Turkey failed to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council after member states voted on Thursday.
The five non-permanent seats were given to Venezuela, Angola, Malaysia, New Zealand and Spain, the latter two beating Turkey to represent the West, the BBC reported.
Despite lobbying heavily amongst the UN’s 193 member nations, Turkey lost out to Spain, which won the third round of run-off voting for the second of the two Western seats.
Turkey, which won only 60 of votes in the final round, jeopardized its bid last week when it launched airstrikes against Kurdish forces fighting the IS group, which the Security Council is seeking to curb. The country has also been under international pressure to help combat IS militants waging war along its border.
New Zealand won the first round with 145 votes.
The state-run Anadolu Agency reported Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu as saying: “We could not abandon our principles for the sake of getting more votes.”
New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key said: “We just put on display the credentials of New Zealand, which is a country that’s seen as an honest broker, someone that stands up for what’s right.”
There were celebrations in Venezuela as the country took the Latin America and Caribbean seat unopposed.
The United States, who publicly opposed Venezuela’s bid in 2006 remained silent this time though they would not say how they voted.
Venezuela’s victory is likely to benefit its allies Russia and China who sit as permanent members on the Security Council, analysts say.
Malaysia and Angola also ran unopposed for the Asian and African seats respectively.
The five new members each received over two-thirds of the votes cast in a secret ballot.
The new members of the Security Council will begin their two-year appointment on 1 January 2015.
They will join five other non-permanent members: Chad, Chile, Jordan, Lithuania and Nigeria.
Argentina, Australia, Luxembourg, South Korea and Rwanda will step down at the end of the year to make way for the newly-elected members.
