Tarkan Sells Out

Posted by Kaya Turan from Rochester, UK, Hatice Soylu from Istanbul, Turkey and Steffan Matrak from Moscow, Russia

In a run through of the news stories in the Turkish press about Tarkan today are claims that the singer's May shows in Russia have "sold out", while the artist's own "super moon selfie Insta story" has also made a touchdown in the celeb pages.

A story in Turkish daily Takvim claims that the concert tickets for Tarkan's slated Moscow concert has seen high demand - with only 100 tickets left at the seven-thousand capacity city hall. The article gets the date of the show wrong, erroneously printing 14 March instead of 14 May.

Previous claims that popped up last month had said that Tarkan signed over a 4m TL ($800,000) concert deal for a tour in Russia.

Known for his nineties chart hits across four continents, the press rumour claims were that Tarkan would be making close to a million dollars with a repeat of his 2009 "Prince of the East" Russian Tour by returning to the same Moscow venue he staged a show in ten years ago. (20 February)

Meanwhile, the second installment of this winter's trio of supermoons - sometimes nicknamed the Super Snow Moon - peaked on 19 February, and Tarkan didn't forget to step outside and look up.

The singer made sure to snap and share his moment on social media with the biggest of the three "supermoons" that start 2019 - and the Turkish press leapt at the opportunity to make it a story.

Sözcü's celebrity channel wrote about Tarkan's "supermoon selfie" as evidence of Tarkan's "colourful online personality", whilst sharing the singer's photos from his Insta story.

Tarkan shared a similar lunar event in January last year, where the singer broke his media silence to snap and share a rare "super blue blood moon".

"Tarkan Spending to Keep Spouse Sweet"

In other news stories running concurrent to the singer's online performance is that Tarkan is spending big to keep his wife happy.

The claims being spread by a couple of news wires is that the singer is having to fork out to set his wife up in business by opening up a beauty salon in the German city of Cologne.

Rumoured to be costing the singer an initial eye-watering amount of 1.5m TL ($300,000) to keep his wife occupied, the claims are that the singer "will be investing more" as time goes by. (20 February)

On the back of this, amateur footage has been discovered online of Tarkan and some unidentified male friends singing and bellydancing on a ferry trip from two years ago, the gossip columns claim.

The news wires say that whilst journeying on a car ferry to Bursa, Tarkan was filmed in a jovial mood with a group of men as they sang and danced merrily giving an impromptu performance for passengers. The article claims that the footage will "create a stir" online. (21 February)

"Flying on the Back of Tarkan"

In two final pieces of trash getting dumped into the garbage truck of pop buzz, there is a new cover version of one of Tarkan's nineties classics doing the rounds, while Tarkan is name-dropped again in a "click controversy" surrounding a Youtuber's recent foray into music.

Female pop artist Ezgi Ayçe has covered Tarkan's "Kır Zincirlerini" (Ölürüm Sana, 1997) - known as "Bu Gece" in Europe - in an acoustic version published on YouTube. The news article about the share mistakenly writes that the song is from 2012 - but that was the year Tarkan downloaded the nineties pop video to his official YouTube channel. (20 February)

And a Turkish YouTuber's "unbelievable" hit count has had various celebs and people in the press drawing comparisons with the Turkish pop icon's more modest video views. (19 February)

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