Kemal Derviş was a Turkish economist and politician who was head of the United Nations Development Programme. He was honored by the government of Japan for having "contributed to mainstreaming Japan's development assistance policy through the United Nations". In 2005, he was ranked 67th in the Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll conducted by Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines. He was vice president and director of the global economy and development program at the Brookings Institution and part-time professor of international economics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

Mustafa Bülent Ecevit was a Turkish politician, statesman, poet, writer, scholar, and journalist, who served as the Prime Minister of Turkey four times between 1974 and 2002. He served as prime minister in 1974, 1977, 1978–1979, and 1999–2002. Ecevit was chairman of the Republican People's Party (CHP) between 1972 and 1980, and in 1987 he became chairman of the Democratic Left Party (DSP).