Ahmet Taner Kışlalı

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Ahmet Taner Kışlalı (1939 - 1999) was a Turkish intellectual, political scientist, lawyer, journalist/author, academics and politician.

Kışlalı was born on July 10, 1939, in Zile, Tokat, Turkey. He completed his primary and secondary education in Kilis, and graduated from "Kabataş Erkek Lisesi" high school in İstanbul in 1957.

He received a degree from the School of Political Sciences at Ankara Üniversitesi, 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.

In 1977 he was elected to the Turkish parliament, Grand National Assembly of Turkey, as deputy of İzmir. Between the years 1978-1979, he was appointed to position of ministry of culture, by Prime inister 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 September 12, 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).

Kışlalı was killed on October 21, 1999 in Ankara after handling a bomb, which had been placed on his car. His death is thought to have been the work of Islamic militants.^[1]