TURKEY'S CONSTITUTIONAL COURT PRESIDENT RETIRES:

C O N F I D E N T I A L ANKARA 001498

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/11/2017
TAGS: PGOV TU
SUBJECT: TURKEY'S CONSTITUTIONAL COURT PRESIDENT RETIRES:
SEZER TO FILL VACANCY

Classified By: Acting Political Counselor Kelly Degnan for reasons 1.4(
b),(d)


1. (U) Summary. Turkey's Constitutional Court President
Tulay Tugcu will retire on June 12, opening the way for
President Sezer to appoint a new justice to the high court.
Sezer will fill the vacancy by choosing from among three
nominees yet to be selected by the Council of State
(Danistay). Current court vice president Hasim Kilic will
step in as acting president until the Constitutional Court
elects a new president from among its 11 members. Tugcu, the
court's first female president, has presided over several
controversial decisions since taking the top job in 2005,
including the May 1 ruling that invalidated parliament's
first round of voting for president. End Summary.


2. (SBU) The time-consuming process of selecting a new
justice and electing a court president may leave Kilic
running the court for some time. According to Koksal Toptan,
parliament's justice committee chairman, the Council of
State's General Assembly must convene and agree on the three
names to submit to Sezer to fill the vacancy created by
Tugcu's departure. If the court waits to elect its next
president until the new justice is appointed, rather than
having an alternate justice sit in temporarily for the vote,
Kilic could remain as acting president for weeks. Toptal
noted that Kilic, who has served on the court since 1991 and
is known for less hardcore secular positions than his
colleagues, may delay the election until after a ruling on a
voting rights case brought by the court's four alternate
jurists. In May, Tugcu rejected the four judges' request to
expand their limited voting rights to include election of the
court's president. Their challenge to her ruling is pending
in an administrative court.


3. (C) Kilic is one of four jurists reportedly favored by
court members for the presidency. He was appointed by Turgut
Ozal in 1991, over the objection of the Istanbul and Ankara
Bar Associations, and has served as vice president since

1999. His vote against the closure of the Islamist-oriented
Refah Party in 2001 and his wife's headscarf added to his
reputation as a conservative. Others reportedly in the
running are Fulya Kantarcioglu, who moved to the
Constitutional Court from the Council of State in 1995; Ahmet
Akyalcin, who joined the high court in 2000 and also serves
as president of the Court of Jurisdictional Disputes; and
Mehmet Erten, who moved to the Constitutional Court in 2002
after a career as a prosecutor and criminal law judge.


4. (C) Tugcu snatched the presidency from Kilic in 2005, when
Kilic, reportedly Erdogan's preferred nominee, withdrew his
candidacy after 58 rounds of voting. Tugcu was appointed to
the court in 1999 by Suleyman Demirel after seven years as a
Council of State member. Known as a staunch secularist,
Tugcu reaffirmed her commitment to confronting Islamic
elements in Turkish society in her first public statement as
president and vowed to uphold Kemal Ataturk's reforms and
principles. She voted to ban the Refah Party in 2001 and
later ruled that Erdogan could not serve as Justice and
Development Party (AKP) chairman because of his conviction
under Turkey's penal code. In 2005, she rejected an AKP plan
to allow parliament to elect several Constitutional Court
jurists for fear that it would politicize the court, and
voted in favor of a controversial five-year political ban for
an MP who insisted on wearing her headscarf in parliament.
Tugcu may be remembered most for presiding over the ruling
that a quorum of 367 MPs is required for presidential
elections; the May 1 decision invalidated the first round of
voting for FM Gul's presidency and forced the government to
call for early elections now set for July 22.

Visit Ankara's Classified Web Site at
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/ankara/

WILSON