Tunç Soyer

Mayor, Izmir Metropolitan Municipality

Born in Ankara in 1959, Tunç Soyer has lived in İzmir since his early childhood. After graduating from Bornova Anatolian Highschool, he completed his university degree at Ankara University Faculty of Law. During this time, he worked as a correspondent in the Turkish News Agency and has translated a work on the tragedy of women in immigrant camps into Turkish. Soyer has a master’s degree on “International Relations” from Webster College in Switzerland and on the “European Union” from Dokuz Eylül University. He founded a holiday village in Seferihisar in 1991 that is still in operation. Being a fluent English and French speaker, he was an active manager in the tourism sector for nine years. In 2003, he became a consultant of the Mayor of İzmir Metropolitan Municipality Ahmet Piriştina on the obtainable financial resources of the European Union and strengthened his experiences on the economy and social life of İzmir within this period. From 2004 to 2006, he served as the Director of Foreign Relations of the İzmir Chamber of Commerce. In 2006, he was appointed as the General Secretary of EXPO İzmir. In 2009 he was elected as the Mayor of Seferihisar and carried on this task for two terms. He has implemented the international local-scale development model Cittaslow (Slow City) first to Seferihisar and then introduced it to the seven geographical areas of Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. He was elected as the Mayor of İzmir Metropolitan Municipality at the local elections held in March 2019.