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.

Sami Süleyman Gündoğdu Demirel, better known as Süleyman Demirel (Turkish pronunciation: [sylejˈman demiˈɾel]; born 1 November 1924), is a Turkish politician who served as Prime Minister seven times and was the ninth President of Turkey.

Demirel was born in İslamköy, Atabey, a town in Isparta Province. Upon completion of his elementary school education in his hometown, he attended middle school and high school in Isparta and Afyon, respectively. He graduated from the school of civil engineering at the Istanbul Technical University in 1949. Demirel worked in the state department for electrical power planning in 1949. He undertook postgraduate studies on irrigation, electrical technologies and dam construction in the United States, first in 1949-1950, then in 1954-1955. During the construction of the Seyhan Dam, Demirel worked as a project engineer and in 1954 was appointed Head of the Department of Dams. As of 1955, he served as Director General of the State Hydraulic Works (DSİ). In this capacity, Demirel was to supervise the construction of a multitude of dams, power plants, and irrigation facilities.

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.

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.

Fethullah Gülen (born 27 April 1941) is a Turkish author, educator, and Muslim scholar. Gülen has been described in the English-language media as "one of the world's most important Muslim figures." He is the founder of the Gülen movement. He currently lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, USA.

Gülen teaches an Anatolian version of Islam, deriving from Sunni Muslim scholar Bediüzzaman Said Nursi's teachings and modernizing them. Gülen has stated his belief in science, interfaith dialogue among the People of the Book, and multi-party democracy. He has initiated such dialogue with the Vatican and some Jewish organizations.

Gülen is actively involved in the societal debate concerning the future of the Turkish state, and Islam in the modern world. In the Turkish context Gülen appears relatively conservative and religiously observant.

His role in Turkish politics is a controversial one, and in 1999 he was put on trial for attempting to overthrow the government. He has since lived in exile in the United States. He was acquitted of the charges in 2008. He has been seen as supportive of Turkey's current prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but news emerging in May 2012 emerged of a possible conflict between the two.