In the corridors of the United Nations, Israel's ambassador Danny Danon put a simple question to Turkey's candidate for the world body's top job: six years after you blocked a resolution condemning Hamas, and sixteen months after the October 7 massacre, can you now bring yourself to condemn the group by name?
The answer from Feridun Sinirlioğlu, Turkey's former ambassador to Israel and current permanent representative to the UN, was a study in diplomatic deflection. Danon's exchange with the candidate for UN secretary-general laid bare the gap between the language of universal values and the silence that follows when those values demand an uncomfortable stand.
The full exchange
Danon opened with a reminder. "Mr. Sinirlioğlu, in June 2018, we both served here as ambassadors to the UN. In your capacity as Turkey's permanent representative, you sought to block an amendment condemning Hamas and demanding it cease all violent activity."
He continued: "Then, on October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. They murdered children in front of their parents. They burned people alive inside their homes. They abducted babies and elderly people, and killed them in tunnels underground."
"Now, as you stand as a candidate for UN secretary-general," Danon asked, "are you able, finally, to unequivocally condemn Hamas?"
Sinirlioğlu's reply began with biography. "I was my country's ambassador to Israel for five years. I know the state very well."
"In my 2018 speech, I addressed the situation as a representative of the state I represented," he said. "Of course, the United Nations has tools at its disposal, and we are committed to international law and all the mechanisms established within it. I will act in accordance with international law."
"I condemn — fully — terror in all its forms," he concluded.
The answer, which avoided naming Hamas even as it invoked the language of principle, continues to echo in UN halls. For a candidate seeking the organisation's highest office, the refusal to name the group responsible for the October 7 atrocities raises the question of whether moral clarity is compatible with the diplomatic ambitions on display.
