Professor Ekrem Gurel the President of the Turkey-Azerbaijan Association and Dean of the Faculty of Science and Letters at Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University, has been appointed as the new rector of Ighdır University by a decree of the President of the Republic of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Originally from Ighdir, Ekrem Gurel was born on June 16, 1969. He graduated from the Department of Field Crops at the Faculty of Agriculture, Ankara University, in 1987. That same year, without pursuing a master’s degree, he was accepted into a fully funded PhD program at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, from which he graduated in 1992.

Between 1992 and 1995, he worked at the Sugar Institute of the Türkiye Sugar Factories Corporation. He later continued his academic career at the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science and Letters at Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University. He was awarded the title of Associate Professor in 1998 and a professor in 2004. He has been the dean of the aforementioned faculty since 2023.

Professor Ekrem Gürel is fluent in English and French. He is married and has a son.