The latest: In more startling news, the Consulate General of Afghanistan in Istanbul has been handed over to the Taliban diplomats by Turkiye, claimed the group’s officials which means that it is the second Afghan diplomatic mission in the region to be handed over formally to the Taliban.
Go deeper:
- Earlier in the past week, it had been reported that the employees of the Afghan Consulate in Istanbul were told to prepare for the handover of the diplomatic mission to the Taliban officials.
- On Monday, Zakir Jalali, an advisor to the Taliban foreign ministry, said that Gulmat Khan Zadran, a Taliban representative, has taken over the consulate there.
- Recently, the group has also dismissed three diplomats of the former Afghan government in the Afghan embassy in Ankara. Ahmad Baryalee Kabirzada, Sayeed Hameed Nomani, and Hekmatullah Durrani were among the diplomats who had been officially fired by the Taliban authorities.
- The Turkish government has not yet commented on the handover of the Afghan Consulate.
- The Taliban officials are urging the world to recognize the group’s government, however, the international community emphasizes the country’s ruling to the regime to fully adhere to the elements of the Doha Agreement – respect human rights, the rights of women, and girls, as well as religious minorities, and form an all-inclusive government, in which all ethnicities and political groups could see them represented.
- On Sunday, the Islamic Republic of Iran officially handed over the Afghan embassy in Tehran to the representatives of the Taliban.
Zoom out: Apart from Turkiye, Iran, Pakistan, China, Russia and Turkmenistan are countries who have officially accepted Taliban officials at their embassies.
- The Taliban-run administration has neither internal legitimacy nor international recognition. So far, no single country in the world has recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
- The Taliban has dispatched an envoy to the United Nations too, but the global body has since then declined to accept him. The diplomat, Suhail Shaheen, protested, saying Afghanistan’s seat should be held by “the current government in Afghanistan, which has sovereignty and writ all over the country.”
- So, one must remember that even though these countries have accredited the Taliban’s appointed diplomat in recent months, they all refuse to officially recognize the group’s government in Afghanistan.
