Aybars Oztuna was born in Ankara in 1999 as the child of a civil servant family. After completing his primary and secondary education in Ankara, he went to Canada with a leadership scholarship and completed his high school education. After completing summer school at Oxford, Cambridge, and Sabancı universities, he graduated from the University of South Florida with a degree in international relations and intelligence studies, which he attended on an academic scholarship.
In 2022, he worked as a researcher at the Department of Public Policy and Global Relations at the University of British Columbia. After completing Boğaziçi European School of Politics, AltMBA, and Recoded programs in 2023, he received a data science specialization, followed by a Master of Science in geospatial intelligence from Johns Hopkins University.
He concurrently served as the student parliament president, basketball team captain, rock guitar lead guitarist, debate and MUN leader during middle school, high school, and university. In 2014, he founded Canis Majoris, the youngest rock band in Turkey, and received the best camper award at the NBA Ankara camp.
He started his career in the private sector in 2016. After working in Vodafone’s digital asset management department, Kloud Trader’s project management department, and completing an investment banking internship at Vakıfbank, he worked as a manager in many international companies such as Cineplex, Walmart, The Advance Group, World Bank, Walther Kranz, Remax, Gokturk Technologies, and Gerson Lehrman Group. In 2023, he began working in the public sector as a chief international inspector while simultaneously working as a managing partner at Oztuna & Partners.
As a young Turkish politician, he started his political career in 2017, with the invitation of Meral Akşener, by joining the İYİ Party. He served as the advisor to the president between 2017 and 2020 and as the head of global affairs under the youth policies department between 2020 and 2022. In 2023, he completed an internship in advisory roles at the UAE Embassy, the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye, and the 11th Presidency Office.
Oztuna is a member of Chatham House, the International Political Science Association, American Economic Association, Conseil de l’Europe, Turkish Hearths, Council of Supply Chain Managment Professionals, Istanbul Planning Agency, and a Political Leadership Excellence Fellow at Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. He is also a McKinsey Forward Fellow, a citizen juror at the European Capital of Democracy, an IKAR Global Institute youth ambassador, a youth fellow at the International Republican Institute, and the founder & CEO of the Geospatial Intelligence Institute.
Oztuna is a philanthropist. He established and served more than ten NGO’s and over $200.000 combined for the direct causes. He is an autodidact polyglot and author of five books, two albums, six scientific peer-reviewed articles, over hundred other articles.
