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Country Director Turkey

The Organisation
The British Council was founded to create ‘a friendly knowledge and understanding’ between the people of the UK and wider world by making a positive contribution to the countries we work with, and in doing so making a lasting difference to the UK’s international standing, prosperity and security. The programmes we use to do this are wide-ranging and cover the arts, education, English, science and society.
We have an excellent opportunity for a Country Director to lead the development and delivery of 3-year Country Plan for Turkey, ensuring it meets the required cultural relations, business and operational objectives and is appropriately aligned to wider corporate strategies. 
The successful candidate must demonstrate the following essential knowledge & experience
  • Ability to generate competitive and value-creating strategies
  • Strong entrepreneurial approach
  • Management experience at senior level leading a medium-large, diverse and complex operation internationally
  • Strong record in business development and financial literacy
  • Excellent relationship building and influencing skills at senior level
  • Ability to operate in a high risk security and financial environment
  • Experience of motivating teams to deliver and achieve results  
  • Successful crisis management experience and preparing business continuity plans to protect interests
Some of the main opportunities/challenges include:
  • Responding to HMG stakeholder interests post-EU Referendum result which are to seek an increasingly closer bilateral relationship with Turkey, with more dialogue around shared interests dominated by counter-terrorism, migration, defence, security and trade and more challenges around balancing interests where there is a divergence of views between the UK and Turkey e.g. human rights, freedom of expression
  • Developing a vision and economic model which is financially sustainable and delivers impact at scale as Turkey moves towards non-ODA status and the UK leaves the EU in an environment where the commercial sector is highly competitive, the public sector highly bureaucratic, and the labour environment highly unionized.
  • Providing leadership, direction and support to a British Council team by adopting a high performance approach, encouraging shared learning and effective use of resources
  • Transforming the British Council’s relationships, influence, and connections amongst external stakeholders, potential partners, clients and customers to maximize business impact, enhance  credibility and engage new audiences
  • Maintaining personal resilience in response to security risk, managing crisis response and motivating the team during frequent periods of uncertainty