Mr. İhsan ÖVÜT was born in Malatya/Turkey in 1966 and completed primary, secondary and high school education in his hometown. In 1985, he started to study in the Department of International Relations of the Faculty of Political Sciences of Ankara University, completed the BSc International Relations programme and graduated from the college in 1989. Then, he began to work at the Turkish Standards Institution (TSE) at the Department of Bilateral and Multilateral Agreements on 26 August 1991. During his term of office under this Department for 9 years, he followed standardization activities of various international organizations and conducted the meetings of these organizations in Turkey.
Furthermore, he was actively involved in managing bilateral cooperation between TSE and national bodies of relevant countries and in organizing official visits. On 24 January 2000, he was appointed as the Director of Agreements and Foreign Relations Directorate and during his term, he conducted and supervised all international agreements of the TSE, visits of foreign delegates, relations with Turkic Republics, and Islamic Countries as well as TSE Foreign Representation Offices. As he was the head of foreign relations, he carried out all correspondence of TSE with ISO and relevant organisations at both technical and administrative levels.
Following his successful tenure as the Director of several Directorates between the years 2000-2011, he was appointed as the Head of the Training Department of the TSE which was formed in 2012. He worked hard to improve the existing infrastructure by amending the regulation framework and preparing all relevant guides in order to have a centralised system. While he was assuming his duties as the Head of the Training Department until 14 December 2014, he was elected as the Secretary General of the Standards and Metrology Institute for Islamic Countries (SMIIC) in the 7th SMIIC General Assembly Meeting held on 19 November 2014.
His term of office as the Secretary General of SMIIC officially started on 15 December 2014 and he completed his first term in 2017. Upon his nomination again, İhsan ÖVÜT was unanimously re-elected for the term 2022-2024 and is still on active duty as the Secretary-General.
Throughout his career in TSE and SMIIC, Mr İhsan ÖVÜT organised several regional/international meetings, drafted and signed cooperation agreements, took part in official international visits and delivered presentations at various events as the head of delegations, besides, he made major contributions to the preparation process of the SMIIC Statute under the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and has led the development of OIC/SMIIC standards and also carried out projects in ECO-Region and Eurasia Region. During his term in SMIIC and under his leadership, various projects and tasks have been successfully accomplished including the restructuring of the Institute, revision of all internal regulations along with the founding Statute, formation of the halal conformity assessment system, OIC Global Halal Quality Infrastructure, improving technical infrastructure of SMIIC as well as making SMIIC Technical Committees more active and more professional.
His approach to SMIIC relies on the institutionalization of professional administration of SMIIC on both technical/administrative and he is working intensively to accomplish this goal.
