He received his Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University in 1973 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "Substitution, employment and intertemporal equilibrium in a non-linear multi-sector planning model for Turkey.

"[9] From 1973 to 1976, he was member of the economics faculty of the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and served also as an advisor to Bülent Ecevit during and after his Prime Ministerial duties.

At the World Bank, he held various positions, including civision chief for industrial and trade strategy and director for the Central Europe Department after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

As a result, Özkan was forced to resign, prompting nearly half of DSP's parliamentarians to follow him, including İsmail Cem, the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

[13] Özkan, Zeki Eker, Cem and Kemal Derviş, the Minister of State in charge of economy, then decided to establish a new social democratic party.

[21] Strobe Talbott announced that Derviş joined the Brookings Institution on 30 March 2009 as vice president and director of the Global Economy and Development program.

[25] These reforms, and his reputation and high-level contacts in the U.S. and Europe, is said to have helped him to mobilize $20 billion in new loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Derviş resigned from his ministerial position on 10 August 2002 and was elected to parliament on 3 November of that year as a member of the main opposition Republican People's Party.

[30] This was speculated by the media as the possible reason why Derviş, despite being seen by many as the right person for the job, decided not to become a candidate to succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn as the next managing director of the IMF, a position which was eventually taken by Christine Lagarde.