Cenk Uygur

Cenk Kadir Uygur (born March 21, 1970) is a Turkish-American left-wing political activist, political commentator, media host, former political candidate, and attorney. He is the co-creator of The Young Turks, a progressive and a left-wing populist sociopolitical news and commentary program. Born in Istanbul, Uygur moved from Turkey to the United States in 1978 and, in 1996, worked briefly as an associate attorney. He launched and began hosting The Young Turks in 2002.

In 2011, he worked briefly for MSNBC as a political commentator (he was replaced by Al Sharpton), and then from 2011 to 2013, he appeared on a weeknight commentary show on Current TV. In 2017, Uygur co-founded the progressive political action committee Justice Democrats. In 2020, Uygur was a candidate in the Nonpartisan primary for both the special election as well as the regularly scheduled election for California's 25th congressional district.

Some of his Democrat adversaries in both elections declared his candidacy to be controversial due to past comments he allegedly made about women and minority groups, including the LGBTQ+ community, religious Jews, and Muslims, which some found offensive but which Uygur said were taken out of context. He lost both elections, placing fourth overall and second among Democrats after receiving six and seven percent of the vote, respectively.