26th February 2026
Different Memories, Shared Futures: Why Inclusive Remembrance Matters for Serbia and the Region
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17th February 2016 Dublin, Ireland
Central & Eastern Europe offers a pipeline of opportunities for British energy companies
The GREAT Energy Summit kicks off this morning, with more than 200 energy sector specialists from the UK and from across Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) coming together in Warsaw. Although the event is in Poland, it will present the opportunities that exist for UK companies across the whole of CEE – and, in turn, […]
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17th February 2016 London, UK
The GREAT campaign: from theory to digital reality
What’s so great about GREAT? The GREAT campaign was launched in 2012 to make the most of the global interest in the UK as a result of the London Olympic Games. It was designed to showcase the very best of what Britain has to offer, welcoming the world to visit us, study with us, and […]
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16th February 2016
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Yeni Şafak and Yeni Akit: freedom of expression matters
I was pleased on 16 February to visit the editorial offices of Yeni Şafak with a number of EU Consuls-General. We went to Yeni Şafak on a “geçmiş olsun” visit after last week’s attacks on Yeni Şafak and Yeni Akit. This followed similar visits to Hurriyet and Sabah after attacks in 2015. The UK […]
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16th February 2016 Skopje, North Macedonia
Not everything you learn is in university
Living as a student in the UK what mainly contributes for my satisfaction are opportunities that the university offers. However, the quality of higher education in the UK is not news. It is well known that some of the best universities in the world are here, and they not only provide students with first-class academic knowledge, but also enable them to […]
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15th February 2016
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
How Turkish whizz-kids can scale-up fast
A young Turkish entrepreneur enters a hotel meeting room. She comes face-to-face with some of Turkey’s top business gurus. ‘OK,’ says the chair, ‘you have five minutes to convince us.’ Five minutes later, after the young whizz-kid has set out her plans for growing her business by establishing a foothold in the UK, the assembled […]
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12th February 2016
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
#RegisterToVote
A guest blog by HM Consul Timothy Fisher, British Consulate-General Istanbul 100 years ago my great grandmother was protesting on the streets of London with other Suffragettes campaigning for the right for women to vote in Britain. It was a time when the right to vote was a hot political topic. A century later, voting remains as […]
11th February 2016 London, UK
Spreading the word (and data) on country names
We’ve been working with the Government Digital Service (GDS) on a project to develop a “Country Register” which will be a dataset of UK approved geographical names for countries and territories. This work is the first stage of a project to create a range of Registers which will be a key part of the UK’s […]
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10th February 2016
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Against Modern Slavery: working with the Holy See
Pope Francis is on record as calling modern slavery “a crime against humanity”. Over 200 years since the British Parliament abolished the transatlantic slave trade and began an international campaign, led by the Royal Navy, to eradicate it, the Home Office estimates that there are around 13,000 potential victims of modern slavery in the UK […]
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10th February 2016 Canberra, Australia
Out of Africa
Sudan is a rhinoceros. If I had written that sentence during the two years I worked at our Embassy in Khartoum, there might have been raised eyebrows. But the fact remains that Sudan is a rhino, and a very special one… Sudan was born in what is now South Sudan in the late 1970s, and […]
9th February 2016
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
#AdiosIstanbul
How many reasons are there to like Istanbul? Since I arrived in Istanbul in August 2012 I have featured over 500 #reasonstolikeistanbul on my @leighturnerFCO twitter account. The response has been mostly enthusiastic. That’s not surprising. Istanbul is a spectacular city, with an epic past, a potential-packed present and, I hope, a brilliant future. But all […]