Tarkan News Snippets

Posted by Steffan Matrak from Moscow, Russia

Social media channels were buzzing yesterday with birthday wishes for Tarkan. The official Twitter channels of the World Music Awards, Turkish streaming site fizy, major music station Kral Pop, and Tarkan's own company HITT Productions all tweeted their well wishes to the singer, with HITT sharing a video of Tarkan.

Among Turkish celebrities, actor and comedian Cem Yılmaz sent his birthday greetings to Tarkan as well as two other singers sharing the same birth date, joking he was "tired out" with all the well wishing.

Celebrating 25 years in music, the 45 year-old was also featured on Polish web portal Interia, which updated its readers on what Tarkan is up to now, including his marriage to a "female fan".

In other news, there are rumours that Tarkan's birthday present from his wife was a 15 day European trip to "his three favourite places" of Berlin, Amsterdam and south Italy, while fans were reported to be donating to good causes in the spirit of the star's own charitable nature, instead of sending gifts.

Elsewhere in regards to the youthful artist, Turkish transsexual diva Bülent Ersoy has been talking about her new song from Tarkan.

UPDATE: Tarkan in studio with Turkish diva >>

Filled with praise about Tarkan being "a real gentleman", Ersoy claims Tarkan removed a song from his latest album just before its release and gave it to her to sing after she had mentioned how "jealous" she was of it.

Another example of Tarkan's kindness was highlighted by a columnist for Turkish daily Vatan, claiming that the singer distributed a traditional home made vegan pudding to a district outside of his own in Istanbul.

"Tarkan has become the ideal husband. The megastar recently entered the kitchen with his mother and his wife to make pots of ashure [which was distributed] by his assistants to the residents of Sarıdağ in the neighbourhood of Sarıyer.

"Tarkan himself lives in Tarabya. Maybe the megastar doesn't have any neighbours or does not want to mix with them," the columnist wrote, suggesting that had the locals of Sarıdağ known Tarkan made the pudding himself, the pots would have been sold online as "megastar ashure".

Ashure or Noah's Pudding is a Turkish dessert made of a mixture consisting of grains, fruits, dried fruits and nuts. It's shared by many of the surrounding countries like Greece; Christian and Jewish cultures as well as Muslims share similar versions of this dessert under a variety of names.

Traditionally made in large quantities to commemorate the ark's landing, it's distributed to friends, relatives, neighbours, colleagues, classmates, among others, without regard to the recipient's religion or belief system as an offering of peace and love, and protesting all kinds of violence and bloodshed.

Finally, Tarkan's name has been mentioned in regards to last year's failed coup in the court case of an alleged coup conspirator, who was found with incriminating activity on his phone. His defence has put forward it was a result of listening to Tarkan's "Kuzu Kuzu" track on a suspicious server connected to an app called Bylock.

According to Turkish authorities, the Bylock phone app was a suspected means of communication among members of the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), accused of being behind the deadly defeated coup a year ago.

UPDATE: Columnist says not all ByLock users are guilty >>

Conspiracy rumours had circulated that Tarkan's 2016 "Cuppa" track released a day before the coup was a signal that a junta was about to take place, while a columnist this year made claims Tarkan had links to the terrorist organisation.

Coincidentally this autumn, Tarkan's 2001 "Kuzu Kuzu" has enjoyed a return to the single charts 16 years after its first release.

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