Ebru Gündeş

Ebru Gündeş is a Turkish pop-folk and arabesque singer, actress and television personality, born in Istanbul on 12 October 1974. ^{1 2} Her debut album Tanrı Misafiri was released in 1993 and sold 1,250,000 copies nationwide, with her picture on billboards all over Istanbul. ¹

Her albums continued to succeed over two decades — fifteen studio albums up to Âşık (2019) — and her television work includes hosting popular shows and judging on Popstar Alaturka and O Ses Türkiye, the Turkish version of The Voice. ¹

Ebru Gündeş was born in Istanbul; the English article and Wikidata give 12 October 1974, while the Arabic article gives 12 June 1974, and the date on which the English article and Wikidata agree is used here. ^{1 3 2} The sources consulted give no extended account of her upbringing or schooling, and the museum adds nothing they do not state.

Her debut album Tanrı Misafiri (1993) presented her as a sweet, innocent-looking singer dressed in white, and she won Kral TV's Best Turkish Classical Music Artist award in 1994, 1995 and 1996. ¹

Her fifth studio album Sen Allah'ın Bir Lütfusun was released in 1998; on 5 April 1998 it ranked among the top 10 on MÜ-YAP's list of the 50 best-selling albums, and by late April and early May it had risen to second place on the pop sales lists of the Megavizyon and Mephisto music markets. ¹

She suffered serious health problems: a cerebral haemorrhage in December 1999 while recording Dön Ne Olur, after which two operations restored her to full health, and the album became one of the best-selling albums of all time in Turkey. ¹

Her albums continued with Ahdım Olsun (2001), Şahane (2003), Bize de Bu Yakışır (2004), Kaçak (2006) and Evet (2008). Beyaz ("White", 2011) sold just over 100,000 copies, and 13.5 (2012), consisting only of covers of old popular songs, met a disappointed critical reception as 'repetition', while Araftayım (2014) sold more than 100,000 copies. ¹

Her fifteenth studio album Âşık was released by Blue Music on 31 January 2019; according to Apple Music data it became the best-selling and most-downloaded album in Turkey on its day of release, and the title song broke the record for the most downloaded song on its day of publication in Turkey. ¹

Gündeş has made hundreds of television appearances in Turkey as a singer and as an actress in the comedy series İmkansız Aşk (Impossible Love); she hosted Mega Show, one of Turkey's most popular television shows, judged on Popstar Alaturka alongside Bülent Ersoy and Orhan Gencebay, and was a judge on O Ses Türkiye from 2013 to 2016 and again from 2021 to 2022. ¹

This section should be read as a presentation of differing positions reported by the sources, not as a verdict of the museum.

The poet Ataol Behramoğlu filed a lawsuit against Gündeş, her programme's producer and its broadcaster after she repeatedly performed, on a television programme in 2010, a song based on verses from his poem Yaşadıklarımdan öğrendiğim bir şey var without permission or payment, seeking compensation for material and moral damages. ¹

Her then husband, the businessman Reza Zarrab, was arrested in Istanbul on 17 December 2013 in a corruption scandal in which some members of the AKP were accused of giving bribes totalling 63 million dollars to government ministers or their proxies; their marriage ended in a finalised divorce on 7 May 2021. ¹

The article records that she married Hamdi Vardar at the age of 16, the lawyer Ömer Durak in 2002, the Iranian Azerbaijani businessman Reza Zarrab in 2010 — with whom she has one daughter — and the businessman Murat Osman Özdemir in February 2024 in Dubai, divorcing him in September 2025. ^{1 3} The museum does not publish family detail beyond what understanding her public life requires.

Her reach ran through record early sales, albums that continued to sell in the hundreds of thousands as the record market shrank, and a constant television presence as singer, host and judge on Turkey's best-known contest shows. ¹ The Arabic article adds that her fame was not limited to Turkey but reached the world, and that in 2000 she recorded a Turkish version of a song by the Arab singer Diana Haddad. ³

• The defined sources cited above, registered in data/source/.
• Later translations and edits of this article need periodic review with clear update dates.