Hikmet Çetin

Mr Hikmet Çetin was born in 1937 in Diyarbakır, Turkey. He graduated from the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Ankara, with a B.A. degree in economics and finance in 1960. After his graduation, he joined the State Planning Organization (SPO) in 1960. Mr Çetin conducted further studies, mostly in the USA and received his M.A. degree with a thesis on “Economics of Development”. Later on, he worked on “planning models” at Stanford University, California, USA. In the SPO, he assumed the position of Head of Economic Planning Department until 1977.

His political career started after his election to the Parliament in 1977 as a member of the Republican People’s Party (CHP). He was appointed as the Deputy Prime Minister in 1978. In 1997, he was re-elected to the Parliament from the Social Democratic People’s Party (SHP). Minister Çetin worked at various executive levels within SHP, including the post of the Secretary General. In 1991, he was re-elected to the Parliament and then served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the two coalition Governments between 1991 and 1994.

At the merger of CHP and SHP under the name of CHP, he was elected as the Chairman of CHP by the Joint Convention of both Parties. He was once again appointed as the Minister of State and Deputy Prime Minister in 1995.

In the 1995 general elections, Minister Çetin retook his seat in the Parliament and was elected as the Speaker of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM) in October 1997.

On 19 November 2003, he was appointed as the NATO Senior Civilian Representative (SCR) for Afghanistan and has been serving in Kabul since 26 January 2004.