The Turkish Cypriot politician and statesman Rauf Denktash (born 1924) began his working life as a lawyer but became engaged in the struggle for his community's rights. In 1975 he became head of the "Turkish Federated State of Cyprus" and in 1985 president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. He served in this office for three terms.

Rauf Denktash was born January 27, 1924, in what became the British Crown Colony of Cyprus the following year. He came from a comfortable middle-class family, the son of a judge who worked in the British administration. After graduating from the English high school in Nicosia in 1941, he worked as an interpreter in the courts, taught for a year in the English school, and began to write articles on the problems of Cyprus' Turkish community for Halkin Sesi (Voice of the People). In 1944 Denktash went to London to study law and was called to the...