Bülent Ecevit

Mustafa Bülent Ecevit (Turkish: [byˈlænt edʒeˈvit]; 28 May 1925 – 5 November 2006) was a Turkish politician, poet, writer, scholar, and journalist, who served as the Prime Minister of Turkey four times between 1974 and 2002. He served as prime minister of Turkey in 1974, 1977, 1978–79, and 1999–2002. He was the leader of the Republican People's Party (CHP) between 1972 and 1980, and in 1989 he became the leader of the Democratic Left Party (DSP).

Personal life

He was born in Istanbul to a middle-class family. Ecevit's father Fahri Ecevit was a professor in Ankara University. His mother, Fatma Nazlı, was among the first women in Turkey to paint professionally.

In 1944, Ecevit graduated from Robert College in Istanbul and started working as a translator at the General Directorate for Press and Publication (Basın Yayın Genel Müdürlüğü). In 1946, shortly after marrying his classmate Rahşan Aral in 1946, he moved to London to work for Turkey's press attaché. During his stay in London, he studied Bengali, Sanskrit and Art History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, but did not graduate. He later went to the United States in the mid–1950s on a State Department fellowship, and worked at two newspapers in North Carolina. Ecevit said his mother was of Bosniak ancestry and his father may have been of Kurdish ancestry.