Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm
A 59-year-old former communist with a history of multiple arrests, now serving as chief advisor to the Turkish president, has effectively become the country’s de facto justice minister, exerting significant influence over the judiciary to politicize the legal system and bolster Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist government through the blatant manipulation of criminal justice.
Mehmet Uçum (also known as Mehmet Ata Uçum), who had repeatedly been in and out of prison for his illegal activities on behalf of Turkey’s Communist Party when it was banned, is reportedly the country’s true justice minister, having the final say on judicial matters.
Not only is he the chief aide to Erdogan, Uçum also serves as the deputy chairman of the Presidential Board for Judicial Policies (Hukuk Politikaları Kurulu Başkanvekili), effectively running it on behalf of the president. Although Erdogan serves as the official chair, he rarely attends board meetings, delegating his authority entirely to Uçum.
His elder brother, Veysel Uçum, was also secretly involved with the Communist Party, operating as the provincial secretary in their home province of Kars in northeastern Turkey during the late 1970s. In fact, the brothers shared the same jail cell for a month and a half in the early 1980s after being detained for illegal activities on behalf of the banned party. Mehmet Uçum, the younger brother, was sentenced to a year in prison and served four months before being released.
Both brothers later became lawyers and established their own practice, but they continued their involvement with the Communist Party, which had been renamed the United Communist Party of Turkey (Türkiye Birleşik Komünist Partisi, TBKP) in October 1987 after merging with the Workers Party of Turkey (Türkiye İşçi Partisi, TİP). Despite the rebranding, the TBKP was also banned.
The younger Uçum was among 12 people detained during a police operation on February 25, 1989 at Öncü Hukuk Bürosu, a law office employing lawyers with links to the Communist Party. The detention, search and seizure warrants were issued by the state security prosecutor.
The Turkish president’s chief advisor also served as a coordinator for the Adımlar newspaper, a propaganda publication of the Communist Party. When the police raided the Adımlar office in Istanbul’s Şişli district on February 11, 1990, Uçum was once again among those detained.
Allegedly subjected to ill-treatment and abuse during his detention, Uçum became a vocal advocate against torture. Between 1998 and 2002 he served as the coordinator of the Istanbul Bar Association’s commission on enforced disappearances and unsolved murders.
During the first decade of Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule, from 2002 to 2011, Uçum engaged in projects that facilitated his connections with then-prime minister Erdogan and his government. His efforts proved successful since he ran on the AKP ticket and was elected as an MP in the June 2015 general election. Representing his home province of Kars, the former communist became a member of the Islamic-rooted AKP parliamentary group.
However, his time in parliament was short lived after Erdogan called a snap election to regain the majority he had lost. In the November 1, 2015 snap poll Uçum was not nominated as a candidate. Instead, on December 10, 2015, Erdogan appointed him chief advisor on judicial matters.
He attempted to rebrand himself from a Marxist-Leninist leftist to a conservative social democrat, yet his public outbursts frequently referenced communist ideological keywords. His anti-Western and anti-Israel stance remains robust, characterized by frequent attacks on the US and Europe, which he denounces as global imperialists.
While he previously advocated for the enforcement of rulings issued by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), he has since reversed his position, arguing that Turkey is not obliged to adhere to Strasbourg court decisions despite a specific constitutional provision mandating that ECtHR rulings are binding on Turkey.
He is now an ardent supporter of oppressive state practices that infringe on fundamental rights, freedoms and liberties. Despite having once been a victim and an outspoken critic of torture and abuse, he has sought to justify these practices, even as instances of such abuse surged in Turkish prisons and detention facilities starting in 2015 and 2016.
In July 2024 he claimed that Turks had carried out a “people’s revolution” during a coup attempt in 2016, drawing parallels to revolutions in Venezuela and Bolivia. The coup attempt was in fact a false flag operation orchestrated by President Erdogan and his intelligence and military chiefs to consolidate his power.
However, Uçum seeks to frame this event as a revolutionary narrative, asserting that Turkey, under Erdogan’s leadership, has become a role model for those resisting global imperialism and fighting for their existence and independence. “Yet, the attacks of global imperialism on our country persist; the traps they set and the operations they carry out with their local collaborators continue,” he tweeted on X.
Uçum said that had Erdogan lost the local elections in March 2024, Turkey would have abandoned its path to full independence and reverted to Western-oriented projects. “This time, Western assimilation would have engulfed the entire society,” he claimed. “In the end, all the ‘Westernizers’—liberals, conservatives and secularists alike—along with the foreign missions and imperialist forces they collaborated with, would have once again been disappointed,” he added.
