The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) approved law scholar Saadet Yüksel in a vote on Tuesday as the new judge from Turkey on the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the Turkish Foreign Ministry announced.
Although incumbent judge Işıl Karakaş’s term expired in April 2017, Turkey had repeatedly failed to provide an acceptable candidate list to PACE.
“Our Government has conducted a meticulous process in order to identify qualified candidates to be submitted for election to the Court. As a result of this process, we are pleased that our new judge who will hold office for 9 years at the ECtHR is elected,” the foreign ministry statement said.
Yüksel has been working at İstanbul University Law School since 2006 and has served as chair of the constitutional law department for the last two years. She earned an MA from Harvard University in 2011.
Some 13 percent of the applications submitted to the ECtHR are from Turkey, with 7,100 applications still pending, according to a statement issued by the court in January.