Melih Gökçek

İbrahim Melih Gökçek ( born October 20, 1948 in Ankara) is a Turkish politician and since 1994 the Lord Mayor of Ankara.

Gökçek was born in 1948, the eldest of three children of a lawyer in Keçiören / Ankara. He spent the first five years of life in Ankara, after he and his family moved to Gaziantep, where he spent his school years. After graduation Gökçek moved again in 1967 to Ankara, initially studied political science at Ankara University and journalism at the Gazi University and worked as a parliamentary correspondent for a local newspaper. In the meantime, he was employed in the Ministry of Labour. His military service he served in Northern Cyprus in Güzelyurt as a reserve officer. Then he ran for many years various commercial, including as eggs wholesalers.

Gökçeks political career began as a member of the " Motherland Party " ( Anavatan Partisi - ANAP ) with the election of the mayor of Keçiören, an office which he held from 1984 to 1989. In 1989, he tried unsuccessfully for reelection. Subsequently, he served from 1989 to early 1991 as head of the Department of Social Services and Child Protection ( Sosyal Hizmetler ve Çocuk Esirgeme Kurumu ). A post he lost in 1991, as he had in the crucial vote for the post of party chairman of the rival candidates chosen later Mesut Yılmaz, Yıldırım Akbulut supported. He was forced to resign from the party, and moved on to the Welfare Party, for which he has been elected in the same year in the Turkish parliament. Previously, he had an electoral alliance with the "party of the Nationalist Work" ( Milliyetçi Çalışma Partisi, MCP), from 1992 again, " Nationalist Movement Party " ( Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP) enforced. In 1994 he was elected mayor of Ankara. After the banning of the Welfare Party in February 1998 because of constitutional hostility he joined its successor party, the " Party of Virtue " ( Fazilet, FP ), a. After these had also been banned in June 2001, he stayed for one year non-party to in June 2002 for a short time in the " Democratic Party " (Democrat Parti, DP ) to enter. Later, he was inducted into the newly founded AKP.

He was the first who managed to be elected twice or three times as mayor of Ankara with his successful re- elections in 1999 and 2004. In 2009, he was set up due to lack of alternative back of the ACP as a candidate and won the local elections in 2009. It is thus for the fourth time in a row mayor of Ankara, capital of Turkey. Gökçek is married and has two children.