Nayib Bukele is the President of El Salvador and one of the most unconventional figures in contemporary global politics, widely recognized for his distinctive personal style, including jeans, backward baseball caps, leather jackets, and unusual eyewear. He was born on July 24, 1981, in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.

Nayib Bukele is the first child of Olga Ortez de Bukele, a Roman Catholic woman from a small town near El Salvador’s eastern border, and Armando Bukele Kattán, a businessman of Palestinian origin and a prominent leader within El Salvador’s Muslim community as president of the Arab Islamic Association of El Salvador. He has three younger brothers and six older half-siblings. Bukele studied law at the Central American University in Managua, Nicaragua, but left his studies to work in his family’s businesses.

Nayib Bukele became involved in the family conglomerate and is the El Salvador representative and importer of Yamaha Motor Company. He also serves as chairman and CEO of Opermet. His paternal grandparents were Christian Palestinians who migrated from Jerusalem and Bethlehem to El Salvador carrying Ottoman passports. On his maternal side, his grandfather was Greek Orthodox, while his grandmother was Catholic.

Bukele’s father, Armando Bukele Kattán, was an influential businessman with investments in textiles, pharmaceuticals, and media, held a doctoral degree, and later converted to Islam, becoming an imam. In 1992, he founded the first mosque in El Salvador. After his death in 2015, he remained remembered as a prominent figure in the country’s Muslim community.

Nayib Bukele entered politics in 2012 as a member of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and was elected mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán, a small town near San Salvador. In 2015, he ran for mayor of San Salvador and won, serving as mayor of the capital between 2015 and 2018.

After leaving the FMLN, Nayib Bukele founded his own political party, Nuevas Ideas (New Ideas), in October 2017. However, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal ruled that the party had been formed too late to participate in the upcoming elections. As a result, Bukele ran for president as the candidate of the Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA).

Nayib Bukele announced his candidacy for the presidency following his term as mayor, and on February 3, 2019, he won the election with approximately 53 percent of the vote. At the age of 38, he became the youngest elected president in Latin American history.

Shortly after taking office, Nayib Bukele implemented the multi-phase anti-gang initiative known as the Plan for Territorial Control, which strengthened law enforcement and adopted a hardline approach toward detainees. In February 2021, his Nuevas Ideas party entered national elections for the first time and, together with its GANA allies, secured a two-thirds majority in the Legislative Assembly.

This supermajority enabled Bukele to replace the attorney general and five Supreme Court justices. With power increasingly centralized, Nayib Bukele adopted unconventional policies, including making El Salvador the first country in the world to recognize Bitcoin as legal tender.

In March 2022, following a surge in homicides, Nayib Bukele requested emergency powers from the Legislative Assembly, suspending rights such as freedom of association, the right to be informed of reasons for arrest, and access to legal counsel. Authorities were granted expanded surveillance powers over suspected gang members. By July, El Salvador recorded its first day with zero homicides in more than two years, and gang activity and murder rates dropped significantly, reducing violence and extortion across much of the country.

By February 2024, an estimated 75,000 Salvadorans—approximately one percent of the population—had been arrested and imprisoned. Human rights organizations raised concerns, alleging wrongful detentions and mistreatment of inmates, warning of violations of civil liberties.

Nayib Bukele frequently communicated government policy through his personal account on X (formerly Twitter). Despite the El Salvadoran Constitution prohibiting consecutive presidential terms, a Supreme Court dominated by Bukele-aligned judges ruled in September 2021 that he was eligible for re-election.

In the February 2024 presidential election, Nayib Bukele won approximately 85 percent of the vote and was re-elected president. On February 9, 2020, he controversially sent 40 soldiers from the Salvadoran Army into the Legislative Assembly building to pressure lawmakers to approve a 109 million U.S. dollar loan from the United States.

Nayib Bukele married Gabriela Rodríguez de Bukele, a psychologist of Sephardic origin and former ballet dancer, in 2014. The couple has two daughters, Layla Bukele and Aminah Bukele.

El Salvador is a Central American country with an estimated population of 6,365,503 as of 2025. It borders Guatemala to the west, Honduras to the north and east, and the Pacific Ocean to the south. El Salvador is the most densely populated country on the American mainland and one of the most industrialized nations in the region. Its official name is the Republic of El Salvador.

Source: Biyografiler.com