In an article for the state-run Anadolu news agency, he asserted that power struggles are the primary drivers of international politics and that in such an environment, international law can be disregarded. “No one should claim that problems can be solved or that approaches can be developed based on international law, UN resolutions, EU law, Council of Europe law or ECtHR decisions,” he wrote in May 2022. “If a country is not strong, if it is not uncompromising on the issue of independence, and if it does not assert its own will economically, militarily and politically, it is doomed to be crushed in the international power struggle.”
He declared a 2017 referendum on constitutional amendments that granted Erdogan imperial-like presidential powers free of checks and balances and turned the parliament into a mere rubber-stamping body to have been a revolution that would lead to the establishment of a new state. Uçum was part of the team that drafted these amendments, which dismantled the balance of power among the executive, legislature and judiciary.
When asked on a TV program whether the government should apologize to the victims of mass purges in the civil service that affected over 100,000 government employees, Uçum dismissed the question. Instead, he pointed out that apologies for historical injustices often come many years later, citing the delayed apologies for the oppression of Native Americans by the US government and Aborigines by the Australian government. He also recalled that Turkey had issued condolences nearly a century after the mass killings of Armenians in 1915.
During the campaign for the 2023 presidential and national elections, Uçum voiced his anti-Western perspective by asserting that “a change of government in the 2023 elections would be a major setback for Turkey’s path to total independence.” He warned that “in such a scenario, a Western ruling philosophy would prevail, putting Turkey’s territorial integrity and political unity at risk.”
Uçum has been leading a campaign against Turkey’s Constitutional Court for some time. He criticized the court’s judgment which declared that the rights of jailed journalists Şahin Alpay and Mehmet Altan had been violated. Despite a similar ruling from the European Court of Human Rights, Alpay was conditionally released, while Altan remained in prison for a period of time before eventually being freed.
Ever since the Constitutional Court ruled in several recent cases against local and appellate courts, finding violations of fundamental human rights, Uçum has been at the forefront of an attack on the judges of the top court. He has challenged the interpretation that the Constitutional Court’s decisions on individual petitions are binding under Article 153 of the constitution, which underscores the binding nature of the top court’s rulings on all branches of government.
Uçum has advocated for a restructuring of the Constitutional Court to align it with what he describes as “national judicial norms,” criticizing the court for its perceived “Western and neoliberal biases.”
The Turkish president’s aide also criticized the Constitutional Court after it ruled twice that the rights of a jailed lawmaker—specifically, his right to a fair trial, his ability to engage in political activity and his liberty—had been violated. The government did not enforce the judgment, and the Supreme Court of Appeals subsequently ruled that Can Atalay, a newly elected parliamentarian from the Workers Party of Turkey (TİP), would remain in prison to serve an 18-year sentence related to the 2013 Gezi Park protests.
Uçum branded the Constitutional Court as a “flawed institution,” citing instances of perceived constitutional violations and legal overreach throughout its history. He claimed that the court positions itself above the Supreme Court of Appeals and the Council of State without legal justification, leading to numerous violations of law. Uçum asserted that the court’s actions have created judicial chaos, with lower courts rebelling against its unconstitutional decisions.
Erdogan’s aide also exerts pressure on journalists and media outlets through the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK), Turkey’s broadcasting and streaming regulator, by filing complaints about impartiality and factuality. His petitions have resulted in censure and penalties for various TV networks.
He also defended the dismissal of elected Kurdish mayors who were replaced by government-appointed officials on terrorism charges. In April 2024 Uçum accused voters who showed solidarity with Kurdish politician Abdullah Zeydan—initially denied the mandate to serve as mayor in the eastern province of Van—of rebelling against the state and collaborating with terrorists. Turkey’s election authority eventually reinstated Zeydan as mayor following protests that erupted when the provincial election board had initially awarded the mayoral mandate to the runner-up from Erdogan’s AKP, citing a court decision that had revoked Zeydan’s right to run for election before the March 31 local polls.
As a 15-year-old member of the youth wing of the illegal Communist Party, Uçum was known to have written slogans such as “No to Fascism” on walls in the streets, which led to his arrest and alleged abuse in prison. Now, he is one of the main architects of Erdogan’s regime, which is often characterized as fascist and authoritarian and relies on police and intelligence agencies to maintain an iron-fisted grip on the country.
Uçum’s latest project is to craft a completely overhauled constitution for President Erdogan, aimed at further empowering the president, solidifying his rule and ensuring that his legacy can be extended into the future through a family member.
