Ahmet Taner Kislali

Ahmet Taner Kışlalı (10 July 1939 – 21 October 1999) was a Turkish professor, politician, and commentator who was assassinated. He served in the Parliament of Turkey in 1977 and was Minister of Culture in 1978 and 1979. He completed his primary and secondary education in Kilis, and graduated from "Kabataş Erkek Lisesi" high school in Istanbul in 1957.

He received a degree from the School of Political Sciences at Ankara University, in 1963. During his college years, he also worked in the newspaper "Yeni Gün", published in Ankara. He got his PhD on "Çağdaş Türkiye'de Siyasal Güçler" (Political Powers in Contemporary Turkey) from the University of Paris, Department of Constitutional Law and Political Science. He started his academic life as a lecturer in Hacettepe Üniversitesi, Ankara. He then moved to School of Political Sciences at Ankara University and became an assistant professor, and later an associate professor in 1977.

Politically, he was a Kemalist who adopted the views of democratic socialism and social democracy. In 1977 he was elected to the Turkish parliament, Grand National Assembly of Turkey, as deputy of İzmir. Between the years 1978 and 1979, he was appointed to position of ministry of culture, by prime minister Bülent Ecevit. During his term of ministry, he restarted the effort of printing classical works by the state press, making these available to masses at reasonable prices.

After the military coup of 12 September 1980, Ahmet Taner Kışlalı went back to the academia, and became a full professor in 1988. He continued to give lectures on political science in Department of Communication at Ankara University, after his retirement. Starting from 1991, he had a regular column in the leftist newspaper Cumhuriyet with the title "Haftaya Bakış" ("A View of the Week").