Recipients of the State Medal of Distinguished Service

Sertab Erener (born 4 December 1964) is a Turkish singer, songwriter and composer. With her coloratura soprano voice, she started working as a backing vocalist for Sezen Aksu, and with Aksu's help she released her first studio album in the 1990s. Because of her education in classical music, she initially had difficulties in performing pop music. Although she did experimental works from time to time, she eventually preferred to focus on making pop music instead of making avant-garde works, in order to make her music heard by a larger audience. In some of her works, she combined Western music and Eastern music, and benefited from operas as well as classical Turkish music together with ethnic elements. With her entrance to Europe's market in the early 2000s, many of her works were also sold in Turkey as well as European countries.

Rahmi Mustafa Koç (born 9 October 1930) is a Turkish businessman. In 2016, Forbes ranked him No. 906 richest person in the world with a net worth of $2.6 billion. In 2013, he is the Turkish person who paid the most income taxes in his country, totalling 37.5 million liras.

Neşet Ertaş (1938 – 25 September 2012) was a Turkish folk music singer, lyricist, modern ashik and virtuoso of the traditional Turkish instrument the bağlama. His profession in Turkish is known as halk ozanı, which literally means "folk bard". Yaşar Kemal gave Ertaş his nickname, "Bozkırın Tezenesi" (literally: "Plectrum of the Steppe"), writing it in a book he gave him as a gift.

Fatih Terim (born 4 September 1953) is a Turkish association football manager and former player. He is the manager of Galatasaray, a position he previously held three times.

Mahmut Gazi Yaşargil (born July 6, 1925) is a Turkish medical scientist and neurosurgeon. He collaborated with Raymond M. P. Donaghy M.D at the University of Vermont in developing microneurosurgery. Yaşargil treated epilepsy and brain tumors with instruments of his own design. From 1953 until his retirement in 1993 he was first resident, chief resident and then professor and chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery, University of Zurich and the Zurich University Hospital. In 1999 he was honored as "Neurosurgery’s Man of the Century 1950–1999" at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting.

Ahmet Çalık is a Turkish businessman. He is chairman of Çalık Holding. He was made a government minister in Turkmenistan by Saparmurat Niyazov.

Enver Ören (10 February 1939, Honaz, Denizli – 22 February 2013, Şişli, Istanbul) was the founder of İhlas Holding. He was born in Turkey. He graduated from the Faculty of Science at Istanbul University in 1961. He was accepted to the premier military school of Turkey with a full scholarship and graduated top of his class. After graduating he went to Italy, on a NATO scholarship for one and a half years for further study and research. In the early 1970s he assumed the heavy responsibility of publishing a newspaper.

Aydın Doğan (born 15 April 1936 in Kelkit, Gümüşhane Province) is a Turkish billionaire media tycoon best known as the founder of Doğan Holding, one of Turkey's largest conglomerates.

Sakıp Sabancı (7 April 1933 – 10 April 2004) was a prominent Turkish business tycoon and philanthropist.

Şakir Eczacıbaşı, (3 December 1929 - 24 January 2010), a second generation member of the notable Turkish Eczacıbaşı family, was a pharmacist, photographer and businessman.