Danilo Türk
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Danilo Türk | |
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File:Danilo Türk 2011.jpg | |
President of Slovenia | |
In office 23 December 2007 – 22 December 2012 |
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Prime Minister | Janez Janša Borut Pahor Janez Janša |
Preceded by | Janez Drnovšek |
Succeeded by | Borut Pahor |
Assistant Secretary-General of the UN for Political Affairs | |
In office 2000–2005 |
|
Secretary-General | Kofi Anan |
Ambassador - Permanent Representative of Slovenia to the United Nations | |
In office 1991–2000 |
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President | Milan Kučan |
Succeeded by | Ernest Petrič |
President of the United Nations Security Council | |
In office August 1998 |
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Preceded by | Sergey Lavrov |
Succeeded by | Lena Hjelm-Wallén |
In office November 1999 |
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Preceded by | Sergey Lavrov |
Succeeded by | Peter Hain |
Personal details | |
Born | Maribor, Yugoslavia (now Slovenia) |
19 February 1952
Nationality | Slovenian |
Political party | Independent |
Spouse(s) | Barbara Miklič |
Children | 1 |
Alma mater | University of Ljubljana University of Belgrade |
Website | Official website |
Danilo Türk (pronounced [daˈníːlɔ ˈtýrk]; born 19 February 1952) is a Slovenian lawyer, diplomat and politician who served as the President of Slovenia between December 2007 and December 2012. He was also the first Slovene ambassador to the United Nations from 1991 until 2000. As of 2014, he is a visiting professor of international law at Columbia University in New York City. He is a professor emeritus.
Contents
Early life
Türk was born in a lower-middle-class family in Maribor, Slovenia (then part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). His father died when he was a child. He attended the prestigious II. Gymnasium High school in Maribor. In 1971 he enrolled to the University of Ljubljana where he studied law. After graduation he served as the secretary of the commission for minority and expatriate affairs at the Socialist alliance of working people (SZDL), a mass organisation sponsored by Yugoslav communist party. In December 1979 he became the chairman of that commission and was later promoted to become a member of the executive committee of SZDL. He obtained an MA with a thesis on minority rights from the University of Belgrade's Law School. In 1978, he became a teaching assistant at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana. In 1982, he obtained his PhD with a thesis on the principle of non-intervention in international law. In 1983, he became the director of the Institute for International Law of the University of Ljubljana. In the following years, he worked on minority rights. In the mid 1980s, he collaborated with Amnesty International to report on human rights issues in Yugoslavia.
Between 1986 and 1992, he served as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Realization of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In 1990, he returned to Slovenia as member of the Constitutional Commission of the Slovenian National Assembly led by France Bučar and Peter Jambrek. He cowrote the human rights chapter in 1991's Slovene Constitution.
Diplomatic and academic career
From 1992 to 2000, Türk was the first Slovene Permanent Representative to the United Nations. During this time, he was president of the United Nations Security Council in August 1998 and November 1999.[1] Between 1997 and 1998, he was a member of the UN Human Rights Committee. From 2000 to 2005, he served as UN Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs. In 2005 he returned to Slovenia, becoming professor of international law and vice dean of student affairs at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana. He is author of the first Slovene book of international law, called Temelji mednarodnega prava (Foundations of International Law).
Election to president
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In June 2007 he accepted to run in the 2007 Slovene presidential election. As an "independent" candidate, he was backed by a broad coalition of left wing parties, composed by the opposition Zares and Social Democrats, the Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia, as well as by the extra-parliamentary Christian Socialist and Democratic Party. In the first round of the presidential elections, held on 21 October 2007, he placed second with 24.54% of the votes, which brought him into the run-off against the centre right candidate Lojze Peterle who received 28.50% of the popular vote. He won the run-off on 11 November 2007 by a landslide, with 68.2% of the votes,[2] becoming the third president of Slovenia on December 23, 2007.
Health issues
In March 2011, Danilo Türk successfully underwent robot-assisted prostate cancer surgery at the Urology Institute in Innsbruck, Austria. The media questioned his decision to have the operation performed abroad, as it could be also done at the General Hospital Celje in Slovenia.[3] Andrej Kmetec, the head of the Department of Urology at the University Medical Centre Ljubljana, explained that he had advised Türk to choose the Innsbruck centre because they had much more experience than Celje in performing such operations.[4]
2012 election
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He ran for re-election in 2012, but lost the election to Borut Pahor in a second round of voting, held on 2 December 2012; he received roughly one-third of the votes.[5]
UN Secretary-General candidature
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In December 2013 Türk announced that he was planning to run for the position of UN Secretary-General. He was soon supported by Prime Minister Alenka Bratušek and Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel Erjavec. In January 2014 the Slovene government officially nominated Türk as its candidate for UN Secretary-General. He was later supported also by the new Prime Minister Miro Cerar and President Borut Pahor. At the beginning he was also supported by then professor at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences and future speaker of the National Assembly of Slovenia Milan Brglez.
