People on Turkey's street signs

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

117 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was a Turkish field marshal and statesperson who was the founder of the Republic of Turkey and served as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He led sweeping...

İsmet İnönü

42 Mustafa İsmet İnönü was a Turkish politician and military officer who served as the president of Turkey from 1938 to 1950, and as its prime minister three times: from 1923 to 1924, 1925 to 1937, and...

Mehmed II

39 Mehmed II, commonly known as Mehmed the Conqueror, was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire twice, from August 1444 to September 1446 and then later from February 1451 to May 1481.

Adnan Menderes

30 Ali Adnan Ertekin Menderes was a Turkish politician who served as Prime Minister of Turkey between 1950 and 1960. He was one of the founders of the Democrat Party (DP) in 1946, the fourth legal...

Kâzım Karabekir

30 Musa Kâzım Karabekir was a Turkish general and politician. He was the commander of the Eastern Army of the Ottoman Empire during the Turkish War of Independence, and fought a successful military...

Turgut Özal

26 Halil Turgut Özal was a Turkish politician, bureaucrat, engineer and statesman who served as the president of Turkey from 1989 to 1993. He previously served as the prime minister of Turkey from 1983...

Fevzi Çakmak

24 Mustafa Fevzi Çakmak was a Turkish field marshal (Mareşal) and politician. He served as the Chief of General Staff from 1918 and 1919 and later the Minister of War of the Ottoman Empire in 1920. He...

Selim I

20 Selim I, also known as Selim the Grim or Selim the Resolute, was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1512 to 1520. Despite lasting only eight years, his reign is notable for the enormous expansion...

Mimar Sinan

19 Mimar Sinan also known as Koca Mi'mâr Sinân Âğâ, was the chief Ottoman architect, engineer and mathematician for sultans Suleiman the Magnificent, Selim II and Murad III. He was responsible for the...

Hayreddin Barbarossa

19 Hayreddin Barbarossa, also known as Hayreddin Pasha, Hızır Hayrettin Pasha, and simply Hızır Reis, was an Ottoman corsair and later admiral of the Ottoman Navy. Barbarossa's naval victories secured...

Yunus Emre

16 Yunus Emre, also known as Derviş Yûnus, was a Turkish folk poet and Sufi who greatly influenced Turkish culture. The UNESCO General Conference unanimously passed a resolution declaring 1991, the...

Mehmet Akif Ersoy

16 Mehmet Akif Ersoy was a Turkish poet, writer, academic, politician, and the author of the Turkish National Anthem. Widely regarded as one of the premiere literary minds of his time, Ersoy is noted...

Uğur Mumcu

15 Uğur Mumcu was a Turkish investigative journalist for the daily Cumhuriyet. He was assassinated by a bomb placed in his car outside his home.

Namık Kemal

15 Namık Kemal was an Ottoman writer, poet, democrat, intellectual, reformer, journalist, playwright, and political activist who was influential in the formation of the Young Ottomans and their struggle...

Midhat Pasha

14 Ahmed Şefik Midhat Pasha was an Ottoman politician, reformist, and statesman. He was the author of the Constitution of the Ottoman Empire.

Rumi

14 Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, commonly known as Rumi, was a Sufi mystic, poet, and founder of the Islamic brotherhood known as the Mevlevi Order. His family hailed from Balkh. Rumi is an influential...

Ahmad Yasawi

14 Ahmad Yasawi was a Turkic poet and Sufi, an early mystic who exerted a powerful influence on the development of Sufi orders throughout the Turkic-speaking world. Yasawi is the earliest known Turkic...

Cengiz Topel

13 Cengiz Topel was a fighter pilot and captain of the Turkish Air Force.                             

Bayezid I

12 Bayezid I, also known as Bayezid the Thunderbolt, was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1389 to 1402. He adopted the title of Sultan-i Rûm, Rûm being the Arabic name for the Eastern Roman Empire....

Turan Güneş

11 Turan Güneş was a Turkish academic and politician who served as the minister of foreign affairs and deputy prime minister in the 1970s. He started his political career in the Democrat Party (DP), but...

Ziya Gökalp

11 Mehmet Ziya Gökalp was a Turkish sociologist, writer, poet, and politician. After the 1908 Young Turk Revolution that reinstated constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire, he adopted the pen name...

Bülent Ecevit

11 Mustafa Bülent Ecevit was a Turkish politician, statesman, poet, writer, scholar, and journalist. He served as the Prime Minister of Turkey four times between 1974 and 2002. He served as prime...

Paruyr Sevak

11 Paruyr Sevak was an Armenian poet, translator and literary critic. A major figure in Soviet Armenia during the Khrushchev Thaw, Sevak and his works remain widely popular in Armenia today. He is...

Adnan Kahveci

9 Adnan Kahveci was a noted Turkish politician who served as a key advisor to Prime Minister Turgut Özal throughout the 1980s. He was one of the founders in 1983 of the Motherland Party (ANAP) led by...

Talaat Pasha

9 Mehmed Talât Pasha, commonly known as Talaat Pasha or Talat Pasha, was a Turkish activist, revolutionary, politician, and convicted war criminal who served as the de facto leader of the Ottoman...

Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu

9 Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu was a Turkish politician and member of the Parliament of Turkey. He was the leader and founder of the Great Unity Party (BBP), a far-right, nationalist-Islamist political party.

Uways al‑Qarani

8 ʾUways ibn ʿĀmir al-Qaranī was Muslim military commander and one of the tabi'in who served in the Rashidun Caliphate. As a tabi'i, he never met the Islamic prophet Muhammad, though was sometimes...

Abdi İpekçi

8 Abdi İpekçi was a Turkish journalist, intellectual and human rights activist. He was murdered when he was editor-in-chief of one of the main Turkish daily newspapers Milliyet which then had a...

Muammer Aksoy

8 Muammer Aksoy was a Turkish lawyer, politician, columnist and intellectual who was assassinated.   

Yeghishe Charents

8 Yeghishe Charents was an Armenian poet, writer, and public activist. Charents's literary subject matter ranged from his experiences in the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and frequently...

Zübeyde Hanım

7 Zübeyde Hanım was the mother of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey. She was the only daughter of the Hacısofular family which included her two brothers. Zübeyde was born in...

Sadik Achmet

7 Sadik Achmet was a Greek physician and politician of Thracian Turkish origin. He founded the Party of Friendship, Equality and Peace.

Cemal Gürsel

7 Cemal Gürsel was a Turkish military officer and politician who was the president of Turkey, serving from 1960 to 1966 after taking power in a coup d'état.

Süleyman Demirel

7 Sami Süleyman Gündoğdu Demirel was a Turkish politician, engineer, and statesman who served as the 9th President of Turkey from 1993 to 2000. He previously served as the Prime Minister of Turkey...

Osman Nuri Pasha

6 Osman Nuri Pasha, also known as Gazi Osman Pasha, was an Ottoman Turkish field marshal. Being one of the most respected and decorated Ottoman pashas of all time, many songs have been written for him,...

Âşık Veysel

6 Âşık Veysel was a Turkish Alevi ashik, bağlama virtuoso, and folk poet. He was born and died in the village of Sivrialan, Sivas Province, in the Ottoman Empire. Blind since the age of 7, Veysel's...

Yılmaz Güney

6 Yılmaz Güney was a Kurdish film director, screenwriter, novelist, actor and communist political activist. He quickly rose to prominence in the Turkish film industry. Many of his works were made from...

Alparslan Türkeş

6 Alparslan Türkeş was a Turkish politician, who was the founder and president of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the Grey Wolves (Ülkü Ocakları). He ran the Grey Wolves training camps from...

Necip Fazıl Kısakürek

6 Ahmet Necip Kısakürek, Türk şair, yazar ve düşünür. İlk şiirlerinde bireysel bunalımlar, metafizik sorgulamalar ve şehir yalnızlığı gibi temaları işlemiş, 1934 yılında tasavvufla tanıştıktan sonra...

Garegin Nzhdeh

6 Garegin Ter-Harutyunyan, better known by his nom de guerre Garegin Nzhdeh, was an Armenian statesman, military commander and nationalist revolutionary. As a member of the Armenian Revolutionary...

Avetik Isahakyan

6 Avetik Sahaki Isahakyan was an Armenian lyric poet, writer and public activist.                     

Nene Hatun

5 Nene Hatun, surnamed Kırkgöz after 1934, was a Turkish folk heroine, who became known for fighting against Russian forces during the recapture of Fort Aziziye in Erzurum from Russian forces at the...

Şehzade Cihangir

5 Şehzade Cihangir was an Ottoman prince, the sixth and youngest child of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his wife Hürrem Sultan.

Nâzım Hikmet

5 Mehmed Nâzım Ran, commonly known as Nâzım Hikmet, was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, director, and memoirist. He was acclaimed for the "lyrical flow of his statements". Described...

Abu Ayyub al-Ansari

5 Abu Ayyub al-Ansari — born Khalid ibn Zayd ibn Kulayb ibn Tha'laba in Yathrib — was from the tribe of Banu Najjar, and a close companion and the standard-bearer of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Abu...

Osman I

5 Osman I or Osman Ghazi was the eponymous founder of the Ottoman Empire. While initially a small Turkoman principality during Osman's lifetime, his beylik transformed into a vast empire in the...

Avicenna

5 Ibn Sina, commonly known in the West as Avicenna, was a preeminent philosopher and physician of the Muslim world. He was a seminal figure of the Islamic Golden Age, serving in the courts of various...

Evliya Çelebi

5 Dervish Mehmed Zillî, known as Evliya Çelebi, was an Ottoman Turkish explorer who travelled through his home country during its cultural zenith as well as neighboring lands. He travelled for over 40...

Hovhannes Tumanyan

5 Hovhannes Tumanyan was an Armenian poet, writer, translator, and literary and public activist. He is the national poet of Armenia.

Saladin

4 Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, commonly known as Saladin, was a Kurdish commander and political leader. He was the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty and the first sultan of both Egypt and Syria. An...

John F. Kennedy

4 John Fitzgerald Kennedy, also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person elected president, at 43 years,...

