Tuncay Babali

Tuncay Babali, diplomat, Ambassador to Canada (2012-14) a fellow (2009-10) at the Harvard Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Dr. Babali has formerly served as Director of the Dep. of Human Resources of the MFA Turkey and as counselor of the Turkish Embassies in Washington, D.C. and London. Previously, he was deputy chief of cabinet to President Ahmet Necdet Sezer (2003-06), counseling on foreign policy issues, contributing to speech writing and preparing presidential level state visits to various foreign countries, setting agenda and scheduling for the president. Dr. Babali has also served in the Turkish Consulate General in Houston, Texas as the vice counsel, and second secretary at the Turkish Embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria. Prior to these postings, Mr. Babali worked as attaché at the MFA headquarters in Ankara in the Deputy Directorates General for both bilateral and multilateral economics affairs, consecutively. He was responsible for carrying out “Joint Economic Commission” meetings with various “non-market” and transitional economies and organizing SME investment business missions to the Balkan states. On the multilateral part, Mr. Babali has worked on formation efforts of “Developing 8 Grouping.” While in that department, he also worked in the organization of the First World Congress of the Turkish Businessmen. During his early career, he also seconded and worked in the Deputy Directorate General of the Energy, Water and Environmental Issues. Mr. Babali earned his PhD from the University of Houston and has a MA degree from the University of London, School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS). He holds a bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of Marmara, Istanbul, Turkey. At Harvard he pursued research on Russian resurgent foreign policy tools: energy, security and economy. He offered a realistic assessment of their impact on its near abroad policy. He has a BA from Marmara Univ., Istanbul. MA frm. SOAS, Univ. of London. Ph.D on Pol.Sci. frm. the Univ. of Houston.