Ahmet Burak Erdoğan (born 4 July 1979) is a Turkish businessman, the owner of MB Denizcilik, and the eldest son of

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (born 26 February 1954) is a Turkish politician serving as the 12th and current president of Turkey since 2014. He previously served as prime minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and as mayor of Istanbul from 1994 t ...

, the President of Turkey.

Personal life

Ahmet Burak Erdoğan was born in Istanbul on 4 July 1979, the son of

and his wife

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

, and educated at

İmam Hatip school In Turkey, an İmam Hatip school ( tr, imam hatip lisesi, 'hatip' coming from Arabic ''khatib'') is a secondary education institution. As the name suggests, they were founded in lieu of a vocational school to train government employed imams; af ...

. He has a bachelor's degree from

Istanbul Bilgi University Istanbul Bilgi University ( tr, İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi), officially established in 1996, is a private university located in Istanbul, Turkey. The university has 4 campuses centrally-located in Istanbul namely SantralIstanbul, Kuştepe, Do ...

. As with all his siblings, his higher education was paid for by

Remzi Gür Remzi Gür (born October 1949) is a Turkish businessman, founder and owner of the Ramsey clothing manufacturing and retail company, and "a close friend and financial sponsor of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan". Early life Remzi Gür ...

, a Turkish textile entrepreneur and friend of the Erdoğan family. In 1998, the Turkish classical music singer Sevim Tanürek died in Istanbul after a period in intensive care after being hit by a car driven by Erdoğan, who reportedly did not have a driving licence and fled the scene. Erdoğan ultimately received no punishment. Following the accident involving Tanürek, he left Turkey to study economics in London. In 2001, Erdoğan married Sema Ketenci, the daughter of Osman Ketenci.

Career

He bought a shipping company together with Mustafa Erdoğan and Ziya İlgen in 2006 and they named it Bumerz. In 2007 Erdoğan co-founded the shipping company MB Denizcilik together with Mecit Çetinkaya, who as well owns the sea freight company Manta Denizcilik. In November 2013, MB bought a sixth ship, ''Pretty'', built in China for over $20 million and with a capacity of 91,000 tons, to add to the existing five ships, ''Safran 1'', ''Sakarya'', ''G. İnebolu'', ''Cihan'' and ''Bosna'' that it owns. The acquisition of ''Pretty'' almost doubled the company's shipping capacity. In 2013, ''

Ynetnews Ynet (stylized as ynet) is one of the major Israeli news and general-content websites, and is the online outlet for the ''Yedioth Ahronot'' newspaper. However, most of Ynet's content is original work, published exclusively on the website and wri ...

'' reported that one of MB's ships, 95-metre ''Safran-1'' had travelled several times between Turkish and Israeli ports despite the poor relations between the two countries, and that in the Turkish Parliament, opposition MPs had asked his father: "Has your son been exempted from the trade embargo against Israel? Is it ethical? What share of the volume of trade with Israel did the ship owned by your son take?" ''Ynetnews'' noted that no formal trade embargo had existed at the time, except for arms sales. In 2015, '' Aydınlık'' reported that Erdoğan now owned 99% of MB (with Çetinkaya owning the other 1%) and that MB owned tankers worth US$80 million.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Erdogan, Ahmet Burak 1979 births Living people Ahmet Burak Imam Hatip school alumni Turkish people of Georgian descent Turkish people of Arab descent Businesspeople in shipping Children of national leaders Businesspeople from Istanbul