Cüneyt Arkın

Cüneyt Arkın (born Fahrettin Cüretlibatur ^[1] on 7 September 1937 at Gökçeoğlu village of Alpu district in Eskişehir, Turkey), is a Turkish film actor, director and producer. His real name is Fahrettin Cüreklibatur.

He is not only a doctor in medicine, but also a renowned martial artist in over seven different forms. Having starred in approximately 248 movies and TV series, he is generally considered one of the most prominent Turkish actors of all time. His films have sometimes been exported, featuring him as George Arkin. His films have ranged from well-recived Dramas to Mockbusters, depending on the time of his career.

His most notable movies are historical dramas, taking place during the first centuries of the Ottoman Empire or slightly before the Ottoman Empire, during the age of the Anatolian Seljuks. A good example of these films is Malkoçoğlu Cem Sultan and Battal Gazi. However these films had a strong ultra-nationalistic and conservative theme bordering extremism. While gaining success with such action based films, he also took part in political films in the late 1970s, the most famous of these being The Adam Trilogy directed by Remzi Aydın Jöntürk.

Although it is one of the poorest quality films that feature him, he is famous abroad for the movie Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saves The World - also known as Turkish Star Wars), an extremely low-budget science fiction tentatively famous for including bootlegged scenes from Star Wars. On set, Arkin was well known to have performed many incredible feats of his martial arts combat skills, like jumping around on trampolines and splitting paper mache boulders with his fists. In an unfortunate incident, an extra was harmed when he got into an argument with him, over the authenticity of his martial arts abilities. The two sparred but the fight ended quickly when Arkin kicked him hard in the kneecap of his left leg (though some maintain it was his right), instantly causing the leg to buckle in the opposite direction. Due to his actions, Arkin felt very bad, and later visited the man in hospital to apologise.

Family

After graduation from the university as a physician, Fahrettin Cüretlibatur married in 1965 his classmate Güler Mocan. In 1966, their daughter Filiz was born. The marriage lasted not long due to Fahrettin's newly beginning career as a film actor.^[2]

In 1968, he, who took the screen name Cüneyt Arkın now, met Betül Işıl, a blonde girl from a wealthy family who also owns tile production company Işıl, who had studied in Switzerland and was working as a flight attendant. In 1969, they engaged and the next year on June 22, the pair married. The togetherness ended soon after, and the couple divorced already the next year. She could not stand the difficulties linked with her husband's lifestyle as a celebrity. In the couple of months following the divorce, Cüneyt Arkın became alcohol dependent due to his loneliness. As he wanted to remarry her, Betül asked him for withdrawal from alcohol. The pair married soon again for the second time. Then after, Betül gave birth to two sons, Murat and Kaan Polat.^[3][4] Cüneyt Arkın's wife and sons starred in some movies of him as well.^[5]

Filmography

References

External links

• A special trailer
• Cüneyt Arkın at the Internet Movie Database
• Official Webpage (Turkish)