Daily Sabah – Former Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yılmaz, a veteran politician who made his mark in Turkish politics in the 1980s and 1990s, died at the age of 73 on Friday after a long battle with lung cancer.
Yılmaz was undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Istanbul’s Şişli district where he underwent brain surgery on May 5 due to a tumor. He was a known chain smoker, a habit he continued up until his late years. He was also a huge Galatasaray fan, up to the point that led to a famous protest by Fenerbahçe fans back in 2002. Yılmaz was seen attending important matches of the Yellow Reds during glorious European campaigns in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Speaking to reporters in Istanbul, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan offered his condolences to the Yılmaz family and to the Turkish nation for the death of the fellow statesman, saying he spoke with the late prime minister’s wife Berna Yılmaz earlier in the day.
His brother Turgut told reporters Friday that a funeral ceremony for the late prime minister will be held Sunday at the Marmara University Faculty of Theology Mosque, where a funeral ceremony was held for his son Yavuz Yılmaz three years earlier.
The veteran politician was shaken in 2017 by the death of his son, who committed suicide at his home in Istanbul’s Beykoz district. He is survived by a 33-year-old son, Hasan.
Born in 1947 to a family hailing from northeastern Turkey’s Rize, Yılmaz was a graduate of the Sankt Georg Austrian High School and Istanbul Boys’ High School, where he learned German that later served to his advantage in tough negotiations with the European Union, of which he was a solid supporter.
He graduated from the economics and finance department at the prestigious Faculty of Political Sciences (SBF – Mülkiye) of Ankara University in 1971 and resumed his post-graduate studies at the University of Cologne in Germany.
After a management career in the private sector, Yılmaz served as one of the founders of the center-right Motherland Party (ANAP) established by late President Turgut Özal in 1983. The party was crucial in Turkey’s cautious switch from the military rule that came to power in a bloody coup in 1980, in addition to a radical switch from planned and state-dominated economy to liberal policies.
Between 1983 and 2002, Yılmaz served as a Rize deputy for ANAP for five consecutive terms, in addition to serving as an independent deputy from the same province between 2007 and 2011.
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