Necmettin Bilal Erdoğan (born 23 April 1981) is a Turkish businessman and the second-born child of President

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (born 26 February 1954) is a Turkish politician who is the 12th and current president of Turkey since 2014. He previously served as the 25th prime minister of Turkey, prime minister from 2003 to 2014 as part of the Jus ...

Early life

Necmettin Bilal was born on 24 April 1981, the second child of

and

Emine Erdoğan Emine Erdoğan (; born 16 February 1955) is the current first lady of Turkey as the wife of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Early and personal life Early life Emine Erdoğan was born as Cemal and Hayriye Gülbaran’s fifth child and only ...

. He has an older brother, Ahmet Burak, and two younger sisters, Esra Erdoğan and Sümeyye Erdoğan. After finishing secondary school at Kartal Anadolu İmam Hatip Lisesi in 1999, Erdoğan moved to the United States, and graduated from

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, IUB, or Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana Univer ...

with a bachelor's degree in political science and economics. He then earned a master's degree from the

John F. Kennedy School of Government The John F. Kennedy School of Government, commonly referred to as Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), is the school of public policy of Harvard University, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard Kennedy School offers master's de ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 2004.

Career

After graduation, he served at the World Bank as an intern for a while. He returned to Turkey in 2006 and started his business life. Erdoğan is one of the three equal shareholders of BMZ Group Denizcilik ve İnşaat Sanayi Anonym Şirketi, a marine transportation corporation. He is also on the governing board of the Turkish Youth Foundation (

TÜGVA The Turkish Youth Foundation () or TÜGVA is a youth and student foundation based in Istanbul. Bilal Erdoğan, the son of the President of the Turkey, Republic of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is a member of the high advisory board of the foundat ...

) which is exempt of paying taxes by decree of the Turkish president, Bilal's father.

Personal life

Erdoğan married Reyyan Uzuner in 2003. The couple have two sons, Ömer Tayyip and Ali Tahir, and a daughter, Fatıma Serra. In October 2014, ''

Today's Zaman ''Today's Zaman'' (Zaman is Turkish for 'time' or 'age') was an English-language daily newspaper based in Turkey. Established on 17 January 2007, it was the English-language edition of the Turkish daily '' Zaman.'' ''Today's Zaman'' included dom ...

'' reported that Erdoğan and his family had moved to

Bologna Bologna ( , , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy. It is the List of cities in Italy, seventh most populous city in Italy, with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nationalities. Its M ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

, after his father's

AK Party The Justice and Development Party ( , AK PARTİ), abbreviated officially as AK Party in English, is a political party in Turkey self-describing as conservative-democratic. It has been the ruling party of Turkey since 2002. Third-party sources ...

lost its parliamentary majority in June. It is stated that he will finish his PhD at The Johns Hopkins University SAIS Bologna Center there, but that all he has to do is complete his thesis, which does not require his permanent presence in Bologna, but does enable him to obtain a two-year residence permit. In February 2017 the prosecuting attorney of Bologna started a lawsuit for

money laundering Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities (often known as dirty money) such as drug trafficking, sex work, terrorism, corruption, and embezzlement, and converting the funds i ...

against him.

Corruption scandal

Erdoğan came under accusations of corruption during the

2013 corruption scandal in Turkey The 2013 corruption scandal in Turkey or 17–25 December Corruption and Bribery Operation was a criminal investigation that involved several key people in the Turkish government. All of the 52 people detained on 17 December were connected in v ...

that extended to other top members of TÜRGEV, for which he gave testimony.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Erdogan, Bilal 1981 births Living people

Bilal __NOTOC__ Bilal may refer to: People * Bilal (name), or Belal or Bilel, including a list of people with the name * Bilal ibn Rabah, a companion of Muhammad, made calls for prayers * Bilal (American singer) * Bilal (Lebanese singer) Places * Bi ...

Turkish people of Georgian descent Turkish people of Arab descent Businesspeople from Istanbul Children of presidents of Turkey Children of prime ministers of Turkey Indiana University Bloomington alumni Harvard Kennedy School alumni Turkish expatriates in the United States