more than 100,000 Armenians were forced from Artsakh.
This was not an isolated act. As undersecretary of Türkiye’s Foreign Ministry in 2010, Sinirlioğlu traveled to Washington to lobby against a U.S. House resolution affirming the Armenian Genocide. His ministry then accused Armenia’s Constitutional Court of imposing “preconditions” on the Armenia-Turkey protocols, a pretext Ankara used to stall their ratification.
In July 2026, as OSCE secretary general, Sinirlioğlu spoke to callers he believed to be Armenia’s prime minister. He told them he would “look into” how the OSCE could support the removal of the Catholicos of All Armenians. Four international human rights and religious-freedom organizations condemned these remarks as irreconcilable with his office and called on him to retract them.
Nor can Sinirlioğlu offer the independence the office demands. He is widely described as a close confidant of President Erdoğan, who nominated him personally. Article 100 of the U.N. Charter forbids the secretary-general from seeking or receiving instructions from any government. Yet in nearly every crisis the next secretary-general must manage, his own government is a party or a protagonist: Cyprus, the South Caucasus, Syria and Ukraine. Türkiye continues to occupy over a third of Cyprus, a U.N. member state, in defiance of Security Council resolutions. Meanwhile, the secretary-general’s good offices lead the search for a settlement there.
The secretary-general speaks for the world on the Genocide Convention. The U.N. cannot be led by a man who denied a genocide on U.N. letterhead and has spent his career working to silence the truth about the first genocide of the 20th century. Entrusting him with the U.N.’s highest office would send a devastating message to survivors of mass atrocities everywhere.
We therefore call on:
- Security Council members, and especially the permanent members, to withhold support from Sinirlioğlu’s candidacy in all straw polls and in the council’s formal recommendation.
- All U.N. member states to insist that the next secretary-general has a record of unambiguous commitment to genocide prevention and to the independence required by Article 100.
- Sinirlioğlu to state publicly whether he still stands by the denial of the Armenian Genocide in his 2020 letter, and whether he has retracted his offer to assist in removing the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
We stand with the governments, communities and civil society organizations that have raised concerns about this candidacy. We urge Armenians and friends of the Armenian people worldwide to contact their governments and representatives.
