SHORT CV

Utku completed his LL.B. studies at Ankara University, Faculty of Law in 2009. He then earned an LL.M. degree from King's College London in 2012, with his master’s dissertation titled "Abuse of the Right to Access ICSID Arbitration" graded as "distinction". Later, he embarked on his professional career as a lecturer at the newly established Aksaray University in Turkiye, fulfilling a two-year mandatory service between 2013 and 2015 as a requirement for the scholarship he received from Turkey’s Ministry of National Education for his graduate studies in the UK.

After gaining two years of academic experience, Utku chose to return to legal practice to further develop his expertise in the field. He worked as an attorney-at-law at the international Sariibrahimoglu Law Office in Ankara for about a year where he had worked also as a legal intern before. During this time, he handled a variety of legal matters, primarily serving foreign clients, including several foreign embassies in Ankara, such as those of China, South Korea, Pakistan, Austria, and Poland. His work involved advising on both diplomatic and personal legal matters for these embassies and their nationals.

Having undertaken a research for three months at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg, funded by the MPI scholarship, he successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, titled "Inalienable Rights of Joint Stock Company Shareholders and the Legal Consequences of Their Violations" in December 2022.

Since 2017, Utku has been a faculty member at Izmir University of Economics, where he teaches at both the Faculty of Law and the Vocational School of Justice. He is fluent in English and has an upper-intermediate proficiency in German (B2 level).