Fuat Saka

Fuat Saka — Biography

Fuat Saka is a singer, composer, songwriter and arranger who brings Black Sea and Laz music together with Western forms. A multi-instrumentalist, he is also known as a guitarist. In recent years he has been best known for Göç Senfonisi: Karanlık Sular, a work on the theme of migration that travelled to Germany for the third time in November 2025 and was performed in Bodrum and Datça in July 2026.

He grew up in the Sotka neighbourhood of Trabzon, took accordion lessons as a child and turned to Western music through programmes on a local radio station. After Istanbul High School he finished the art department of the Atatürk Education Institute and taught between 1977 and 1980. After the 1980 coup he left Turkey for political reasons and spent about twenty years in Paris and Hamburg; he was stripped of Turkish citizenship when he did not return, and came back in the late 1990s after taking German citizenship. His first album, Yıkılır Zulmün Son Kaleleri, appeared in 1982; Kerem Gibi set poems by Nazım Hikmet to music, and Torik Balıklar Ülkesinde was made for children. The Lazutlar series, begun in 1997, continued with Lazutlar II, III and Livera.

He has worked since the mid-1980s with Greek musicians such as Nikos Papazoglou and Dionysis Savvopoulos, and has performed with musicians from several countries. In 2000 he received an award for promoting Turkish folk music abroad. He is credited with music on the films Nerdesin Firuze, Karadeniz'de Amerikalılar and Hurmuz'a Yedi Koca, and in 2023 he composed the Republic's 100th anniversary march with the poet Haydar Ergülen.