Cüneyt Arkın

Fahrettin Cüreklibatır (born September 7, 1937), better known by his stage name Cüneyt Arkın, is a Turkish film actor, director, and producer. Having starred in somewhere around 248 movies and also TV series, he is widely considered as one of the most prominent Turkish actors of all time. His films shown abroad credited him as George Arkin. Arkın's films have ranged from well-received dramas to mockbusters throughout his career spanning four decades.

Early in his career, Arkın became known for starring in historical dramas taking place during the first centuries of the Ottoman Empire and Anatolian Seljuks, such as Malkoçoğlu Cem Sultan and Battal Gazi. While gaining success with such action-based films, he also took part in political films in the late 1970s, the most famous of those being The Adam Trilogy directed by Remzi Aydın Jöntürk. Arkın and Jöntürk continued their collaboration on many other films.

In the 1980s, Arkın became known abroad for the film Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saves The World, also known as Turkish Star Wars), an extremely low-budget science fiction tentatively famous for featuring bootlegged scenes from Star Wars. Today, despite being a B movie, it has a cult following. On the set, Arkin was well known to perform many incredible feats of his martial arts combat skills, like jumping on the trampolines and splitting papier-mâché boulders with his fists. In one incident, an extra was harmed when he got into an argument with him over the validity 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, instantly causing the leg to buckle in the opposite direction. Later on, Arkin felt very bad for what he has done and paid a visit to the man in the hospital to apologize.

Family

Fahrettin Cüreklibatur was born in the village of Gökçeoğlu in the Alpu district of Eskişehir Province, Turkey to a family of Crimean Tatar and Nogai origin.

After graduation from the university as a physician, Cüreklibatır married his classmate Güler Mocan in 1965. In 1966, their daughter Filiz was born. However, the marriage did not last long due to Cüreklibatır's newly flourishing career as a film actor.^[1]

In 1968, he took the stage name Cüneyt Arkın, and met Betül Işıl, the daughter of a wealthy family that owned a tile manufacturing company. Işıl, a graduate of a university in Switzerland was working as a flight attendant at the time. They were engaged in 1969 and married in 1970, but were divorced in 1971. Soon afterwards, they remarried and Betül gave birth to two sons, Murat and Kaan Polat.^[2][3] Arkın's wife and sons have starred in several of his films.^[4]

Outside of acting, Arkın is also a certified medical physician and a renowned martial artist in seven disciplines.

Filmography

References

External links

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