New President of the Turkish Constitutional Court

For the first time in Turkish history, a woman has been elected to hold the highest judicial position in the country. Last week the predominately male high court judges elected 63-year-old Tülay Tugcu as their President. Yesim Kasap reports

The Turkish woman appointed to one of the most powerful positions in the country is blond, a professor, and she owes a great deal in her career to former minister and Turkish President Süleyman Demirel.

No, we are not referring to former Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller and this is not the year 1993. The woman in question is Tülay Tugcu, the recently elected President of the Constitutional Court.

Her new appointment makes Tugcu the 6th most important person in the Turkish state protocol. The Turkish political and judicial system is dominated by men, and it takes a very special woman to hold her own in this male domain. Tugcu was elected after 59 rounds of voting among the 11 high court judges, and a decision was only reached after the preferred nominee of the governing AKP party volunteered to withdraw his candidacy.

For democracy and secularism

Back in 1993, many Turks were wildly enthusiastic when Ciller came to power because they saw her appointment as an emancipatory victory over Islamic fundamentalism.

However, Ciller's supporters of over a decade ago today hold far more reserved views of Tülay Tugcu, who managed to prevail over her male competition and a female challenger for the top judicial position in the country.

As a staunch secularist, in 2001 Tugcu voted to ban the Islamist Virtue Party – the radical predecessor of the current fairly moderate Islamic governing party. She also spoke out against accepting graduates of religious high schools – Imam-Hatip schools – into the country's police academies.

In addition, she was a member of the group of judges who rejected the lawsuit filed by the extreme right-wing nationalist MHP party against measures to comply with EU norms and standards. She also voted in favor of a controversial 5-year political ban for Merve Kavakci, an MP who insisted on wearing her hijab in parliament.

Furthermore, she supported a warning issued by the court to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, now the Turkish Prime Minister, when he founded the AKP, the current governing party, despite a previous conviction as an Islamic activist.

Not surprisingly, in her first speech after her election, Tugcu publicly reaffirmed her commitment to a direct confrontational course with Islamic elements in Turkish society. She vowed to uphold the reforms and principles of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern secular Turkish republic in the 1920s.

Brief term of office

Not much more is known about Tülay Tugcu. She was born in Ankara in 1942 and is well educated. After working for many years as a lawyer, she rapidly made a career for herself as a judge.

In 1982, she was given a position on the highest administrative court, the Danistay, and in 1999 she was appointed to the Constitutional Court by the Turkish President at the time, Süleyman Demirel.

Tugcu has two children and is married to a lawyer. In addition, her brother-in-law, a well known columnist in Turkey, is an avowed enemy of the moderate Islamists.

Her meteoric rise to the country's top judicial position took virtually everyone by surprise. Judging from articles in the press, however, it is clear that Tugcu is the preferred candidate of those in Turkey who favor early elections. Tugcu's term of office will in fact be brief. She will retire in two years.

There are certain similarities between Tugcu's election as President of the Constitutional Court and the appointment of the current Turkish President and former President of the Constitutional Court, Ahmed Necdet Sezer.

Sezer was chosen to head the Constitutional Court in 1998 and became the Turkish President just two years later. Nonetheless, shorter after assuming her new position, Tugcu explicitly stated that she did not intend to become the first female President of Turkey.

Yesim Kasap

Translation from German: Paul Cohen

Qantara

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