Adil Şan

Adil Şan — Biography

Adil Şan was born Adel Alıssa on 12 September 1980 in the Bayırbucak area of the Turkmen Mountains region near Latakia, Syria. The son of a father from the Aleppo countryside and a mother of Turkish origin from Gaziantep, he had no formal schooling and taught himself Turkish. A Syrian Turkmen, he began his music career performing traditional Turkish folk melodies.

He released his debut album, Çobanbey Elleri, in 2003 and then settled in Turkey. He married on 12 September 2006, and around that time obtained Turkish citizenship with the help of a Turkish government minister, adopting the surname "Şan". In 2007 he joined the Turkish folk music choir of the Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality. He released his second album, Hattuç, in 2013, and in 2015 published his first book, on Syrian Turkmen culture.

That same year he represented Syria at the Turkvision Song Contest in Istanbul with the song Geliş, finishing fifth with 165 points and receiving the jury's Sympathy Award; the song later reached a much wider audience after being used in the series Diriliş: Ertuğrul. In 2016 he released his third album, Dilimiz. A 2022 report described him as continuing to represent Syrian Turkmens through his art. He is married and has a son named Oğuzhan.