Mehmet Ali Aybar

The teenage Mehmet Ali Aybar competed as a sprinter in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics but was eliminated in the opening round of both his events. He graduated in law from Istanbul University and later took a position as an assistant professor of international law at his alma mater.

He stood as a parliamentary candidate for the Democratic Party in 1946, the same year he was dismissed from his post due to his left wing opinions. Sentenced to a prison term in 1949 he was freed under a general amnesty a year later. In 1962 he was elected to parliament as leader of the Workers Party of Turkey and remained in that position until 1969. His opposition to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia caused internal problems within the WPT and in 1971 he left to form the Socialist Revolution Party.

Ali Aybar was a member of the International War Crimes Tribunal, commonly known as the “Russell Tribunal”, formed to investigate US military intervention in Vietnam.

Personal Best: 100 – 11.0 (1930).