Mehmet Şimşek

Who is Mehmet Şimşek?

Mehmet Şimşek was born on 1 January 1967 to a Kurdish family in the village of Arıca, Mardin Province.

He is the Minister of Finance of Turkey in the cabinet of re-elected Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He was elected to the Parliament for Gaziantep in the general election on July 22, 2007. Mehmet Şimşek was the State Minister for Economic Affairs from August 2007 to April 2009. On May 1, 2009, he was appointed Minister of Finance. He is a member of the Justice and Development Party.

Şimşek earned his B.Sc. in Economics from Ankara University in 1988. After working as research assistant in the chair of international economics and economic development, he was awarded a state scholarship to the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, where he earned his M.Phil. in Finance and Investments in 1993.

Şimşek previously worked as the chief economist and strategist for emerging Europe, Middle East and Africa region at Merrill Lynch in London for 7 years. At this time he had a number of contacts with the Turkish authorities and the Central Bank and had worked with the AK Party government on economic policy. He also served as senior economist and bank analyst for Deutsche-Bender Securities from 1998 to 2000. Mr Şimşek spent about a year in New York where he worked for UBS Securities in 1997. Prior to that, he was a senior economist at the US Embassy in Ankara for almost four years.