One of the two vacant deputy secretary-general posts at NATO is highly likely to be assumed by a Turkish diplomat, sources close to the NATO leadership say.
Ambassador Huseyin Dirioz, currently the top foreign policy aide to the Turkish president, is among the four candidates who run for the post.
Sources say chances are high that Dirioz will be appointed as deputy secretary-general.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called "the (North) Atlantic Alliance", is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on April 4, 1949. The NATO headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, and the organization constitutes a system of collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party.
NATO has added new members seven times since first forming in 1949 (the last 2 in 2009). NATO comprises 28 members: Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
New membership in the alliance has been largely from Eastern Europe and the Balkans, including former members of the Warsaw Pact. At the 2008 summit in Bucharest, three countries were promised future invitations: the Republic of Macedonia, Georgia and Ukraine.
Other potential candidate countries include Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which joined the Adriatic Charter of potential members in 2008.
