Born in Istanbul, Turkey in the spring of 1953, he immigrated to the United States in the mid 1950’s at the age of 3. His father a Turkish Cypriot, who had already immigrated to Turkey and after finishing school and becoming a doctor, a Turkish soldier and then a Turkish practical doctor in Central Anatolia, he decided to further his education at the Cleveland Clinic located in Ohio and of course Erol and his mom of followed. Erol first started elementary school in a the inner city portion of Cleveland, Ohio. After his father completed his 5 year of residency and practical training, they returned as planned back to Turkey. They had no intentions of returning back to the US because the original trip was just to further his fathers education and learn as much as he could about the ever growing US, so he could use what he had learned by his mentors at the Cleveland Clinic, when he arrived back to his second fatherland.

Erol went to TED in Ankara as a “yatali”, and learned Turkish and various disciplines during the two years they remained their. Erol attended both 4th and 5th grades during this era and then the his family decided to immigrate back to the US, but this time permanently. Reason; his father said that there was just way too much politics involved in his profession and decided that he wanted to pursue only being a doctor, something he thought he could do anywhere in the world, because sick people were everywhere, without having to be involved politically.

When Erol came back to the US, he excelled in every discipline that was taught because most of the materials he was already familiar with during his 2 years at TED. When they came back, the school he was enrolling his son at event told him, that Erol could skip 2 years ahead, but my father wisely refused and wanted Erol to be with the same age group that he was apart of.

Still today Erol has various sporting records that still have not been broken at the schools he attended in an affluent suburb of Columbus. After graduating from High School, Erol attended Ohio University, finishing off his education at a private school devoted in practical and advanced computer programming. Since that time, there really were no “experts computer geniuses”, he easily got a job in this field and continues in this profession as a mentor to his peers and customers.

In the late seventies, he married a Turkish born and raised, English teacher and after a long period of adjustment, had a daughter. Today, both of them still work together on project’s furthering the Turkish culture through the local TACA’s. they have been affiliated with. They enjoy meeting new people, traveling and working together as a family to further the Turkish culture in their community and travel to Turkey quite often to refresh themselves of the Turkish culture and the perpective we all inherit from our rich culture. With over 25 years in the computer industry, when the PC was not even invented yet, Erol worked as a systems programmer, installing and maintaining Large IBM mainframes computer Operating Systems, where he excelled rapidly, also developing tools for his company, vendors and procedures to automate large mainframe shops. Later in the 1990’s when the Large Mainframes were being replaced by servers, Erol worked as a consultant automated large mainframe computer systems for Fortune 500 companies, until he decided yet for another career change and moved into the Data Communications sector. Since then he has again excelled to the top of his career, working as a International Project Manager, delivering and facilitating Wide Area Network (WAN) installations all over the world, for multi-national corporations working for the largest Communications in the world. Erol has always worked for US and European top Fortune companies even before computers were popular and continues to flourish in his business sector he truly enjoys.

Erol became interested joining the Turkish Community back in the early 80’s during a ATAA grassroots symposium held in Columbus, Ohio. When the visiting Turkish Ambassador later that evening used portions of Erol’s speech and philosophy, which Erol had conveyed to his audience earlier that day, Erol was hooked. He knew that there was a big job ahead of educating and facilitating his fellow Turks in the United States, to close the gap between other US ethnic groups and gaps of perception, promotion and the lack of social education which seemed to perpetuate within the TACA’s in the US and Turks worldwide.

Since then, he has held various board positions within the two different Turkish communities he has been involved with. Today he is located in Columbus, OH, and he facilitates and brings about the changes necessary to move ahead into another era of Turkish – American relations and the promotion and education of our culture to our communities and of course to our membership.

Erol’s life time goal in this area is to continue to enlighten the Turks and the Turkish communities about how Turks can be more effective working as a team in accomplishing any feat or challenge they are faced with because this is really the only problems Turks really face. He truly believes in the phrase “Birlikten Kuvvet Dogar” and feels that we have some small but important hurdles we must conquer to get there.

Sema Karaoglu, Founder
Sons_of_Ataturk@yahoo.com