Please note: This lecture is now fully booked.
Turkey and Australia are two nations sharing common values and ideals. The UN, G20, MIKTA (Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, Australia) and NATO are a few examples of the international platforms where Turkey and Australia cooperate closely, with the objective of strengthening international peace and stability.
In this lecture, His Excellency Mr Cemil Çiçek will touch on the last 100 years of Turkish - Australian relations and how this relationship has been transformed from enmity during the 1915 Gallipoli / Çanakkale Wars to the friendship and close partnership that we see today.
Mr Çiçek will discuss Turkey’s multi-dimensional foreign policy as practised in the past decade, and Turkey’s response to international and regional developments in its neighbourhood and beyond. He will also address the topic of Turkey’s relations with countries in the Asia-Pacific region, and institutions such as ASEAN and ASEM.
His Excellency Mr Cemil Çiçek has been the Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey since 2011. He graduated from Istanbul University, Faculty of Law in 1971. After practising law for 10 years, he was elected as the Mayor of Yozgat; he was elected as a Deputy for Yozgat in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (1987-1991) and as a Deputy for Ankara (1996-present). In addition to his duties in various other commissions of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, he was a Member of the Reconciliation Committee, the Constitution Committee, and the Turkish Group of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCEPA).
Mr Çiçek served as Minister of State and as Minister of Health in the governments formed by Prime Minister Turgut Özal (1983-1989). He also served as Minister of State in the governments formed by Prime Minister Yıldırım Akbulut (1989-1991) and Prime Minister Mesut Yılmaz (1996). After joining the Justice and Development Party, Mr Cemil Çiçek was appointed Minister of Justice in two successive governments from 2002 to 2007.
He served as the Minister of State, Deputy Prime Minister and Government Spokesman in the 60th Government of Turkey chaired by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (2007-2011).