Bülent Kiliç won first prize in the Spot News Single at the World Press Photo Awards 2015 for the image of a young woman wounded during clashes between demonstrators and security forces at the funeral in Istanbul on 12 March 2014 of 15-year-old Berkin Elvan who died from injuries suffered during a protest.
Kiliç also won third prize in the same category for the stunning image of a coalition airstrike against Islamic State group militants on Tilsehir hill west of the Syrian border town of Kobane on 23 October 2014.

Hearing the news, he said: “I am very happy of course. It’s the biggest photo contest in the world. It has been a dream for the last ten years and it has finally happened.”
 

Bülent Kiliç, a Turkish photographer born in 1979, began his career as a journalist for the local press and in 2003 became a photographer, joining AFP as a stringer two years later.
He is currently the photo manager for Turkey and has carried out several foreign assignments including in Ukraine and Syria.

“The two awards won by Bülent at the World Press Photo crown an exceptional year of reporting which has already seen him win several prizes,” said AFP chairman Emmanuel Hoog.

In 2014 Bülent Kiliç won prizes at the Bayeux-Calvados War Correspondents awards, the North American Press Photographers Association competition and the China International Press Photo contest. Time Magazine and the Guardian also chose him as their agency photographer of the year.