Abd Al-Aziz, His Imperial Majesty (Ottoman Turkish: `Abdü´l-Âzīz عبد العزيز) (February 9/18 1830 – 4 June 1876) was the 32nd Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and reigned between 25 June 1861 and 30 May 1876. He was the son of Sultan Mahmud II and succeeded his brother Abdülmecid I in 1861.

Born and later circumcised at the Eyüp Palace, Constantinople (Istanbul), on 9/18 February 1830, Abdülaziz received an Ottoman education but was nevertheless an ardent admirer of the material progress that was made in the West. He was interested in literature and was also a classical music composer. Some of his compositions have been collected in the album "European Music at the Ottoman Court" by the London Academy of Ottoman Court Music.

His parents were Mahmud II and Valide Sultan Pertevniyal ("Partav-Nihal"). (1812–1883), originally named Besîme but sometimes called as Hasnâ, a noble Vlach (1812 – 5 February 1883), descendant of Mihai Viteazu/Michael the Brave a Member of the Drăculeşti line. He was a quarter French. In 1868 Pertevniyal was living in the Dolmabahçe Palace. That year Abdülaziz led the visiting Eugénie de Montijo, Empress of France, to see his mother. Pertevniyal perceived the presence of a foreign woman within her quarters of the seraglio as an insult. She reportedly slapped Eugénie across the face, almost resulting in an international incident. The Pertevniyal Valide Sultan Mosque was built under the patronage of his mother. The construction work began in November 1869 and the mosque was finished in 1871.

Edip Yuksel (born 1957) is an American intellectual considered one of the prime figures in the modern Islamic reform and Quraniyoon movements. Author of many books on the Qur'an and Islam, he has gained much attention through his works and speeches.

His main aim, as stated throughout his writings, is to spread an Islamic understanding that is rational, progressive, and humanistic, which in his eyes can only be gained through accepting the Qur'an as the only Divine authority. He is also a promoter of Theistic evolution, an understanding he gets from science and the Qur'an, instead of the Islamic belief in Creationism. Specifically, Yuksel is critical of Islamic creationists such as Adnan Oktar. Yuksel is a former member of United Submitters International.

Next to his activities on Islamic reform, he teaches philosophy and logic courses at Pima Community College. He currently lives in Tucson, Arizona. Yuksel is an ethnic Kurd, and was born in Turkey.

Yuksel was born in Turkey in 1957 into a Kurdish family. His father, Sadreddin Yuksel, an Islamic scholar, taught Arabic at a Turkish university. His brother, Metin Yüksel was assassinated by nationalists. Yuksel says that he was an outspoken Islamist as a youth, and spent years in prison for his views. Yuksel says that he broke with Islamism in 1986 and adopted the Qur'an Alone philosophy as preached by Rashad Khalifa, the inspiration of the United Submitters International whose beliefs include: the dedication of all worship practices to God alone, upholding the Quran alone, and rejecting the Islamic traditionalist hadith and sunnah attributed to Muhammad. Because of this, Yuksel's traditionalist father, Sadreddin, declared his son an apostate, and he received many death threats from Orthodox Muslims.

Yaşar Nuri Öztürk (June 22, 1951 in Sürmene, Trabzon) is a Turkish theologian, lawyer, columnist and a former member of Turkish parliament.

He was born on June 22, 1951 in Sürmene, Trabzon and raised in Turkey’s Black Sea region.

He has served as both faculty member and dean at the Istanbul University for over 26 years. He taught Islamic thought at the Theological Seminary of Barrytown in New York for one year as a guest professor, during which time he also made major contributions to the Islamic section of the anthology, “The World Scripture.”

He has given many conferences on Islamic thought, humanity and human rights in Turkey, the USA, Europe, the Middle East and the Balkans. Yasar Nuri Ozturk represents an interpretation of Islam which is secular and social democratic.

He also has a Turkish translation of the Qur'an. This translation, which went into 126 printings between 1993 and 2003, is recognized as the most printed book in the history of the Turkish Republic.

His lengthy articles, such as “Islam and Europe,” (Die Zeit, February 20, 2003); “Islam and Democracy,” [“Desperately Seeking Europe,” London (Archetype Publications), 2003, pp. 198–210; Europa Leidenschaftlich Gesucht, München-Zürich, (Piper Verlag) 2003, pp. 210–224], “İslam-Batı İlişkileri ve Bunun KEİ Ülkelerindeki Yansımaları” (Chelovecheskiy Faktor: Obschestvo i Vlast, 2004-4), along with the extensive interviews he has given on the subjects of Islam, the West and secularism [for example, see “al-Ahram” (weekly), February 1–7, 2001] have had a deep impact in both the West and the Islamic world.

Fatih Altaylı (born 1963, Van, Turkey) is a Turkish journalist, columnist, television presenter and media executive.

He graduated from Galatasaray High School in Istanbul. Fatih Altaylı stepped into journalism at the newspaper Cumhuriyet as a sports reporter. In 1993, he co-founded the radio station Best FM. From 1995 on, Altaylı continued with broadcating at Show Radio for about one year. The same year, he was appointed news presenter at the sister media Show TV channel. In addition, he started to present. his own program Teke Tek (One For One).

In 1996, Altaylı transferred to Doğan Media Group. While writing his column at Hürriyet, he was tasked with the post of a coordinator at Radio D in the same media group. In the summer of 2002, Fatih Altaylı was appointed top executive of the television channel Kanal D.

Later, he worked as the top executive of the newspaper Sabah. He resigned from this post as the newspaper was sold to Çalık Holding's Turkuaz Media in 2008 after it was seized in April 2007 by the governmental Savings Deposit Insurance Fund of Turkey (TMSF) due to financial problems of the former owner Dinç Bilgin.

Murat Gökhan Bardakçı (born 1955) is a Turkish journalist working on Ottoman history and Turkish music history. Besides he is a columnist in Habertürk newspaper.

Bardakçı was born in 1955 in İstanbul. An economist by training, he was trained in Turkish classical music by some of the most-reputed contemporary masters, in tanbur and singing at first, with his primary interests directed more towards theory and musical history later. He published several researches on musical history (notably the biographies of the composers Abd al-Qadir Maraghi and Refik Fersan) and with the start of a journalistic career in Hürriyet, expanded the scope of his writings on Ottoman and general Islamic history, with marked emphasis on the 19th and the early-20th centuries. Two of his books on the end of the Ottoman dynasty, "Son Osmanlılar" (The Last Ottomans) and Şahbaba, a biography of Mehmed VI Vahideddin, became best-sellers in Turkey, the former also having been carried over to the screen in the form a TV serial.