page_title: Danilo Türk
section_title: Presidency
hierarchical_section_title: Danilo Türk / Presidency
caption_attribution_description: English: King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway with the Slovenian President Danilo Türk and First Lady Barbara Miklič Türk in Slovenia in 2011
context_page_description: Danilo Türk is a Slovenian diplomat, professor of international law, human rights expert, and political figure who served as President of Slovenia from 2007 to 2012. Türk was the first Slovene ambassador to the United Nations, from 1992 to 2000, and was the UN Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs from 2000 to 2005.
  He is a visiting professor of international law at Columbia University in New York City, a professor emeritus at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana, and non-resident senior fellow of Chongyang Institute for Financial studies at Renmin University of China in Beijing. Türk is the founder of the Danilo Türk Foundation, devoted mostly to the rehabilitation of child victims of armed conflict. He is also the chairman of the Global High Level Panel on Water and Peace and the chairman of the board of the Global Fairness Initiative, a Washington-based NGO dedicated to economic and social development in developing nations.
  In 2016, Türk was an unsuccessful candidate for the post of Secretary-General of the United Nations.
context_section_description: In June 2007, Türk ran in the Slovene presidential election. As an "independent" candidate, he was backed by a broad coalition of left-wing parties, composed of the opposition Zares party and Social Democrats, the Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia, and the extra-parliamentary Christian Socialist Party 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 runoff against the centre right candidate Lojze Peterle (who received 28.50% of the popular vote). He won the runoff on 11 November 2007 with 68.2% of the votes, becoming the third president of Slovenia on December 23, 2007.  Türk ran for reelection in 2012, but lost the election to Borut Pahor in a second round of voting, held on 2 December 2012. He received roughly one-third of the votes.
caption: Danilo Türk and his wife Barbara with King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway in 2011
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