We want to start by thanking you once again for the great interest you have shown in our event, which is now only days away. Today we want to introduce a speaker who learned by living it that, when it comes to “human worth”, being human is enough. We would not be wrong to call him someone who lives intertwined with different cultures and sees all differences as one single whole. Here is “Il Turco”…
Who is Vittorio Zagaia?
The son of an Italian craftsman father and a Greek mother from Gökçeada, he was born in 1974 in Tophane, at the Italian Hospital on the Italian slope; he grew up in Beyoğlu and studied at the Italian High School. His nickname is “Il Turco”.
In 1989, while still in high school, he started working part-time at the Şark Ekspres Ship Agency, a company about which he says, “They taught me to be a decent, moral, conscientious and honest person; I will be grateful until I die.”
In 1997, at just 23, he founded his own international transportation and logistics company, Galata Taşımacılık, with two friends. In 2017 this company was listed among Turkey's 500 largest Service Exporters. In 2006 he turned his hobby, fitness, into a business and founded a company named AVV A.Ş., which in 2018 earned the “Great Place to Work” certification in Turkey.
With this company he obtained the distributorship for Turkey, Turkmenistan and the TRNC of the Italian “Technogym The Wellness Company”, a leader in the fitness and wellness sector. Over the last 5 years AVV has ranked in the top 3 among more than 100 Technogym distributors worldwide.
In 2007, for his efforts in developing business and social relations between Italy and Turkey on a global scale, he received a state order at the rank of “knighthood” from the Italian government. Since 2011 he has also served as the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire in Turkey.
He loves Turkey; and he doesn't just love it, he takes responsibility for it. He works to help it develop, to make up for its shortcomings, to elevate it. That is why abroad his nickname is “Il Turco”.
Zagaia says, “I lived in the most organized chaos you can experience in Istanbul” and adds: “In the 80s I lived in the Taksim, Beyoğlu, Tophane triangle. I saw everything, both by day and by night... I lived side by side with Armenians, Jews, Greeks, Levantines, Laz, Kurds, Circassians, Roma and many more; I only knew their names, because everyone's ethnic identity was always kept to themselves alone.” Besides Turkish, Vittorio Zagaia also speaks Italian, Greek, English and French, and is pushing himself with German.
- You can get tickets for the event at the link below.
