Armenian descent man becomes Türkiye’s district governor for first time

Armenian descent man becomes Türkiye’s district governor for first time

ISTANBUL

A 27-year-old man has become the first district governor of Armenian descent in Türkiye’s history.

Berk Acar has been appointed as the district governor of the western province of Denizli’s Babadağ district,” reports Agos, an Armenian bilingual weekly newspaper published in Türkiye.

According to the report, Acar, a lawyer by profession, sat in the official exam for district governor in July 2021.

Among the 13,374 participants, Acar qualified for the exam by finishing in 72nd place.

Acar was one of the 475 people invited to attend the oral exam. After successfully passing the final stage, Acar has been appointed as the Babadağ district governor and will replace the previous governor Adem Karataş in the coming days.

Born in 1995, Acar went to the Sahakyan Nunyan Armenian Secondary School and Işık High School in Istanbul and graduated from Istanbul Bilgi University’s Law Faculty in 2020. He served his internship in a law firm in Istanbul’s Şişli district before entering the exams for district governor.

According to official data for 2019, there are around 67,300 Armenians living in Türkiye.

Agos, which has Armenian and Turkish pages and an online English edition, has a weekly circulation of over 5,000.