There are many ways one can look at the surprise appointment and then the quick exit, even before the takeover, of Ilker Ayci as the CEO of recently privatised Air India. But one question before we talk of the controversial appointment and the equally controversial exit is this: how did the politically sensitive Tata group even consider a Turkish national for the role?
Here's where it is increasingly clear that CEO candidates should be reasonably vetted on political grounds where the company in question is, in effect, a national institution.
Barely three weeks ago, the man credited with a turnaround in Turkish Air was named as the first post-privatisation CEO of the carrier that was once a state monopoly with a maharaja as its icon. On the face of it, that seemed fine. But it is clear that Tata Sons chairman N. Chandrasekaran was treading on ultra-thin ice because it simultaneously emerged that Ayci was once an adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan when he was the mayor of Istanbul. Erdogan has even attended Ayci's wedding.