Ahmet Mesut Yılmaz (Turkish pronunciation: [meˈsut jɯɫˈmaz]; born 6 November 1947 in Istanbul) is the former leader of the Motherland Party (Turkish: Anavatan Partisi, ANAP) and was the Turkish prime minister in the 1990s.

Mesut Yılmaz was a rising star in the Motherland Party of Turgut Özal, representing the Black Sea province of Rize in the parliament and serving as tourism minister in Ozal's cabinet. Upon Özal's election to the presidency in 1989, Yılmaz became the leader of an intraparty opposition to the new Prime Minister, Yıldırım Akbulut.

Yılmaz managed to discharge Akbulut from party leadership and from all executive functions during the biennial party congress in June 1991. Because ANAP had the majority in the parliament he subsequently became Prime Minister of Turkey.

The following years saw a decline in the popularity of the Motherland Party and an acrimonious relationship with Tansu Çiller, leader of the center-right True Path Party (DYP). Yılmaz also made the Motherland Party more business-friendly and Europe-oriented, causing the more conservative, religious wing to switch to the Welfare Party (RP) of Necmettin Erbakan.

Necmettin Erbakan (29 October 1926 – 27 February 2011) was a Turkish engineer, academic, politician (eventually political party leader), who was the Prime Minister of Turkey from 1996 until 1997. He was Turkey's first Islamist Prime Minister. In 1997 he was pressured by the military to step down as prime minister and later banned from politics by the constitutional court.

Erbakan was born in Sinop, at the coast of Black Sea in northern Turkey. His father was Mehmet Sabri, a judge from the prestigious Kozanoğlu clan (Oghuz Turks, Afshar tribe) of Cilicia and his mother Kamer was a native of Sinop and second wife of Mehmet Sabri.

After the high school education in Istanbul High School, he graduated from the Mechanical Engineering Faculty at the Istanbul Technical University in 1948 with a GPA of 4.00/4.00, and received a PhD degree from the RWTH Aachen University, Germany. After returning to Turkey, Erbakan became lecturer at the İTÜ and was appointed professor in 1965 at the same university. After working some time in leading position in the industry, he switched over to politics, and was elected deputy of Konya in 1969.

Abdullah Çatlı (1956 – November 3, 1996) was a Turkish convicted drug trafficker, and contract killer for the Counter-Guerrilla. He led the youth branch of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). His death in the Susurluk car crash, while travelling in a car with state officials revealed the depth of the state's complicity in organized crime.

Growing up in Nevşehir, a small province in Central Anatolia, Çatlı was familiar with the views of the far right MHP, and Turkish ultra-nationalists. He was a hit man for the state, ordered to kill suspected members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the ASALA.

Çatlı is claimed to be responsible, along with Haluk Kırcı, of the 9 October 1978 Bahçelievler Massacre during which seven university students, members of the Workers Party of Turkey (TIP), were murdered. He is further said to have helped Mehmet Ali Ağca murder the left-wing newspaper editor Abdi İpekçi on 1 January 1979, in Istanbul, and helped Ağca escape from an Istanbul military prison, in 1979.

Erdal İnönü (6 June 1926 – 31 October 2007) was a Turkish physicist and politician. He was the son of Turkey's second president İsmet İnönü. Leader of the Social Democratic Populist Party between 1983 and 1993, he served as Deputy Prime Minister in two governments between 1991 and 1993 and as Minister of Foreign Affairs for approximately six months in 1995.

He graduated from the Physics Department of the Faculty of Sciences of Ankara University in 1947 and received his PhD from California Institute of Technology in 1951. Upon his return to Turkey, İnönü worked at first as assistant professor in Ankara University. Between 1964-1974, he was professor of physics and the first Chairman of the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Middle East Technical University (1960–1966). He initiated research on neutron transport during that period. Between 1969-1971, he was the Dean of the university's Faculty of Art and Sciences. He served as president of METU between 1970-1971. In 1974, İnönü moved to Bosphorus University in Istanbul and lectured there until his venture into politics when he founded the Social Democracy Party (SODEP) in 1983.

Aydın Doğan (born 1936 in Kelkit, Gümüşhane Province) is a Turkish billionaire media tycoon best known as the founder of Doğan Holding, one of Turkey's largest conglomerates.

Born in 1936 as a member of a well-known family in Kelkit, Aydin Dogan got his elementary and secondary school education in Kelkit and finished high-school in Erzincan. Between 1956-60, he attended Istanbul Economy and Commerce Academy (later Marmara University) where his leadership qualities were first recognized helping him to become the Student Community Leader.

In 1959, he got registered in Mecidiyekoy Tax Office and started his professional life trading construction equipment, as well as passenger and commercial vehicles.

Dogan founded his first industrial company in 1974 and joined both the Assembly and the Administrative Board of Istanbul Chamber of Commerce. In the years that followed, he served as a board member in the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey.

Dogan became a publisher with the acquisition of the daily newspaper Milliyet in 1979. With the addition of the prestigious daily newspaper Hurriyet in 1994, he intensified his presence in the media. Between 1986 and 1996, he served as the head of the Association of Turkish Newspaper Publishers. In 2004, Doğan became the first elected Turkish Deputy Chairperson of World Association of Newspapers (WAN). The Doğan Media Holding he founded incorporates the newspapers Posta, Hürriyet, Milliyet, Radikal, Fanatik, Referans, Vatan and Turkish Daily News, and 21 TV channels in Turkey and abroad.