DIPLOMATS from Turkey

Top 3

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Turkish Diplomats of all time. This list of famous Turkish Diplomats is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Megasthenes (-350 - -290)

With an HPI of 62.89, Megasthenes is the most famous Turkish Diplomat.  His biography has been translated into 39 different languages on wikipedia.

Megasthenes ( mi-GAS-thi-neez; Ancient Greek: Μεγασθένης, died c. 290 BCE) was an ancient Greek historian, diplomat, ethnographer and explorer in the Hellenistic period. He described India in his book Indica, which is now lost, but has been partially reconstructed from literary fragments found in later authors that quoted his work. Megasthenes was the first person from the Western world to leave a written description of India.

2. Zannanza (-1350 - -1320)

With an HPI of 54.88, Zannanza is the 2nd most famous Turkish Diplomat.  His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.

Zannanza (died c. 1324 BC) was a Hittite prince, son of Suppiluliuma I, king of the Hittites. He is best known for almost becoming the Pharaoh of Egypt, and because his death caused a diplomatic incident between the Hittite and Egyptian Empires, resulting in warfare.

3. Selahattin Ülkümen (1914 - 2003)

With an HPI of 50.85, Selahattin Ülkümen is the 3rd most famous Turkish Diplomat.  His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.

Selahattin Ülkümen (14 January 1914 – 7 June 2003) was a Turkish diplomat who was recognized by Israel as one of the Righteous Among the Nations in 1989, with his name being listed at Yad Vashem in the city of Jerusalem. During World War II, he was serving as a consul-general of Turkey on the island of Rhodes, Greece, which had been invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany. Ülkümen assisted the island's Jews by personally intervening to prevent as many of them as possible from being deported by the Germans amidst the Holocaust. In total, he managed to save around 50 Jews—13 on the basis of their Turkish citizenship, and the remainder through his own initiatives. Jews in Axis-occupied Greece were deported from Corfu and sent to Nazi death camps, namely Auschwitz. Rhodes, where Ülkümen was posted, had a Jewish population of some 2,000 at the time of the German invasion, which had followed the signing of an armistice between Italy and the Allies amidst the fall of the Fascist regime.