Vittorio (Vito) 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, grew up in Beyoğlu and attended 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 Shipping Agency, of which he says, “They taught me to be a decent, moral, conscientious and honest person; I’ll be grateful until I die.” In 1997, at just 23, he founded his own international transport and logistics company, Galata Taşımacılık, with two friends. In 2017 the company was listed among Turkey’s 500 largest service exporters. In 2006 he turned his hobby, fitness, into a business and founded AVV A.Ş., which in 2018 earned “Great Place to Work” certification in Turkey. Through this company he became the distributor 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 among the top 3 of more than 100 Technogym distributors worldwide. In 2007 he received a state decoration at the rank of “knight” from the Italian government for his global efforts in business and social relations between Italy and Turkey. Since 2011 he has also served as Honorary Consul of the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire in Turkey. He loves Turkey, and not just loves it, but rolls up his sleeves for it. He strives to help it develop, to make up for its shortcomings and to elevate it. That is why his nickname abroad is “Il Turco.” Zagaia says, “I lived in the most organized chaos you could experience in Istanbul,” and adds: “In the ’80s I lived in the Taksim, Beyoğlu, Tophane triangle. I saw everything, day and 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 working hard on his German.