Angola, Malaysia, New Zealand, Venezuela, and Spain, were elected as non-permanent members of the U.N. Security Council yesterday. Venezuela is likely to frequently join Russia and China—the so-called “sovereignty caucus” on the council—in opposing U.S. initiatives. The U.S. opposed Venezuela’s bid to join the council in 2006, but this time only registered its objections after the fact, with Amb. Samantha Power saying that the country’s “conduct at the UN has run counter to the spirit of the UN Charter.”
But the bigger story may be that Turkey, which had also put in a bid for membership, narrowly lost out on a spot to New Zealand and Spain in the “Western Europe and Others” group. This comes at a time when Turkey’s NATO allies are extremely frustrated with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government’s reluctance to participate more actively in the fight against ISIS militants across the border in Syria. (This week Turkish warplanes bombed camps of the Kurdish PKK movement in Turkey in the first major offensive since peace talks began two years ago. Given that Kurdish fighters have been on the frontlines against ISIS in both Syria and Iraq, Turkey could be seen as actively hampering the coalition.)
Turkey’s foreign minister said after the vote that “there may be some countries disturbed by our principled stance” and that “we could not abandon our principles for the sake of getting more votes.”
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