Serdar Bilgili

Serdar Bilgili — Biography

Serdar Bilgili is best known as the 31st president of Beşiktaş Gymnastics Club and today stands out as a businessman in real estate and tourism. During his presidency Beşiktaş was floated and became the first sports club traded on the stock exchange. He was born in Beşiktaş into a family with roots in Kahramanmaraş.

After Robert College he studied business and photography at the University of Redlands in California, spent a year interning at the United Nations in Vienna in 1983, and returned to Turkey in 1984 to start in textiles, construction and tourism. From 1992 to 1998 he served on Beşiktaş boards under Süleyman Seba as secretary general and press spokesman. He was elected president on March 26, 2000, and brought in Nevio Scala as coach; in 2002 he was re-elected. The 2002-03 Süper Lig title and the 2000 Atatürk Cup were won in this period. After heavy point losses in the second half of 2003-04 he resigned in 2004.

In business he is chairman of Bilgili Holding and founder of BLG Capital. He received the Istanbul Tourism Award in 2008 for the Akaretler project and the Urban Land Institute award in London in 2009 for the Akaretler Row Houses restoration. In 2007 he opened the photography exhibition "Engellere Rağmen..." in Istanbul, with its works collected in a book of the same name in 2008. In 2026 he was reported to have set up a 500-million-euro hotel investment fund and to have raised a Beşiktaş flag over a hotel he bought; he also put his name to the restoration of the Prinkipo Greek Orphanage on Büyükada.