[2] He then worked as a research assistant in the Department of Industrial Engineering at Anadolu University in Eskişehir, Turkey, where his family lived, from 1984 to 1985.

[2] He worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Quantitative Analysis at Cleveland State University's Faculty of Business from 1989 to 1992.

While he was an associate professor at Bilkent University in Ankara, he became a founding member of the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

On February 3, 2012, he was appointed as the Deputy Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, a position he resigned from on September 5, 2014.

His daughter, Saide Simin Mercan, married Justice and Development Party (AKP) politician Alparslan Bayraktar in 2018.