By Chris Elliott…….
Cyprusscene is pleased to welcome Meryem Ozcilem as a contributor on our pages and with her background and translation skills we will now try to include more Turkish Cypriot news in English for our worldwide readership.
Meryem Ozcilem was born in 1984 in Famagusta. She grew up in one of the small villages in the Iskele district, and lived there with her parents until she 
started her University studies. She had decided to become a teacher and studied at Eastern Mediterranean University in the English Language Teaching Department and graduated in 2007 Spring Semester, with the aim of teaching English in Government and Private Schools. However, Meryem later decided on a change of direction for her future career.
In 2012, she started working for the TRNC Government in the Prime Ministry for about 1½ years, then moved to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Immigration Office for three years. In the Immigration Office she dealt with foreign nationals who live in North Cyprus. Her duties involved responsibility to give Residency Permission to the foreigners who are visitors in TRNC. Also, in the case of Permanent Residency Permissions (White ID. Card) she voluntarily offered to do some translation work with Chris Elliott in order to help people understand the benefits of getting the White Card by publishing articles about it in cyprusscene.com.
Today Meryem works as a Secretary to a Departmental Manager at the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus Legislative Assembly.
She also voluntarily deals with Res-Bir (Restaurateurs Association) in public relations where the Cypriot Restaurant owners join the association and receive certification. She has recently become interested in writing about Tourism, and will be dealing with Tourism News and will talk about Restaurant events weekly in cyprusscene.com and northcyprusforum.net.
Welcome to the team Meryem 🙂
A great addition to the team. the diversity of Cyprusscene is now well established.