İlyas Salman

İlyas Salman — Biography

İlyas Salman was born on 14 January 1949 in the village of Asar in the Arguvan district of Malatya province; his official records list 1954, but sources agree his actual birth came a few years earlier. After graduating from Malatya's Turan Emeksiz High School he left the Ankara State Conservatory in his final year, began his stage career at the Istanbul Municipal City Theatre, and later performed with the Ankara Birlik Theatre. Known for decades for playing naive village characters, he was long assumed to be of Kurdish background because of those roles; in a 2007 essay and a later book he stated that he comes from an Alevi Turkmen family. He reached wide audiences through Yeşilçam classics such as Kibar Feyzo, Banker Bilo, Çiçek Abbas, Şekerpare and Sarı Mercedes, and in 2012 shared the Adana Golden Boll Film Festival's best actor prize with Engin Günaydın for Night of Silence, the same year receiving an honorary award at the Antalya Golden Orange festival. He has also published poetry collections and folk-music albums. A self-described leftist and member of the Communist Party of Turkey, he ran as the party's İstanbul parliamentary candidate in 2023. He is married to Gülser Salman and has two children, Devrim and Temmuz Ali.