Thousands bid farewell to legendary actor

ISTANBUL

Thousands of fans bid farewell to Turkish legendary actor Cüneyt Arkın, who died at the age of 85, in a funeral service held in Istanbul’s Teşvikiye Mosque.

The actor was then laid to rest in Zincirlikuyu cemetery in the Beşiktaş district on June 30.

Early on June 30, a ceremony was held in Atatürk Cultural Center, one of the metropolis’ iconic art centers.

“Cüneyt Arkın will always be remembered,” Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, the country’s culture and tourism minister said at the ceremony.

“We will set a special place inside the Atlas Cinema Hall [an iconic cinema hall in the Beyoğlu district] devoted to Arkın,” the minister noted and added: “The belongings to be put inside that place will be selected by his family.”

“He was the hero of three generations in Türkiye,” Istanbul’s governor Ali Yerlikaya stated in his speech.

While addressing the crowd, his son, Kaan Polat Cüreklibatır, said that Arkın did not die. “This is not death. This is im-mortality that comes by death. What we have to do from now on is to introduce him to the new generations,” he expressed.

His other son, Murat Arkın thanked all those who came to the ceremony and the funeral service. “I see that our family is much bigger than I thought,” he said.

Making a call to all his father’s beloveds not to cry, he said, “Men like him deserve epics, not mourning.”

Cüneyt Arkın, whose real name was Fahrettin Cüreklibatır was born on Sept. 8, 1937, in the Alpu district of Eskişehir province.

He graduated from Istanbul Medical School in 1961 and worked as a doctor. When he was doing his military service in Eskişehir as a reserve officer, he caught the attention of a famous Turkish director Halit Refiğ.

In 1963, with the offer from Halit Refiğ, he started working as an actor and acted in at least 30 films over the next two years.

The fight scene in his film “Gurbet Kuşları” in 1964 was a turning point in Arkın’s career. He started focusing on action films at the suggestion of Refiğ, after playing emotional and romantic characters.