Abdülhamit Bilici


Abdülhamit Bilici is a Turkish journalist and media executive. Bilici was once one of the prominent and influential media figures in Turkey, as the last editor-in-chief of Zaman, the country’s most widely circulated newspaper and the CEO of the Feza Publications which ranked 244th among top 500 companies according to Istanbul Chamber of Industry's ISO500. Prior to that, he was the general director of Cihan News Agency, once the nation’s second largest news agency and also columnist of both Zaman daily and its English-language version, Today's Zaman. Bilici's newspapers were taken over by Erdogan government with a brutal raid on March 5, 2016 and the Feza Media Group was shutdown after July 15, failed coup attempt. In these circumstances, he was forced into exile under the threat of an arrest warrant.
Bilici is an expert on Turkish politics and continues his journalism career by writing freelance articles for various media outlets, lectures at different universities and speaks at conferences related to press freedom and Turkey's domestic and foreign policy. Recently, He has spoken in conferences in more than 20 states in America and is a frequent commentator on television channels such as BBC, CBS, Al Jazeera, and Sky News, among others.
He speaks English. Bilici is married and has two children.

Early life

Bilici attending primary school education in İstanbul and graduated from high school in Erzurum. He read for a BA in Political Sciences and International Relations Department at Bosporus University in 1993. He obtained a master's degree from Department of Economics at Istanbul University with a thesis titled “Energy Structure of Turkmenistan and Natural Gas”. He is currently a doctoral student at Department of International Relations at the same university. Bilici also has MBA degree from Faculty of Management at Fatih University.

Career

Starting his career at Zaman as a correspondent, Bilici worked as an editor at Aksiyon. between 1995-1997, as foreign news editor at Zaman between 1998-2001, as general editor at Zaman Daily between 2002-2008 and as general director of Cihan News Agency and as the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Zaman Newspaper. He is a columnist for Zaman and Today's Zaman dailies. He writes mainly on Turkish foreign policy and world politics. He is a frequent speaker on local and international television programs. Bilici is the editor of the book "Why Turkey?", which features different perspectives on Turkey-European Union relations.

Some of his published articles