Former Arizona Senator Becomes Ambassador to Turkey

Former Arizona Senator Jeff Flake sits down with Ted to discuss becoming Ambassador to Turkey, the latest in the nation and Ukraine, and also comments on Arizona elections and the House Speaker saga.

When asked what motivated him to become Ambassador to Turkey, Flake said, “I’ve always admired those in the foreign service, our diplomats— I’ve always kinda wanted to do that. In fact when I was asked during my time in the House in the Senate, If you weren’t doing this what would you like to be doing? I would often say, I’d like to be in the foreign service.”

Ted proceeds to ask Flake about the latest news of Turkey’s position in the world, specifically of that with the war in Ukraine. Turkey seems to be taking a friendly approach to both sides of this conflict, said Ted.

With the invasion happening only six weeks after Flake’s arrival into Turkey, majority of Flake’s job has been personally dealing with Turkey’s involvement in the war.

“Turkey has always been in this position but with regards to Ukraine, initially very early on they invoked the Montreux Treaty which kept Russian war ships out of the Black Sea. I think Russia initially thought we won’t need any assets there, this is gonna be a quick war,” said Flake.

Flake mentioned Turkey’s steadfast support toward Ukrainian sovereignty all while remaining friendly to Russia as well.

“They do a lot of trade with the Russians and they haven’t imposed the same sanctions that the U.S. and EU have done,” said Flake.

Regrading the aftermath of the latest midterm elections,” It was really heartening to see that in almost any case with the exception of, maybe Arizona, those who lost elections accepted it and said next time we’ll do better,” Flake said. “It is important for the U.S. to model the behavior that we’d like to see the rest of the world adopt.”