After successfully lobbying for changed laws in Turkey, his team performed the first local deceased-donor kidney transplantation at Hacettepe University in 1979.

As a child, he initially aspired to becoming an engineer until his second year at high school, when he changed his mind to medicine.

[2] During his residency, he became interested in general surgery and the management of burns and subsequently co-authored the paper "Results obtained from the application of 0.5 per cent silver nitrate solution in the treatment of burns", published in the Journal of Turkish Medical Society in 1970.

[1] He completed his fellowship in burns at the Shriners Burn Institute and John Sealy Hospital in Galveston, Texas (1973)[3] before training under Thomas Starzl at the Colorado University Medical School Transplantation Center, Denver (January 1974 – June 1975).

[2][5] In June 1975, when he returned from the States, he met with founder and president of Hacettepe University, İhsan Doğramacı, and a transplantation unit was set up.

[8] On 3 November 1975, he led the team that performed the first renal transplantation in Turkey, where a living mother donated a kidney to her 12-year old son.

[7] It legalised the diagnosis of brain death[8] and meant that kidneys could be acquired from a local supply as an alternative to importing from Europe.

[18][19][20] He is the only Turkish citizen to be elected as an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Surgical Association and the Institute of Medicine of the United States National Academy of Science.