Turkish politician and writer Bülent Ecevit (born 1925) was alternately prime minister and leader of the opposition in the 1970s; since 1989 he has chaired the Democratic Left Party. He was made Turkey's prime minister for the fifth time in 1999.

Bülent Ecevit was born in Istanbul on May 28, 1925 into a learned and cultured family. His father was a physician and member of Turkey's new parliament as a representative of the Republican People's Party (RPP); Ecevit's mother was a teacher and painter. He graduated from the American Robert College in Istanbul in 1944 and later studied at the universities of Ankara, London, and Harvard. Following an interlude as an official with the Press Attaché's office at the Turkish Embassy in London, he returned to Turkey in 1950 and joined Ulus, the daily of the RPP, as a literary critic. He would later hold positions of foreign news...