Danilo Türk

Danilo Türk
President of Slovenia
Incumbent
Assumed office 23 December 2007
Prime Minister	Janez Janša Borut Pahor
Preceded by	Janez Drnovšek
Personal details
Born	19 February 1952 (1952-02-19) (age 59) Maribor, Yugoslavia (now Slovenia)
Political party	Independent
Spouse(s)	Barbara Miklič
Alma mater	University of Ljubljana University of Belgrade
Website	www.daniloturk.si/

Danilo Türk (pronounced [tyrk]; born 19 February 1952) is the current President of Slovenia. He is also a lawyer and diplomat.

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. 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 co-authored the chapter of human rights in the 19XX Slovenian Constitution.

Diplomatic and academic career

From 1992 to 2000, Türk was first the Slovenian 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] 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.

Election to president

Main article: Slovenian presidential election, 2007

Danilo Türk and his wife Barbara with Harald V and Sonja of Norway in 2011

In June 2007 he accepted to run in the 2007 Slovenian 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 the robot-assisted prostate cancer surgery at the Urology Institute in Innsbruck, Austria. The media have been questioning 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 performing such type of operation than Celje.^[4]

Honors and awards

•  Albania: Received a copy of the key of the city of Tirana on the occasion of his state visit to Albania.^[5]

References

1. ^ "Presidents of the Security Council : 1990-1999", UN.org.
2. ^ “UN diplomat wins Slovenia election”, Al Jazeera, 11. November 2007
3. ^ "Predsednikova operacija v Avstriji ni nezaupnica slovenskemu zdravstvu [The President's Operation in Austria is not a Vote of No Confidence to the Slovenian Health System]" (in Slovene). MMC RTV Slovenia. 31 March 2011. http://www.rtvslo.si/zdravje/predsednikova-operacija-v-avstriji-ni-nezaupnica-slovenskemu-zdravstvu/254291. 
4. ^ "Predsednik Danilo Türk na operacijo v Avstrijo [The President Danilo Türk Underwent Surgery in Austria]" (in Slovene). 31 March 2011. http://www.delo.si/clanek/146320. 
5. ^ Received a copy of the key of the city of Tirana

External links

• (English) Biography
• Presidential campaign site
• (Spanish) Biography by CIDOB Foundation
• (English) Interview from December 2009 in English with transcript

Political offices
Preceded by Janez Drnovšek	President of Slovenia 2007–present	Incumbent

Persondata
Name	Turk, Danilo
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	19 February 1952
Place of birth	Maribor, Yugoslavia (Slovenia)
Date of death
Place of death