Türk has many experiences with work in the United Nations. He served as the first Permanent Representative of the Republic of Slovenia to the UN, he stayed in New York as Ambassador for 9 years from 1991 until 2000. As Slovenian representative he also presided the United Nations Security Council twice. His work was recognised by then Secretary-General of the UN Kofi Anan, who chose Türk as one of his coworkers and named him for Assistant Secretary-General in 2000. He served as Assistant Secretary-General until 2005, when he returned to Slovenia, where he worked as professor of international law in University of Ljubljana. He was also Slovenian representative to the UN Human Rights Committee.
For many experts Türk is a very good candidate, as he worked in the UN and cooperated with its institutions for more than 30 years. The Secretary-General of the UN Kofi Anan also invited Türk to be his assistant for political affairs. He was Assistant Secretary-General for more than 5 years, before he returned in Ljubljana as professor of the international law at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Law. Türk has been recognised as an expert for the human rights and his work has been connected with human rights and fight for equality for more than 40 years. He is also one of the authors of the Human rights chapter of the Slovene Constitution.
American analyst Richard Gowan recognised Türk as one of the favourites for the position of Secretary-General.
In December 2015 Türk was officially nominated by the Slovenian Government.
Honors and awards
- Albania: Received a copy of the key of the city of Tirana on the occasion of his state visit to Albania.[6]
- Austria: Grand Star of the Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria (2011)[7]
- Azerbaijan: Ilyas Afandiyev International Prize (2010)
- European Union: European Court of Auditors Medal (2012)
- Finland: Commander, First Class, Order of the White Rose of Finland (2010)
- Hungary: Gold medal of the Széchenyi Scientific Society (2008)
- Hungary: Honorary Doctorate, University of Szeged (2010)
- Hungary: Honorary Doctorate, Corvinus University of Budapest (2015)
- Iceland: Knight Grand Cross, Order of the Falcon (2011)
- Italy: Knight Grand Cross with Cordon, Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (2011)
- Kazakhstan: Honorary Professor of the Academy of Public Administration, Astana (2009)
- Monaco : Grand Cross of the Order of Saint-Charles (11 January 2011) [8]
- Norway: Grand Cross, Royal Norwegian Order of St Olav (2011)
- Peru: Grand Cross with Diamonds, Order of the Sun of Peru (2008)
- Russia: Honorary Doctorate, Moscow State Institute of International Relations (2012)
- Ukraine: Honorary Doctorate, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (2011)
- United Kingdom: Received the Order of the Bath by Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to Slovenia in 2008.[9]
- United States of America: Arthur J. Goldberg Award, Touro Law College (2008)
- Protector of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (2008)
Personal life
Danilo Türk is married to Barbara Türk née Miklič. They have a daughter. He is the brother of the manager Vitoslav Türk, member of the Slovenian Democratic Party.[10][11]
References
- ↑ "Presidents of the Security Council : 1990-1999", UN.org.
- ↑ "UN diplomat wins Slovenia election", Al Jazeera, 11. November 2007
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- ↑ Received a copy of the key of the city of Tirana
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- ↑ Nomination by Sovereign Ordonnance n°3076 of 11 January 2011 (French)
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External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. |
- Web page of the president of Slovenia
- Former presidents of Slovenia with links on their archive web pages
- Office of former President Danilo Türk
- Biography
- Presidential campaign site 2012
- (Spanish) Biography by CIDOB Foundation
- Interview from December 2009 in English with transcript
Political offices | ||
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Preceded by | President of Slovenia 2007–2012 |
Succeeded by Borut Pahor |
- Use dmy dates from May 2014
- Pages with broken file links
- Articles with Spanish-language external links
- 1952 births
- Grand Crosses of the Order of Saint-Charles
- Honorary Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
- Knights Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic
- Living people
- Members of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights
- People from Maribor
- Permanent Representatives of Slovenia to the United Nations
- Presidents of Slovenia
- Slovenian academics
- Slovenian diplomats
- Slovenian lawyers
- United Nations Human Rights Committee members
- United Nations officials
- University of Belgrade alumni
- University of Belgrade Faculty of Law alumni
- University of Ljubljana alumni
- University of Ljubljana faculty
- Columbia University faculty