İbrahim Tatlıses

İbrahim Tatlıses — Biography

İbrahim Tatlıses, registered at birth as İbrahim Tatlı, was born on 1 January 1952 in Şanlıurfa, Turkey. He is known as a singer, composer, actor, director, producer, television presenter and businessman. His father was of Arab descent and his mother of Kurdish descent, and besides Turkish he has performed material in Kurdish and Arabic. The stage surname he later adopted translates literally as 'sweet voice'. His admirers address him as 'İbo', and because of his standing in arabesque music he is commonly called 'the Emperor'.

He grew up in a poor household of seven children and never attended school, working from a young age selling water and later as a cold-iron worker on construction sites; in 1976 he finished primary school externally and collected his diploma from Kartalbey Primary School in Kilis. Sources relate that he only learned to read and write as he approached twenty and never learned notation, yet he still composed songs of his own, among them Haydi Söyle. After recording amateur tapes around Urfa and neighbouring provinces, he sang in nightclubs in Adana and then Ankara, and in Istanbul he met the musician Yılmaz Tatlıses, who gave him his surname. His professional career opened with the singles Kara Kız and Beni Yakma Gel Sevdiğim; his early recordings also include Gelme İstemem in 1971, Sevda Yüklü Kervanlar in 1975 and Tövbeler Olsun in 1976.

Singing Ayağında Kundura in an Ankara nightclub in 1974 brought him first to Ankara Radio and then to television, and the 1978 release of the same name broke Turkish sales records of the era, making him one of the most recognisable figures of the arabesque style. He sustained his success with albums such as Adaletin Bu Mu Dünya, Ben İnsan Değil Miyim?, Mavi Mavi and Acı Gerçekler, while Selam Olsun, devoted to traditional folk music performed on regional instruments, also counts among his key works. Sources differ on his album count: some give 42, while Turkish-language sources speak of around fifty. He also gained a wide audience in Greece, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East, and he founded Tatlıses Müzik in 1987 and İdobay Müzik in 1997.

He entered cinema with Ceylan in 1978 and went on to appear in dozens of films; on Mavi Mavi and Fırat he acted and directed at once. He wrote the screenplays for pictures including Kara Zindan and İmparator, and produced Cabbar and Aşık Oldum; the productions he directed number more than twenty.

On television he became synonymous with İbo Show, which ran on various channels for years. The programme returned on Star TV between 14 November 2020 and 18 May 2022 for 43 episodes; after a period in which it reportedly could not find a broadcaster because of low ratings, it was announced that it would air on Tatlıses TV from 2023. Some sources also note that he stood as a parliamentary candidate in the 2007 general election.

Outside the arts he has invested in food, tourism, construction, communications and transport; a çiğköfte chain bearing his name, a television channel and a radio station are among his ventures. He is also said to have taken part in construction projects in Iraq with his business partner Ali Sarıyıldız. On 14 March 2011 he was gravely wounded by a gunshot to the head in an armed attack as he left a programme; he survived and returned to television nine years later.