WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden nominated former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, one of the few elected Republicans to speak out against Donald Trump, to be his ambassador to Turkey.
Flake, a one-term senator who chose not to run in 2018 after breaking with the then-president, also served 18 years in the House of Representatives. He endorsed Biden for president in 2020.
He is the first Republican elected official Biden has chosen for an ambassadorial post.
“With this nomination, the Biden administration reaffirms the best tradition of American foreign policy and diplomacy: the credo that partisan politics should stop at the water’s edge,” Flake said in a statement. “U.S. foreign policy can and should be bipartisan. That is my belief as well, and my commitment.”
Turkey is one of the trickier posts for U.S. diplomats. While Turkey has the largest military in NATO after the U.S., the country’s government under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has frequently complicated the U.S. relationship with Russia, Europe and other Mideast countries.
The White House also said Tuesday that Biden intends to nominate Kent Doyle Logsdon, a career foreign service officer, to be ambassador to Moldova.
