Ahmet Necdet Sezer

Ahmet Necdet Sezer [ ɑhmɛt nɛdʒdɛt sɛzɛr ] (* September 13, 1941 in Afyon ) was the 10th President of the Republic of Turkey.

Sezer received his doctorate at the Faculty of Law at Ankara University and then became a judge. From 1983 he was the Supreme Court operates and in 1988 appointed by the then President General Kenan Evren to the Constitutional Court, which he chaired in 1998 as the successor of Yekta Güngör Özden. After he was elected on 5 May 2000 in the third ballot of the parliament, he was sworn in as successor of Suleyman Demirel as 10th president on May 16, 2000.

Sezer is the first Turkish president who was neither parliamentarians nor comes from the army.

During his tenure, he pardoned 260 prisoners. 78 percent of the pardoned were members of proscribed underground organizations such as the PKK. The basis for the pardons of paragraph 104 of the Turkish Constitution.