Umit Bektas was born in Ankara, Turkey in 1972. He graduated from the School of Journalism in Ankara University. He started working as a photojournalist for the newspaper Milliyet in 1993. After leaving Milliyet, he’s been working for the Reuters news agency as a senior staff photographer since 2004. He served in over 50 countries throughout his career. Photographed the United States operations in Iraq as an embedded photographer. He also covered the NATO campaign in Afghanistan again as an embedded journalist. He photographed many zones of conflict such as Ukraine, Bosnia, Algeria, Kosovo, Georgia, Hong Kong, Sudan, Serbia, Syria. The pictures he took became covers to magazines such as Time and Newsweek. His photos got published in prestigious newspapers such as New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde. In 1995, 2011 and 2021 he won the Press Picture of the Year award from the Turkish Photojournalists Association.