Cemil Çiçek

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Cemil Çiçek (b 1946 Yozgat) is Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey and AKP Member of Parliament from Ankara. He was formerly Minister of Justice and government spokesman.

He graduated from the Law Faculty of Istanbul University and joined the centre-right ANAP in 1983. He became an ANAP MP for Yozgat, and in the late 1980s Minister of State responsible for "the family". In this role he was known for his conservative views on matters of sex and marriage. He later became Minister for energy and natural resources but was expelled from ANAP in 1997, upon which he joined the Islamic leaning Fazilet Party which later evolved into the AKP.

He was Minister of Justice in the first AKP government (from 2003 to 2007) when as a former ANAP MP he was thought to be one of the leading figures of the AKP most acceptable to the Turkish military. During his ministry he had to deal with situations including:

the 2003 Istanbul bombings
the release from prison of former MP Leyla Zana,
a conference to discuss the Armenian Genocide issue at Bilgi University, which was banned following pressure from Çiçek and his department.
the prosecutions of a number of police officers accused of torturing prisoners.
an attempted suicide bombing of his ministry.

His legislation included stricter controls of prisons (in 2006).

[edit] Quotes

As Minister of Justice

The mentality of the general public is the prime obstacle to rule of law (in Turkey). "Our public does not want justice, they just want their own affairs sorted out. They want to see corruption investigated but they are not ashamed to manage their own affairs corruptly. The public actually doesn't care about corruption. They say "let someone tackle it while we watch and see who wins" as if it were a football match. He then went to blame the professional bodies for not exposing corruption among their members. ^[1]

The Islamic world will get nowhere by blaming all its problems on the outside world and making itself out to be a white spoon just pulled out of the milk^[2]

(Upon the release from prison of Leyla Zana..)The Turkish courts have played their part. Now the EU has no excuse (not to begin entry negotiations with Turkey)