Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey
Bülent Arınç was born in 1948 in Bursa. He has been an MP for Manisa since 1995. He was the 22nd House Speaker of the Parliament between the years 2002 and 2007. He is at present a State Minister and Deputy Prime Minister and an influential figure in the sixty first cabinet. Bülent Arınç received a degree in Law in 1970 from the University of Ankara. He became an MP for the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) after the 1995 elections. After the party was disbanded by the Constitutional Court in 1998, he joined the Virtue Party (Fazilet Partisi). He was elected in the 1999 elections as an MP for Manisa again where he served in the Foreign Affairs Commission. In 2001, his party was banned as well. Bülent Arınç then became one of the founders of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) together with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Abdullah Gül, Cemil Çiçek and Ali Babacan.
