President Erdoğan’s daughter sets wedding date with engineer fiancé

ISTANBUL

AA photo

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s daughter, Sümeyye Erdoğan, has set May 14 as the wedding date with Selçuk Bayraktar, a defense industrialist engineer producing unmanned aerial vehicles. 

The couple got engaged at a low-key gathering at the Huber Palace in Istanbul’s Tarabya district by the Bosphorus on March 20. They will tie the knot in a wedding ceremony at the Yahya Kemal Beyatlı Cultural Center in Istanbul’s Küçükçekmece district on May 14. 

The couple had to postpone their engagement after Bayraktar’s father Özdemir Bayraktar, the owner of technology firm Baykar Makine, was rushed to hospital with a heart problem on the originally planned day of the engagement ceremony on March 12.

The ceremony was held a week later at the same venue, the Huber Palace, under heavy security measures. Members of the press were not allowed near the mansion and guests could only enter after being checked from a list. 

Turkish media had first reported early on March that Sümeyye Erdoğan and Selçuk Bayraktar had decided to marry.

The president’s daughter studied sociology and politics at Indiana University in the U.S. before earning a master’s degree from the London School of Economics. 

Baykar, the company run by Selçuk Bayraktar, Özdemir Bayraktar and his two brothers, has been developing unmanned vehicles both for the Turkish military and for other countries. 

Selçuk Bayraktar graduated from Istanbul Technical University in 2002. He holds master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also holds a PhD from the Georgia Institute of Technology.