They Call It Diplomacy by Peter Westmacott

Author:Peter Westmacott [Westmacott, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Diplomacy, Great Britain, History, International Relations, Political Science
ISBN: 9781800240988
Google: C6ngDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B087XD8YDJ
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2021-02-04T03:00:00+00:00

a Villepin lacked neither intellect nor self-confidence. A fellow guest at the banquet which The Queen gave in honour of President Chirac in 2004 remarked to a friend afterwards: ‘I have just had the honour of dining with the cleverest man in France and the country’s next president.’ ‘Really?’ came the reply. ‘How do you know?’ ‘Because he told me.’

10

So close and yet so far (2006–16)

The nearly five years I spent as ambassador in Turkey were not entirely consumed with politics and Turkey’s relations with the EU. We also found time to explore and enjoy the country, and to delve into its history. On a regional tour of central Anatolia, Susie and I once stopped off in Amasya, a small city which occupies a strategic position just south of the Black Sea. It was the birthplace of the Greek geographer-philosopher Strabo two thousand years earlier and of at least two Ottoman sultans. The curator of the local museum told us calmly that traces of no fewer than seventeen different civilisations spread over eight thousand years had been found in his city.

Who outside Turkey – or even inside it – is aware that the country’s rich cultural heritage includes two hundred different theatres and amphitheatres from Graeco-Roman times? Or that it was at the parliament of the ancient Lycian city of Patara – recently excavated from beneath the sand dunes near Kaş on the Mediterranean coast – that the nation states of the Lycian League used to come together more than two thousand years ago in the earliest examples of pooled sovereignty the world has ever known?

There was scope too for cultural diplomacy. Turkey had never been very imaginative about the social integration of people with physical disabilities, so one of the initiatives we took at the embassy, with the help of the British Council and a creative Ankara theatre, was to arrange for the London-based CanDoCo dance company to give a performance demonstrating the extraordinary beauty of disabled dance. Explaining from the stage, off the cuff, why we had done this stretched my Turkish to its absolute limits. But the effect of the CanDoCo dancers was mesmerizing and we were left with the sense that attitudes in the Turkish capital towards disability had changed overnight.

Early in 2004 I had a visit from the artistic director of the Royal Academy in London. The Academy had a slot in 2005 for a major exhibition and was thinking of doing something around the theme of Turkey. But time was short, and so was money. Could I help? It seemed to me – and to Susie, who is an art historian – that this was a remarkable opportunity for Turkey to put itself on the map. With Pera House out of service because of the terrorist attack the previous November, we arranged a dinner for the president of the Royal Academy and potential donors in a special köşk, or royal pavilion, in the grounds of the Topkapi Museum, which was never normally open to the public.

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