Graduated from Ankara University, Faculty of Political Sciences, Department of International Relations. Between 1970 and 1971, he worked as an assistant in international relations at the Middle East Technical University, Faculty of Administrative Sciences.
From 1971 to 1973, he lived in Syria and Lebanon and participated in the Palestinian liberation movement. He pursued a journalism career for 40 years, starting in 1976. Between 1991 and 1993, he served as an advisor to the 8th President Turgut Özal. From 1999 to 2000, he worked as an expert at various think tanks in Washington. Academically, he taught Modern Middle Eastern History and Middle Eastern Politics at Istanbul Bilgi University and Istanbul Kültür University.
In his political life, he was among the founding members of the New Democracy Movement. In 2016, he worked as a researcher at the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies in Sweden. From 2018 onwards, she served as a senior expert at the Swedish Institute of International Relations.
He is also a member of the Turkish-EU Joint Parliamentary Committee of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, the Asian Parliamentary Assembly, and a substitute member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Çandar was elected as a Member of Parliament for Diyarbakır in the general elections in 2023.
