At 24, he became a journalist, working in many positions, from reporter to editor-in-chief. As a columnist, he wrote in the weekly Nokta and the daily newspapers Hürriyet, Güneş, Milliyet and Yeni Yüzyıl. In November 2007 he founded the newspaper Taraf with Alev Er. He is the current editor-in-chief of Taraf and writes the daily column ‘Hourglass’. His outspoken criticism of the system meant he was often tried and prosecuted and forced to leave his job; but he did not give up his struggle. He challenges and addresses “the army problem”, a main issue since the foundation of the Republic, questioning and criticizing military authority to facilitate the establishment of democracy. He received the 2011 International Hrant Dink Award.

Since the mid-1980s, she has been writing extensively in newspapers and magazines on people trafficking, organized crime, drug trafficking, gender violence and official corruption. She specializes in defending women’s rights. In 2000, she founded the Cancun-based Centre for Complete Assistance to Women for the victims of violence and abuse against women and children. She currently is a columnist for El Universal, the biggest newspaper in Mexico, and conducts workshops in assisting victims of human trafficking. She received the 2011 International Hrant Dink Award.

Political analyst and Director of the Yerevan-based Caucasus Institute. His areas of study are ethno political conflicts, post-Communist transformations and nation building in the former USSR in general and in the Caucasus in particular. Since the early 1990s, he has specialized on conflicts in the South and Northern Caucasus, elections in a transition setting, and the building of post-Soviet identities. He has also conducted and supervised research on migration, regional integration, media development and the formation of public discourses. Alexander also teaches Political Science and Caucasus Studies at the Caucasus Institute and other universities in Armenia.

He is a filmmaker born in Greece in 1933. Following his education in Paris, he settled in France. Costa Gavras was president of the Cinémathèque Française from 1982 to 1987, and again from 2007 to the present. Costa Gavras is known for merging controversial political issues with the entertainment value of commercial cinema. He is best known for films with overt political themes, most famously Z (1969). Law and justice, oppression, legal/illegal violence, and torture are common subjects in his work. In most cases, the targets of Gavras's work have been right-of-center movements and regimes.

He got his graduate degree in the field of international economics at Ankara University Political Science Faculty where he also taught between 1977 and 1980. In 1995-96, he took part in the New Democracy Movement. In 1997, he started to work in Radika Newspaper as a columnist. In 2000, he started to write for Yeni Binyıl newspaper for a while; in May 2001, he became a columnist in Zaman newspaper. Between 2007 and 2010, he was the editor-in-chief in Agos newspaper.

Born 1953, Nilüfer Göle is a prominent Turkish French sociologist and a leading authority on the political movement of today's educated, urbanized, religious Muslim women. From 1986 to 2001 a professor at the Bogazici University in Istanbul, she is currently Directrice d'études at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Centre d’Analyse et d’Intervention Sociologiques (CADIS), in Paris. Göle is the author of Interpénétrations: L’Islam et l’Europe and The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling. Through personal interviews, Göle has developed detailed case studies of young Turkish women who are turning to the tenets of fundamental Islamic gender codes.

Well-known through his activities as political writer, blogger and columnist, Timothy Garton Ash is also a historian focusing on communist dictatorships in Central and Eastern Europe. He has lived in Berlin for several years, which gave him the opportunity to travel behind the “iron curtain” and to improve his knowledge of the German language and culture. His work covers the topic of the transformation of the former Eastern Bloc after 1989. Ash has been an editorial writer on Central European Affairs for The London Times and a columnist on Foreign Affairs at The Independent. He currently contributes to different American newspapers and has a weekly column at The Guardian.

Rakel Dink became involved in human rights activism following the tragic assassination of her husband, the prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist and founder of Agos newspaper, Hrant Dink.

Born to an Armenian family in Silopi, southeastern Turkey, Rakel moved to Istanbul with tens of kids from Anatolia in order to receive education in Armenian Schools. She met with Hrant Dink at Camp Armen, where Armenian children orphans or those away from their families would spend their summers. Rakel and Hrant got married and became managers at Camp Armen in the following years until the property was seized by the state.

Following the death of Hrant Dink in January 2007, Rakel devoted her life to preserving her husband’s legacy. She established the Hrant Dink Foundation in 2007, with a mission to protect and uphold human rights in Turkey, preserve the identity and culture of minorities, address polarization, and normalize Turkish-Armenian relations. Rakel continues to be an optimist and maintains that despite the various challenges that she was forced to overcome throughout her life, she has been surrounded by love and kindness. She is hopeful for the future of Turkey and finds joy in her work and her family.