Former Foreign Minister Yaşar Yakış, one of the founders of the AK Party, passed away in hospital at the age of 85. Yakış, a former diplomat, was the Foreign Minister of the first AK Party government established in 2002.
Who is Yaşar Yakış?
Born in Düzce in 1938, Yakış was appointed as Deputy Consul General of the Consulate General of Antwerp in his first overseas assignment. Yakış also served in various capacities at the Embassies in Lagos, Rome and Damascus and at the Permanent Representative to NATO in Brussels.
In 1985, Yakış established and chaired the COMCEC Coordination Board, which was established to provide secretariat services to the President of Turkey as the Chairman of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
In 1988, he was appointed as the Ambassador to Riyadh and later served as the Ambassador to Cairo and Permanent Representative of the Republic of Turkey to the United Nations Vienna Office and International Organizations in Vienna. Between 1992 and 1995, Ambassador Yakış served as Deputy Undersecretary for Economic Affairs.
Founding member of AK Party
In 2001, he retired from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and entered politics as a founding member of the AK Party. He also served as the party’s Deputy Chairman and a member of the Central Decision Making Board. Yakış was elected as an MP from Düzce in the general elections held on November 3, 2002 and was appointed as the Minister of Foreign Affairs on November 18, 2002. He left his post to Abdullah Gül in the following change of government.
He was expelled from the AK Party
After leaving parliament, he worked as a part-time lecturer at TOBB University of Economics and Technology. Yakış was expelled from the party he founded on March 28, 2016 after he drew attention with his criticism of the AK Party, especially on foreign policy.
