I was born in 1962 in Bayındır, Izmir. I completed my high school education at Tarsus American College. I graduated from Ege University Faculty of Medicine in 1985.
After I completed my compulsory service in Sakarya and started my residency in general surgery at the Izmir Atatürk Training and Research Hospital. During my residency, with the support and help of my esteemed mentor, Prof. Dr. Burhanettin Savan, I worked at the UCLA Liver Transplant Center in Los Angeles for one year (1991-92).
Although I went mainly for research purposes, with the opportunity given by Prof. Dr. Ronald Busuttil, I participated in donor or recipient surgeries in liver transplantation from around 150 cadavers that year. This was an extraordinary experience for me. Within the same year, I passed the ECFMC exams and after returning to my country and completing my remaining residency period, I continued to work as a chief resident in the 2nd General Surgery Clinic.
In 1994, with the support of both Prof. Dr. Savan and Prof. Dr. Busuttil, I was accepted as a clinical transplant fellow to the Organ Transplantation Center of Chicago RUSH University. For three years, I completed my clinical transplant fellowship training at the transplantation center headed by Prof. Dr. James Williams and received the ‘Transplant Surgeon’ certificate of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons in kidney and liver transplantation.
In 1997, upon the invitation of Prof. Dr. İbrahim Astarcıoğlu, I started to work as a faculty member in the Department of General Surgery at Dokuz Eylül University.
I worked in the Department of Liver, Pancreas and Biliary Tract Surgery (HPB Surgery) and Liver Transplantation until 2012. I became associate professor in 2000 and full professor in 2006. With our team headed by Prof. Dr. Astarcıoğlu, we performed a total of 460 liver transplants, including live and cadaveric liver transplants, as well as many advance liver, pancreas and biliary tract surgeries.
In 2012, with the invitation from Ankara Güven Hospital, I took responsibility for the HPB Surgery and Organ Transplantation Department. We established the Guven Organ Transplantation Center and performed more than 650 liver and kidney transplants with our team, as well as many HPB cases. As Güven Hospital Liver Transplant Program, we were included in the European Liver Tranpslant Registry in 2016. I am still working as the head of the General Surgery and Organ Transplantation Department at Ankara Güven Hospital.