Mehmet Ali Aybar

Mehmet Ali Aybar (; 5 October 1908 – 10 July 1995) was a lawyer, member of the Turkish parliament, the second president of the Workers Party of Turkey ( or briefly TİP), the founder and President of the Socialist Revolution Party, and a member of the Russell Tribunal against the war crimes of the United States in Vietnam. He is known as one of the most prominent proponents of democratic socialism in Turkish political history.

Biography Mehmet Ali Aybar was born in Istanbul in 1908. He was a great-grandson of the Prussian-born Ottoman general Mehmed Ali Pasha, and thus a relative of Turkish poets Nâzım Hikmet and Oktay Rıfat Horozcu, as well as the statesman Ali Fuat Cebesoy. Aybar's father was Tahsin Bey, who was the son of Hüseyin Hüsnü Pasha, first commander of the Action Army. Another ancestor of his is Gelenbevi Ismail Efendi.

He studied at Galatasaray High School, and graduated from Istanbul University's School of Law. He then moved to Paris to continue his legal studies. It was in Paris that he was exposed to Marxist literature. After his release from prison in 1962, he became the first leader of the Workers' Party of Turkey. It was only after he ascended to party leadership that intellectuals began to take the party seriously. Aybar's credibility drew academics to the party As the leader of the party, he and his associates were responsible for the direction and success of the party. Aybar personally opposed the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia and this caused disputes in the party. In 1971 he resigned from TİP as a result of his ideological split with party leadership over the Czechoslovakia issue. In 1975 he founded Socialist Party (later called Socialist Revolution Party). This party was closed by the military coup in 1980. Aybar was also a member of the International War Crimes Tribunal which was founded by Bertrand Russell. Mehmet Ali Aybar died on 10 July 1995 in İstanbul.