Uğur Uluocak

Who was Uğur Uluocak?

Yaşar Uğur Uluocak was a multi-talented Turkish outdoorsman, mountaineer, photographer and editor.

Born in 1962 in Ankara, Turkey, Uğur attended Saint Joseph High School in Istanbul, and graduated in Mechanical Engineering from Istanbul Technical University.

Uğur started mountain climbing in 1984 with the mountaineering club at Istanbul Technical University. Uğur was a complete sportsman. He competed four years in rowing, ranking in first place. He was a middle and long distance runner for eight years, and a scuba diver and cyclist for the last two years. As a globally known mountaineer, he trained many young sportsmen both in theoretical and practical ways.

From 1999 on, Uğur worked as a photographer, expedition coordinator and editor for the Turkish nature and outdoor sports magazine "Atlas". He not only wrote about his mountaineering adventures but also on mountaineering ethics and history with his friend Ahmet Köksal.

Uğur was an influential figure in the Turkish mountaineering community, with a very strong and dedicated personality and an extremely high intellectual capacity. He was fluent in five languages.

Professionally, he was a lecturer at the Marmara University in Istanbul and was also an active member of the Communist Party of Turkey for over 20 years.