The first NALAS Vice-President, Mr. Mehmet Ergün Turan, is the Mayor of Fatih, in Istanbul, Türkiye.

Mr. Mehmet Ergün Turan was born in 1967 in Istanbul. He received his undergraduate degree from the Civil Engineering department of Istanbul Technical University. He was engaged in foreign commerce and construction sectors for several years when he conducted engineering and execution processes of many projects.

Between 1999 and 2005, he worked as the Deputy Mayor of Güngören Municipality as well as the Head of Zoning Commission and Council Member at Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. He served as the Deputy Chairman of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Council between 2007 and 2009, and later was elected as the Chairman of AK Party Group between 2009 and 2014. On 18 April 2014, he was appointed to the Prime Ministry’s Housing Development Administration.

He was active in urban planning, structure and city culture, conventional architecture; Turkish houses, the Seljuk and Ottoman architecture, settlement culture in Anatolia; local architectural tendencies, Istanbul and the historic peninsula together with local government in social, cultural, and economic scales and development models and conducted studies in these areas.

During his Presidency at the Housing Development Administration of the Republic of Türkiye(TOKI), Mr. Turan pioneered construction of over 200,000 residences all around Turkey all having at most 6 stories in the framework of horizontal architecture, local architecture, and principles of neighbourhood culture. He took active part in the project of National Gardens that are being built and opened in all cities starting from Istanbul. Mr. Turan adopted “human cantered and human scale” settlement in the framework of sustainable environment and the city as his basic architecture and engineering principle.

On 30 November 2018, he resigned from his position as the President of TOKI to present his extensive experience in the public sector and local government to Fatih that is the heart of Istanbul and its residents. Mr. Turan was elected Mayor of Fatih on 31 March 2019.

He is married and has four children.