Kemal Dervis

Kemal Dervis (Turkish: Kemal Derviş) is a Turkish economist and politician. He was born on January 10, 1949 in Istanbul to a Turkish father and a German mother.

As Minister for Economic Affairs in Turkey when Bülent Ecevit was prime minister, Derviş was the architect of Turkey 's successful three-year economic recovery program launched in 2001. Before being named to head the United Nations Development Programme UNDP, he was a member of the Turkish parliament, and a member of the joint commission of the Turkish and European parliaments. He previously was a member of the European Constitutional Convention.

He was named by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to be the next head of the UNDP on April 26,2005, and is expected to officially start his four-year term on August 15, 2005.

Studies and World Bank Career

Kemal Derviş earned his bachelor (1968) and master's degrees (1970) in economics from the London School of Economics and his PhD from Princeton University, USA (1973). From 1973 to 1976, he was member of the economics faculty of the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey and, served also as an advisor to Bülent Ecevit during and after his Prime Ministerial duties. From 1976 to 1978, he was member of the faculty, Department of Economics at the Princeton University.

In 1977, he joined the World Bank, where he worked until he returned to Turkey in 2001. At the World Bank, he held various positions, including Division Chief for Industrial and Trade Strategy and Director for the Central Europe Department after the fall of the Berlin wall. In 1996, he became Vice-President of the World Bank for the Middle East and North Africa Region, and in 2000, Vice-President for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management. In the first position, Kemal Derviş coordinated the World Bank’s support to the peace and reconstruction process in the Balkans (Bosnia) and the Middle East. In the second position, he was responsible for the World Bank’s global programmes and policies to fight poverty and the development of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) initiative that had just been launched. He was also responsible for the operational coordination with other institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and United Nations institutions, on international institutional and policy issues.

Ministry of Economic Affairs

When Derviş became Turkey’s minister of economic affairs in March, 2001, after a 22-year career at the World Bank, the country was facing it's worst economic crisis in modern history and prospects for success were uncertain. Derviş used his independence from domestic vested interests and support of domestic reformers and civil society to push through a tough stabilization program and far-reaching structural changes, sweeping bank reform protected state banks from political use. Derviş also strengthened the independence of the central bank and pushed through deep structural reforms in agriculture, energy and the budget process. These reforms, and his reputation and top-level contacts in the U.S. and Europe, helped him to mobilize $20 billion in new loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Rapid economic growth resumed in 2002 and inflation came down from an average of nearly 70 percent in the 1990s to 12 percent in 2003; interest rates fell and the exchange rate for the Turkish lira stabilized.

Derviş resigned from his ministerial position in August of 2002 and was elected to parliament in November of that year as a member of the opposition.

A Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development (http://www.cgdev.org/), he is the author of "A Better Globalization: Legitimacy, Governance and Reform" (http://www.cgdev.org/Publications/?PubID=198). Derviş was instrumental in strengthening Turkey’s prospects of starting membership negotiations with the European Union. He is also a member of various international task forces such as the Task Force on Global Public Goods and the Special Commission on the Balkans and, is associated with the Economics and Foreign Policy Forum in Istanbul.

Since 1977, Derviş is married to his second wife Catherine Stachniak Derviş, an American citizen.fr:Kemal Derviş