Berat Albayrak

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Berat Albayrak (2019)

Berat Albayrak (born January 1, 1978 in Istanbul ) is a Turkish businessman and politician of the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP). He was Finance Minister in the Erdoğan IV cabinet from July 2018 and resigned on November 8, 2020. He has been a member of the Turkish parliament since June 2015 . He is the former managing director of Çalık Holding and was Minister for Energy and Natural Resources in the Yıldırım cabinet from 2016 to 2018 . He is married to Esra Albayrak, née Erdoğan, and thus the son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan .

Life

Berat Albayrak was born on January 1, 1978, the son of the Turkish journalist and politician Sadık Albayrak. He has an older brother. Albayrak attended a private high school and studied at the School of Business Administration at Istanbul University . In July 2004 Albayrak married Esra Erdoğan, the daughter of the then Prime Minister and current President of Turkey. They have four children together: Ahmet Akif (* 2006), Emine Mahinur (* 2009) Sadık (* 2015) and Hamza Salih (* 2020).

Economic career

In 1999 he started working for the government-affiliated Çalık Holding and in 2002 was appointed finance director of the company's American branch. At that time he was also studying for a master's degree at the Lubin School of Business at Pace University in New York City . In 2004 Albayrak became the company's American country manager. After returning to Turkey in 2006, he worked as an assistant to the Çalık Finance Manager. In 2007, at the age of just 29, he became CEO of Çalık Holding , who u. a. the Turkuvaz media group is owned and therefore the influential daily Sabah and the news channel A Haber . He remained CEO of the company until 2013.

In 2015 his older brother Serhat Albayrak took over the management of the Turkuvaz media group.

The Panama Papers mentions a company based in the British Virgin Islands , originally founded by Çalık Holding. The CEO of Çalık-Holding was Berat Albayrak from 2007 to 2013. When the journalist Pelin Ünker published this, he sued her and lost.

Political career

After the parliamentary elections on June 7, 2015 , Albayrak became a member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey as a representative of the AKP. Albayrak has been a member of the extended AKP board since September 2015. On November 24, he succeeded Ali Rıza Alaboyun as Minister for Energy and Natural Resources in the cabinet of Ahmet Davutoğlu . After Davutoğlu announced his resignation as chairman of the ruling AKP and thus also as prime minister in May 2016, Albayrak was discussed together with the transport minister Binali Yıldırım as a potential successor to the office of prime minister.

At the end of September 2016, the left-wing hacker group " RedHack " , critical of the government, threatened to make 57,623 emails of Albayrak correspondence from April 2000 to the end of September 2016 public if the imprisoned "left opposition members" were not released. The leak was supposed to show how the Turkish government, and in particular Albayrak, had influenced the media and alleged contacts between the Turkish government and the terrorist militia Islamic State . The online magazine Diken , which is critical of the government, and the daily Cumhuriyet reported on the leaked e-mails from Albayrak relating to the oil transport company Powertrans , according to which the energy minister was the “secret boss” of Powertrans. On December 5, 2016, WikiLeaks published a searchable archive of the emails from Albayrak's correspondence (Berat's Box) that RedHack had forwarded to the discovery platform.

After holding the post of energy minister in 2017 and 2018, Albayrak was appointed finance minister by his father-in-law in early July 2018 in place of the previous incumbent Mehmet Şimşek . He held the office for a good two years and was repeatedly criticized. In addition to economic problems in Turkey, the Turkish lira lost a lot of its value. After his father-in-law had recently replaced the head of the Turkish central bank, Albayrak resigned from the office of finance minister on November 8, 2020 "for health reasons". Albayrak had previously stated that there were no plans to intervene in the collapse of the currency.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Turkish finance minister resigns
  2. ↑ a b Erdogan son-in-law wins key post in new Turkey cabinet . In: Yahoo , November 24, 2015. Retrieved May 5, 2016. 
  3. ↑ Enerji Bakanı Albayrak'ın mutlu günü . Sabah . Retrieved May 5, 2016.
  4. ↑ Berat Albayrak, Çalık Holding Genel Müdürü oldu. Milliyet , March 30, 2007; Retrieved May 5, 2016.
  5. ↑ Article on the scandal surrounding Albayrak's CEO activities ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , internetajans.com, November 8, 2007 (Turkish) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.internetajans.com
  6. ↑ a b Deniz Yücel : 20 gigabytes of e-mails that could put Erdogan in trouble. Hackers cracked correspondence from Turkey's energy minister Berat Albayrak. It deals with Turkish connections to IS and control of the media. In: The world . October 8, 2016, accessed December 7, 2016 .
  7. ^ Hannes Munzinger: One of the last investigative journalists in Turkey. In: sueddeutsche.de . September 6, 2018, accessed October 13, 2018 .
  8. ^ Turkish PM Davutoğlu forms 64th government of Turkey , Hürriyet Daily News , November 24, 2015; Retrieved May 5, 2016.
  9. ↑ Davutoglu loses power struggle with Erdogan. n-tv, May 5, 2016; Retrieved May 5, 2016.
  10. ↑ Efe Kerem Sozeri: RedHack Leaks Reveal the Rise of Turkey's Pro-Government Twitter Trolls. In: The Daily Dot. September 30, 2016, accessed December 8, 2016 .
  11. ↑ Turkey blocks cloud services because of explosive e-mails. In: DiePresse.com. October 10, 2016, accessed December 8, 2016 .
  12. ↑ Tunica Öğreten: RedHack sızdırdı: Kürt petrolünü taşıyan şirkette 'söz sahibi' Albayrak. In: Diken. September 30, 2016, accessed December 9, 2016 .
  13. ↑ Serious allegations against Erdogan's son-in-law. In: Wiener Zeitung . December 8, 2016, accessed December 8, 2016 .
  14. ↑ Berat's Box. In: WikiLeaks. December 6, 2016, accessed December 7, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Thanos Kamilalis: Exclusive: WikiLeaks documents highlight sinister relations between Erdogan and ISIS. In: thepressproject.gr. December 5, 2016, accessed December 7, 2016 .
  16. ↑ Bethan McKernan: Email cache proves Turkish oil minister's links to Isis oil trade, WikiLeaks claims. In: The Independent . December 7, 2016, accessed December 7, 2016 .
  17. ^ Robbie Gramer: Latest Wikileaks Dump Sheds New Light on Erdogan's Power In Turkey. In: Foreign Policy . December 7, 2016, accessed December 7, 2016 .
  18. ↑ Philipp Mattheis: "Son-in-law instead of competence" Wirtschaftswoche from July 10, 2018
  19. ^ Turkish Finance Minister resigned . In: tagesschau.de, November 9, 2020 (accessed November 9, 2020).
personal data
SURNAME Albayrak, Berat
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Turkish businessman and politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1978
PLACE OF BIRTH Istanbul