About Us

“Turkish Experts on Arms Control and Disarmament (TEAD)” is a platform of experts gathering around the topic. We are experts in the field of arms control and disarmament with long years of experience, for over two decades in the Armed Forces and in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

After retirement, we have been putting efforts to closely follow developments in the field. With that regard, we are volunteers to mobilise our knowledge and experience on the subject, for a safer world. We aim to increase awareness towards arms control and disarmament (ACD), in close coordination with the relevant institutions and organisations. We firmly believe in the contribution of ACD to regional and international security and stability.

Most of us have worked in implementation centres and in the diplomatic arena of this invaluable field as inspectors/observers or as representatives. Our tenures in the United Nations Office in Geneva (UNOG), Organisation for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) added up more to our experiences and expanded our views towards the matter.

Cognizant of the fact that our country is situated in a rather difficult geography, we keep our belief in the contribution of ACD to regional and global security. Therefore, we would like to extend our efforts towards the preservation of the achievements in this field and join the struggles towards ending the erosion of the available ACD instruments. We know very well and will always remember how hardly these instruments were negotiated in the last years of the Cold War era. Until their erosion, these ACD acts had been serving as the cornerstones of stability both in the Euro-Atlantic and in the Caucasus-Central Euro-Asian geography.

Unfortunately, pursuit of ACD is not always a cooperative exercise. We are very much concerned to observe the ill-fated erosion of some of these important instruments one by one, which are in fact the backbones of international security architecture. Obviously, stands of some of the key actors are extremely important in this field. Nevertheless, we believe that collective efforts might affect these actors in the direction to make positive steps, though they might be small at the beginning.

In this opinion, we also wish to make our contributions to this noble goal by trying to make our part in the country and in international fora.