Selcuk Bayraktar

Selçuk Bayraktar (born October 7, 1979, Istanbul) is a Turkish engineer and businessman. He is the architect of Türkiye's domestically produced Unmanned Aerial Vehicle/Armed Unmanned Aerial Vehicle system Baykar Bayraktar TB2 and the first national unmanned combat aircraft prototype  Bayraktar Kızılelma, Baykar Baykar Chairman of the Board / Technology Leader (CTO)  and He is the chairman of the Board of Trustees of Türkiye Technology Team.

 Biography 
He was born in 1979 in the Sarıyer district of Istanbul (originally from Trabzon, Sürmene Çamburnu village) as the second child of the Özdemir-Canan couple. He began his education at Sarıyer Primary School. After graduating from there, he enrolled in Robert High School|Robert College and graduated from Robert College in 1997. The same year, he began his university education in the Electronics and Communication Engineering department at Istanbul Technical University. While he was studying at university, his internship application at the GRASP laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania was accepted. Following a scholarship offer, he completed his master's degree in unmanned aircraft at the University of Pennsylvania between 2002 and 2004. 

After completing his education, he returned to Türkiye in 2007. He became the technical manager of Baykar. He was involved in flight control, avionics system architecture, navigation algorithm development, system kinematics and dynamics, embedded software development, and electronic hardware for unmanned aerial vehicles developed in Türkiye. Together with his team, he designed the guidance and control system of the Baykar Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicle system, which was used in the Turkey-PKK conflict, the Syrian Civil War, and the Second Libyan Civil War. He designed the Bayraktar Mini UAV, the first unmanned aerial vehicle to enter the inventory of the Turkish Armed Forces. Selçuk Bayraktar and his team also developed the Bayraktar Akıncı, Turkey's first offensive UAV system with a takeoff weight of 6 tons, and delivered it to the Turkish Armed Forces on August 29, 2021.

In addition to these projects, Selçuk Bayraktar leads the development of the Bayraktar TB3 UCAV, which can land and take off from ships with short runways, and the Bayraktar KIZILELMA MİUS (Combat Unmanned Aircraft System), Turkey's first unmanned combat aircraft project. Bayraktar, who has also founded a venture focused on space technologies, has been working on orbital transfer vehicles and satellite technologies in this area for some time.

He is also the chairman of the board of trustees and a co-founder of the Turkish Technology Team Foundation. As part of the foundation's founding goals, he encouraged people of a certain age group who were enthusiastic about technology to conduct research with the foundation. He organized the space festival |TEKNOFEST to promote space research in Türkiye.

On March 22, 2020, Bayraktar announced on his personal Twitter account that he would provide technical support for ventilator production in Türkiye against the COVID-19 virus, which emerged in the Wuhan province of China. Following a two-week development process carried out jointly by Arçelik, ASELSAN, Baykar, and BIOSYS, the first 100 of the 5,000 ventilators planned to be produced were delivered at the opening of Başakşehir Çam and Sakura City Hospital on April 20, 2020.

In 2021, Selçuk Bayraktar was awarded the Karabakh Order of the Republic of Azerbaijan by President Ilham Aliyev for the contribution of Bayraktar TB2 UAVs to the liberation of Karabakh from Armenian occupation. Bayraktar was awarded the Ukrainian State Order of Merit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2022. The order was presented by Andri Yermak, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, during his visit to Turkey on October 2, 2022.

Baykar Chairman Selçuk Bayraktar ranked first in the list of taxpayers who declared the highest income tax in 2022, thus becoming the income tax record holder.

Türkiye's first local and national social media application, "Next Teknofest Social," developed by TEKNOFEST entrepreneurs in collaboration with the T3 Foundation, of which Selçuk Bayraktar is the chairman of the board of trustees, and Baykar, of which he is the chairman of the board of directors, was launched on July 23, 2025. Next Social reached 250,000 users in a short time after its launch.

 Personel Life 
He married Sümeyye Erdoğan, the daughter of the President of the Republic of Türkiye Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in 2016 and is the father of two children. He also holds a private pilot's license. He has brothers named Haluk and Ahmet. His father Özdemir Bayraktar was involved in politics with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the 1990s.

 Awards 

  1 April 2021: 50px Order of Karabakh

  2 October 2022: 50px State Order of Merit

  4 April 2023: Medal of Military Cooperation

  2 October 2023: ASAN Service Medal

  18 October 2023: National Order of Mali

  28 April 2024: Order of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, 1st Degree
  9 October 2024: Dank State Award of Kyrgyzstan
 Patents  
 Automatic Takeoff and Landing System for Aircraft (Turkish Patent Institute 2015/07928)
 Electromechanical Servo Motor-Controlled Actuator System and Control Method Capable of Sensing Changing Operating Conditions (Turkish Patent Institute 2015/14111) 
 Triple Redundant Flight Control System (Turkish Patent Institute Ref: PT2015-00693) 
 Electrocardiography|ECG Device (Turkish Patent Institute Ref: PT2015-00693)

 References 

 Links 



Category:1979 births
Category:Johns Hopkins University alumni
Category:Living people
Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni
Category:People from Istanbul
Category:Turkish businesspeople
Category:Turkish engineers
Category:Turkish politicians