Ebru Baybara Demir

After her graduation from the Tourism Guidance Department of Marmara University, she started her professional career as a courier.She between 1997-1999, worked as Secretary General of the Istanbul Guides Association and Turkey Tourist Guides Association. Ebru Baybara Demir, who settled in Mardin in 1999, transformed a historical Assyrian mansion in Mardin to a restaurant with 21 Mardin women. She opened Cercis Murat Mansion which is the first touristic initiative of Mardin. She has researched Middle Eastern and traditional Anatolian cuisine. Ebru believed that gastronomy can be used as a tool for developing and transforming lives and societies as well as adding value to tourism. Ebru proved this belief in the success of the social gastronomy projects. She was nominated for the Basque Culinary World Prize, the world’s most prestigious culinary prize competition, in 2017 with the Harran Gastronomy School Project and in 2018 she was nominated with the Soil Plate Project. She was the first and only Turkish chef to be elected as one of the top 10 chefs in the world for two years in a row. Demir, with the support of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), is conducting a project that includes good agricultural practices, the availability and reproduction of local seeds, the social integration of host communities and Syrian refugee women and women’s employment. The name of the project is from Soil to Plate, Living Soil and Local Seed.