Gökhan Kırdar

Gökhan Kırdar — Biography

Born in Aydın on 2 June 1970, Gökhan Kırdar began studying architecture at Yıldız Technical University in Istanbul before turning to music and relocating to İzmir to study musicology at Dokuz Eylül University's Faculty of Fine Arts. He got his start singing and writing lyrics for bands with friends in the late 1980s, drew attention in 1991 with his self-written entry "Karanlığın Gizi" at the Istanbul Beyaz Güvercin Music Competition, and soon after wrote and composed the hit single "Yerine Sevemem."

He moved into film scoring in 1993 with the soundtrack for Atıf Yılmaz's Gece, Melek ve Bizim Çocuklar, then found major success as a pop and pop-rock recording artist with the albums Serseri Mayın and Tutunamadım. In 1997 he founded his own label, Loopus, and released Trip, regarded as Turkey's first trip hop album. From the mid-1990s onward he leaned into scoring for television and film, blending eastern and western influences, and his music for series such as Kurtlar Vadisi, Haziran Gecesi and Yabancı Damat became some of the most recognizable themes in Turkish TV history, earning him international soundtrack awards.

"Cendere," his iconic theme for Kurtlar Vadisi, remains very much alive in his career: in 2026 he drew attention for staging live stadium performances of the track for football club supporters, winning an award for the year's most impressive live show after a performance before roughly 40,000 fans. The same period also saw a publicized rights dispute between Kırdar and the production company behind Kurtlar Vadisi over the show's music.