Tarkan Tüzmen

Tarkan Tüzmen — Biography

Tarkan Tüzmen was born on March 7, 1968, in Ankara; after TED Ankara College, he graduated in civil engineering from Middle East Technical University and was for a time a competitive national swimmer. He made three attempts to represent Turkey at the Eurovision Song Contest: in 1996 he went unranked with "Bilirsin ya" and placed second in the national final with "Var mısın söyle," a duet with Pınar Ayhan (later Pınar Karakoç); in 1997 he again went unranked with "Şarkı," a duet with Elçin Engin. In 1998 he won the national final with "Unutamazsın" and represented Turkey in Birmingham, finishing 14th with 25 points.

He began acting in 2005, playing "İstihbaratçı Alper" in the series Valley of the Wolves: Ambush, and also released two albums, t1 (1996) and t2 (2003). His engineering background has occasionally been reported as his "real" profession. He is also known as the brother of Kürşad Tüzmen, who served as a government minister across three terms of AKP rule.