“A crucial development triggered by the Gezi uprising was a sudden change of topic in conversations among friends: from “Where is this country heading to?” to “So what are we doing, friends?” Youngsters from all walks of life—previously deemed apolitical—decided to become active agents in a process which touched their lives. For the first time, young people from my generation realized that they were not alone and could make a difference by acting together, revealing an immense energy for change.”

For several decades and their corresponding generations in Turkey, politics has been the least preferred career option for the country’s talent. However in the aftermath of the Gezi resistance, things began to change for Turkey’s youth and Sercan Çelebi was one of the central  non-partisan figures who stood in the epicenter of the change.

Under Sercan Çelebi’s leadership “Oy ve Ötesi” (Vote and Beyond) movement was formed with three concrete, concise and objective targets that presented an opportunity to train country’s forgotten muscle of collaboration toward impact. Those three targets were voter turnout, transparency around individual candidates and independent election monitoring.

Furthermore, the “Ötesi” (Beyond) component of the foundation conveyed a clear glimpse of Sercan Çelebi’s vision that the fundamental approach and mechanisms of the foundation could readily be replicated into any area of civic engagement in democratic processes. A vision that indeed made “Oy ve Ötesi (Vote and Beyond) the sustainable grassroot NGO that it is today after the last years’ elections marathon.

In the past five elections which took place within a space of only two years,  Oy ve Ötesi (Vote and Beyond) trained more than 170,000 volunteers across Turkey, monitored all five elections to different extents in the front lines and cross-checked the aggregated official results with a state-of-art software developed by Oy v Ötesi volunteers.

Who is Sercan Çelebi

A graduate of German High School in Istanbul and Yale University, Sercan Çelebi is the co-founder, spokesperson and chairman of Oy ve Ötesi Foundation (Vote and Beyond) – an independent and non partisan election monitoring organisation that emerged ahead of Turkish local elections in 2014 as a completely voluntary initiative. From tomato and pepper agriculture in İzmir to energy investments, from social media and big data analysis to management consultancy in New York, Çelebi has a vast array of multinational management experience in different industries. A McKinsey & Company alumni, Sercan Çelebi has done a significant number of project work for both multinational clients and public sector across continents. In his free time, he practices martial arts. Sercan Çelebi speaks English, German and Spanish.