Ahmet Necdet Sezer

Ahmet Necdet Sezer is a Turkish judge and statesman, born in Afyonkarahisar in 1941, who served as president of Turkey from 2000 to 2007. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Ankara University in 1962 and began his career as a judge in Ankara, later becoming a supervisory judge in the High Court of Appeals, to which he was elected in 1983. He was appointed a member of the Constitutional Court in 1988, was reappointed for another five years in 1993 and was elected its chief justice in January 1998. He resigned in 2000 to become president, the first Turkish head of state to come from a judicial background. As president he defended secularism firmly, vetoed several laws passed by the government elected in 2002 and referred others to the Constitutional Court.