Tansu Çiller

Tansu Çiller (born 24 May 1946) is a Turkish academic, economist, and politician who served as the 22nd Prime Minister of Turkey from 1993 to 1996.

She was Turkey's first and only female prime minister.

Tansu was born in Istanbul; she was the only child of her father Necati Çiller, a journalist and governor of Bilecik Province during the 1950s, and Muazzez Çiller, a Rumelian Turk from Thessaloniki.

Tansu Çiller graduated from the department of Economics at Boğaziçi University after completing her high school education at Robert College in Istanbul.

She continued the DYP-SHP coalition with small changes (50th government of Turkey).

After graduating from Boğaziçi, she continued her studies in the United States, where she earned graduate degrees from the University of New Hampshire and University of Connecticut with her husband Özer Uçuran, who she married in 1963.

She later completed her postdoctoral studies at Yale University.

Çiller taught economics at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

In 1978, she became a lecturer at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul and in 1983 she was appointed as professor by the same institution.

She was also president of the now-defunct Istanbul Bank.

In addition to her job at Boğaziçi, Çiller made a name for herself with her studies at TÜSİAD and her critical reports of the Motherland Party's (ANAP) economic policies.

For a short time she was a consultant to Bedrettin Dalan, then Mayor of Istanbul.

In December of the same year, she was elected to the administrative board of the other major center-right party, the True Path Party (DYP) and became the deputy president responsible for the economy.

As a Professor of Economics, Çiller was appointed Minister of State for the economy by Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel in 1991.

Çiller entered parliament as a deputy from Istanbul in the 1991 election.

Çiller took credit for some DYP slogans for the election, such as "Two keys", but also generated controversy with the economic program called UDİDEM, which was not implemented by the government.

DYP won the election, and formed a coalition government with the Social Democrat Populist Party (SHP).

Çiller was appointed as a minister of state responsible for the economy by Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel.

She was elected to the executive board of DYP and acquired the position of deputy chair.

When Demirel was elected as President in 1993, Çiller was elected leader of the True Path Party and succeeded Demirel as Prime Minister.

Her premiership preceded over the intensifying armed conflict between the Turkish Armed Forces and the PKK, resulting in Çiller's enacting numerous reforms to national defense and implementing the Castle Plan.

With a better equipped military, Çiller's government was able to persuade the United States and the European Union to register the PKK as a terrorist organization.

However, Çiller was responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated against the Kurdish people by the Turkish military, security forces, and paramilitary.

Several reports of international organizations of human rights documented destroying and burning Kurdish villages and towns and extrajudicial killings of Kurdish civilians perpetrated by the Turkish military during Çiller's government of 1993–1996.

After the death in office of President Turgut Özal (which according to some was part of an alleged military coup), Prime Minister Demirel won the 1993 presidential election.

Suddenly the important position as Prime Minister and leader of the DYP was vacant.

The party found itself in a leadership crisis.

Çiller was no obvious candidate, but her three challengers could not muster the political capital to compete effectively.

The media and business community supported her, and her gender gave the impression that Turkey was a progressive Muslim country.

She fell 11 votes shy of a majority in the first ballot for party leader.

Her opponents withdrew and Çiller became the party's leader and on 25 June, the first and so far only female Prime Minister of Turkey.

Shortly after winning the 1994 local elections, large-scale capital flight due to the lack of confidence in Çiller's budget deficit targets led to the Turkish lira and foreign currency reserves' almost collapsing.

Amid the subsequent economic crisis and austerity measures, her government signed the EU-Turkey Customs Union in 1995.

Her government was alleged to have supported the 1995 Azeri coup d'état attempt and presided over an escalation of tensions with Greece after claiming sovereignty over the Imia/Kardak islets.

Although the DYP came third in the 1995 general election, she remained Prime Minister until she formed a coalition government with Necmettin Erbakan in 1996.

That year's Susurluk car crash and subsequent scandal revealed the relations between extra-legal organisations and Çiller's government.

Revelations that she had employed individuals connected with the Turkish mafia and the Grey Wolves such as Abdullah Çatlı led to a decline in her approval ratings.

As the leader of the True Path Party, she went on to concurrently serve as Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey and as Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1996 and 1997.

Erbakan's and Çiller's coalition government fell due to a coup by military memorandum, following which the DYP declined further in the 1999 general election.

Despite coming third in the 2002 general election, Çiller's DYP won less than 10% of the vote and thus lost all parliamentary representation, which led to her resignation as party leader and departure from active politics.