Ciller, Tansu  ( born 1946 , Istanbul, TurkeyTurkish economist and politician, who was Turkey’s first woman prime minister (1993–96) and the first female to head a Middle Eastern Muslim country.

Ciller was born to an affluent family in Istanbul. After graduating from the University of the Bosporus with a degree in economics, she continued her studies in the United States, where she earned graduate degrees from the Universities of New Hampshire and Connecticut and attended Yale University. Ciller returned to Turkey to teach and, at age 36, became the nation’s youngest full professor. Together with her husband, she amassed some $60 million through real estate speculation.

Ciller joined the ruling True Path Party (Doǧru Yol Partisi; DYP) in 1990. The following year she was elected to parliament and was named economics minister in Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel’s coalition government. Although she advocated greater privatization of state-owned firms and a balanced budget, it was during her tenure as economics minister that government debt soared and the country suffered a downgrading of its international credit rating. Despite these woes, Ciller was selected to replace Demirel as prime minister in 1993.

As she assumed power, Ciller faced the growing violence of Kurds in southeastern Turkey and the pressing need to reduce government spending. In 1995 the DYP’s coalition collapsed, but Ciller stayed on as caretaker prime minister until 1996, when her party and the Motherland Party formed a coalition that promptly fell apart. Ciller was reelected as the DYP’s leader in 1999, but, after the party fared poorly in the 2002 elections, she stepped down.