The HSYK made the appointments on Monday night. Former Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor Hüseyin Boyrazoğlu is among the new members of the Supreme Court of Appeals, along with former Ministry of Justice Deputy Undersecretary Hüseyin Yıldırım and Hüsnü Uğurlu, the former deputy director-general of the Ministry of Justice’s department of legal affairs.
The HSYK is expected to assign a prosecutor as the new Ankara chief public prosecutor in the coming days.
The HSYK had for the last eight months not been able to decide on what judges to appoint to the 34 posts of the Supreme Court of Appeals. According to the law regulating the appointment of judges to the court, however, the HSYK must assign judges to the court’s open posts within two months of them becoming vacant.
Several reports pointed to tension between the HSYK and the Ministry of Justice as the cause for the delay in appointing judges to the country’s highest court. After numerous calls from the Ministry of Justice to the HSYK to draw up a list of judges to be assigned to the Supreme Court of Appeals, the HSYK issued its list of 34 judges, 20 of whom have faced judicial investigations on more than one occasion.
Following the ministry’s rejection of the list, the ministry suggested changing the appointments procedure and recommended that an examination be a condition for assignment to a seat on the Supreme Court of Appeals. The HSYK rejected the proposal. The dispute between the two institutions led to an eight-month delay in appointing judges to the appeals court.
In the summer of 2009, when decisions were made for the appointment of judges and prosecutors to their posts for the new legislative year, the HSYK held up meetings with the Ministry of Justice by demanding replacement of the prosecutors conducting an investigation into Ergenekon, a clandestine organization charged with plotting to overthrow the government. The HSYK members’ insistence on removing Ergenekon prosecutors from their posts created a roadblock in the process of reassigning judges and prosecutors.
