Vahit Melih Halefoğlu

Vahit Melih Halefoğlu (born November 19, 1919 in Antakya , † January 21, 2017 in Istanbul ) was a Turkish diplomat and politician. He was the Turkish ambassador in several European countries, a member of the Turkish National Assembly and from 1983 to 1987 foreign minister of his country.

Life

Halefoğlu studied political science at Ankara Üniversitesi and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1942. In the following years he worked at embassies in Moscow and London, but also in departments in the Foreign Ministry. In 1959 he became head of the Department of Politics in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1962 he moved to Beirut as ambassador, in 1964/65 he worked as ambassador in Kuwait City, in 1965/66 in Moscow and from 1966 to 1970 in The Hague. He then spent two years in Ankara, then as ambassador to Germany until 1982 and again in Moscow in 1982/83.

After the first free parliamentary election after the military coup in Turkey in 1980 , the new Prime Minister Turgut Özal made him the new Foreign Minister in 1983, thus appointing a non-party without a mandate. In the 1986 by-elections, Halefoğlu stood for the Anavatan Partisi (ANAP) and was elected to the Turkish Grand National Assembly for Ankara . In the election the following year he did not run and left politics on December 21, 1987.

Halefoğlu died on January 21, 2017 at the age of 97 and was buried in the Zincirlikuyu Cemetery in the Teşvikiye Mosque after the funeral prayer . Halefoğlu was married to Fatma Zehra Bereket, daughter of the first Syrian President Suphi Bereket . The couple have two children.

Web links

• Entry "Halefoglu, Vahit" in Munzinger Online / Personen - Internationales Biographisches Archiv

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Vahit Halefoğlu , biyografi.net, accessed on May 19, 2018 (Turkish)
2. ↑ Sayın Vahit Melih Halefoğlu'nun Özgeçmişi ( Memento of the original from May 19, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accessed May 19, 2018 (Turkish) 
3. ↑ Turgut Özal'ın ilk Dışişleri Bakanı Vahit Halefoğlu vefat etti , CNN Türk , January 21, 2017 (Turkish)