WSJ/Dow Jones name Turkey bureau chief

Wall Street Journal international editor Matt Murray sent out the following staff announcement on Monday morning:

We’re delighted to announce that Joe Parkinson has been named the Bureau Chief of our integrated Turkey bureau, a vital job in a fast-growing country that sits at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East.

In his new role, Joe, an experienced foreign correspondent who has been stationed in Turkey for nearly two years, will be driving business, FX, markets, economic, diplomatic and political coverage of the world’s 15th-largest economy, including identifying its fast-growing companies and rising executives. Turkey, the Muslim World’s most powerful secular democracy, is an increasingly important U.S. ally and key player in the Middle East, bordering some of the world’s hot spots, including Syria, Iraq, Iran and Greece.

A proven news breaker and writer who has helped anchor Arab Spring coverage and has filed for us from 15 countries, Joe is well-positioned to lead news coverage of the country for the Journal and Dow Jones, working closely with colleagues across the region. (He also, it should be said, chronicled Turkey’s first-ever camel beauty pageant and wrote about post-Soviet Georgia’s answer to “The Apprentice.”)

A graduate of the London School of Economics, Joe previously worked as a junior diplomat in the British government’s Foreign Service. He joined Dow Jones in 2007 and has worked as a London-based European economics reporter covering crises and summits across the continent and as a political correspondent covering the 2010 UK election campaign, with the dubious distinction of riding Gordon Brown’s ‘battle bus’ in the final days before the poll.

Please join us in congratulating Joe in his important new job.