WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- The White House said on Monday that the nomination of the U.S. ambassador to Turkey has been sent to the Senate for approval.

In a statement, the White House said that David Michael Satterfield is a career member of the senior Foreign Service and class of Career Minister.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Feb. 15 announced that he intended to nominate Satterfield, who has been the acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs since 2017.

According to the White House, Satterfield, a B.A. graduate from the University of Maryland, has previously served as the director general of the Multinational Force and Observers in Rome, Italy, from 2014 to 2017 and 2009 to 2013.

In 2014, he was special advisor to the secretary of state for Libya, based in Tripoli, Libya, and served as charge d'affaires at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt, from 2013 to 2014.

Satterfield speaks Arabic, French and Italian.

The U.S. ambassadorship to Turkey has been vacant since October 2017.

The nomination came at a critical moment as the United States and Turkey have been recently sparring over the fortunes of Kurdish militia in northern Syria, which has been an ally of Washington in the campaign against the Islamic State, but viewed as a "terrorist group" by Ankara.