Tourwix News 29.10.2022   461

Who is Mehmet Gurcan Karakas? Who owns the Anadolu Group?

Mehmet Gürcan Karakaş, CEO of TOGG, known as Turkey's Automobile Enterprise Group, made key statements ahead of the opening of the Gemlik plant. In the recent post on TOGG social media account, the presence of the first automobile designed and produced in Turkey “Devrim” alongside the TOGG sedan and SUV vehicles did not go unnoticed.

Who owns Anadolu Group?

Anadolu Groupis a Turkish holding company that operates in 19 countries, mainly in Turkey and is headquartered in Fatih Sultan Mehmet. Founded in 1950 by Kamil Yazıcı and İzzet Özilhan, who met in 1949, Anadolu Group has expanded its scope of operations in recent years with investments in the agricultural, real estate, energy and health sectors.

The group founded by Kamil Yazıcı and İzzet Özilhan is still owned by two families, 68% of the group belongs to Yazicilar Holding and 32% to Özilhan Sınai Yatırım.

Who is Mehmet Gurcan Karakas?

Mehmet Gürcan Karakaş, who was born in 1965 in Akseki district of Antalya, came to Ankara after graduating from high school after completing his primary and secondary education in Germany. After studying mechanical engineering at METU in 1988, he worked as a design engineer at ASELSAN.

Moving to Bosch in 1990, Karakaş went to Germany in 1991 and worked as a product development engineer in the diesel injection systems division in Feuerbach. Karakaş, who was project manager for technical applications in Bursa in 1995, became managing director of Bosch Turkey in 2004 after working for a year in 1996 as project manager for Japanese and Scandinavian customers in the German Bühlertal in the field of energy systems. In 2007, Bosch moved to the German headquarters.

Karakaş was selected as one of the 100 candidates to head Germany's 20 largest companies in 2011 and was appointed CEO of Turkey's automotive project by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2018. With the protocol signed by Tayyip Erdoğan on November 2, 2017, Anadolu Group, Kök Group, Zorlu Holding and Turkcell, BMC have started cooperation with the joint venture in coordination with the Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology.

The name for domestic automobile company is Turkey's Automobile Girişim Grup Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. Mehmet Gürcan Karakaş was appointed as the head of this company on September 1, 2018.