Ahmet Necdet Sezer

Ahmet Necdet Sezer (born September 13, 1941) is the tenth and current President of Turkey. Sezer was elected by the Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi (the Grand National Assembly of Turkey) in 2000 after Süleyman Demirel's seven year term expired.

Sezer is the first president in Turkish history to have been neither a military leader nor a politician. He was previously the president of the Constitutional Court of Turkey, after a long career as lawyer and judge.

He was sworn in as President of the Republic on May 16, 2000. He is a strong secularist, and has sometimes been at odds with his Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. However, like Erdogan and his government, Sezer supports Turkey's attempts to gain membership in the European Union. He has criticized the Turkish constitution as insufficiently democratic.