Ahmet Kaya

4 Ahmet Kaya was a Turkish–Kurdish folk singer. Kaya was persecuted by Turkish nationalist celebrities and authorities. Kaya left Turkey in an act of self-exile, and moved to France, where he would...

Kenan Evren

4 Ahmet Kenan Evren was a Turkish military officer who served as the 7th president of Turkey from 1982 to 1989. He assumed the post by leading the 1980 military coup.

Refik Saydam

4 İbrahim Refik Saydam was a Turkish physician, politician and the fourth Prime Minister of Turkey, serving from 25 January 1939 until his death on 8 July 1942.

Ali Çetinkaya

4 Ali Çetinkaya, also known as "Kel" Ali Bey was an Ottoman-born Turkish army officer and politician, who served eight terms in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, including a period in 1939–40 as...

Orhan

4 Orhan Ghazi was the second sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1323/4 to 1362. He was born in Söğüt, as the son of Osman I and his consort Malhun Hatun.

Imam Shamil

4 Imam Shamil was the third Imam of the Caucasian Imamate (1840–1859), and a Muslim sheikh of the Naqshbandi Sufi order. Nicknamed the "Caucasian Eagle", he was the political, military, and spiritual...

Piri Reis

4 Piri Reis was an Ottoman Turkish cartographer, admiral, navigator, and corsair. He is best known for his 1513 world map and his nautical atlas, the Kitab-ı Bahriye. His maps combined classical...

Hovhannes Shiraz

4 Hovhannes Shiraz was an Armenian poet.                                                             

Andranik

4 Andranik Ozanian, commonly known as General Andranik or simply Andranik, was an Armenian military commander and statesman, widely regarded as the preeminent fedayi and a seminal figure of the...

Süleyman Seba

3 Süleyman Seba was a Turkish football player of Abkhazian origin and was the longest presiding chairman of the Istanbul-based multisports club Beşiktaş. He was also an intelligence officer for...

Ahmet Tokuş

3 Ahmet Tokuş, Türk siyasetçidir.                                                                     

Yaşar Kemal

3 Yaşar Kemal was a leading Turkish writer of Kurdish descent, who wrote in Turkish and a human rights activist. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize...

Osman Kavuncu

3 Osman Kavuncu, Türk siyasetçi. 9 Eylül 1950 - 7 Şubat 1954 ve 7 Şubat 1954 - 17 Eylül 1957 tarihleri arasında, iki dönem Kayseri Belediye Başkanlığı yaptı.

Orhan Doğan

3 Orhan Doğan was a Kurdish human rights lawyer and politician of the Democratic Society Party.       

Piali Pasha

3 Piali Pasha was an Ottoman Grand Admiral between 1553 and 1567, and a Vizier (minister) after 1568. He is also known as Piale Pasha in English.

Yaşar Doğu

3 Yaşar Doğu was a Turkish wrestler. He competed in freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling, winning gold at the Olympic, world, and European championships.

Ahmed Vefik Pasha

3 Ahmed Vefik Pasha was an Ottoman statesman, diplomat, scholar, playwright, and translator during the Tanzimat and First Constitutional Era periods. He was commissioned with top-rank governmental...

Ali Fuat Cebesoy

3 Ali Fuat Cebesoy was a Turkish military officer who served in the Ottoman Army and then in the Turkish army and politician.

Al-Farabi

3 Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi, known in the Latin West as Alpharabius, was an early Islamic philosopher and music theorist. He has been designated as "Father of Islamic Neoplatonism", and the "Founder...

Şemsettin Günaltay

3 Mehmet Şemsettin Günaltay was a Turkish historian, politician, and Prime Minister of Turkey from 1949 to 1950.

Sokollu Mehmed Pasha

3 Sokollu Mehmed Pasha was an Ottoman statesman of Serb origin most notable for being the grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire. Born in Ottoman Herzegovina into an Orthodox Christian family, Mehmed was...

Ertuğrul

3 Ertuğrul or Ertuğrul Ghazi was a 13th-century uch bey (marcher-lord), who was the father of Osman I. Little is known about Ertuğrul's life. According to Ottoman tradition, he was the son of Suleyman...

Rauf Denktaş

3 Rauf Raif Denktaş was a Turkish Cypriot politician, barrister and jurist who served as the founding president of Northern Cyprus. He occupied this position as the president of the Turkish Republic of...

Tevfik Fikret

3 Tevfik Fikret was the pseudonym of Mehmed Tevfik, an Ottoman educator and poet, who is considered the founder of the modern school of Turkish poetry.

Çetin Emeç

3 Çetin Emeç was a prominent Turkish journalist and columnist, who was assassinated.                 

Halide Edib Adıvar

3 Halide Edip Adıvar was a Turkish novelist, teacher, and a nationalist and feminist intellectual. She was best known for her novels criticizing the low social status of Turkish women and what she saw...

Salih Omurtak

3 Salih Omurtak was a Turkish general and the 4th Chief of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces.

Yahya Kemal Beyatlı

3 Yahya Kemal Beyatlı, known by the pen name Yahya Kemal, was a Turkish poet, author, politician and diplomat.