The government of Luis Lacalle Pou appointed the first ambassador of the Eastern Republic of Uruguay to the Republic of Armenia, a few days after the Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlüt Çavusoglu, made a gesture in front of Armenian protesters that generated criticism and repudiation.
In a diplomatic move towards Armenia, the Uruguayan Executive appointed Eduardo Rosenbrock to be the ambassador at the diplomatic headquarters to be installed in Yerevan, where until now it is the Consulate and in which the diplomat was Minister Counselor.
Bustillo had anticipated last year that the Consulate was going to be promoted to the category of Embassy, and therefore Rosenbrock would go from consul to ambassador.
The Turkish gesture
The Turkish diplomat, Mevlüt Çavusoglu, was leaving a meeting with his Uruguayan counterpart, Francisco Bustillo, just on the date on which the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman empire (from which Turkey derived) is remembered, and went through the window towards them with a hand gesture used by the Turkish far-right group “Grey Wolves”, who are not only singled out for a significant number of murders but also deny such genocide.
Last Tuesday, the Chamber of Senators suspended the accreditation of Hugo Cayrús as ambassador to the Republic of Turkey, in the environment of the International Affairs Commission of said chamber. This same body summoned Bustillo to clarify what happened with his Turkish counterpart; the latter justified himself by saying that “the protesters exhibited unpleasant attitudes” and that “after these unacceptable and ugly attitudes, we gave the necessary response” which was the manual gesture that vindicates the group considered racist, xenophobic and ultra-nationalist but which is close to the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
