Müslüm Gürses ([mysˈlym ɟyɾˈses] (7 May 1953 – 3 March 2013), born Müslüm Akbaş and called Müslüm Baba (literally: Papa Müslüm), was a popular Turkish arabesk singer and actor.

Biography

He was born on 7 May 1953 in an adobe hut at Fıstıközü village in Halfeti district of Şanlıurfa Province, southeastern Turkey. His mother was Emine, his father Mehmet, a farmer. Müslüm was only three years old when the family migrated to Adana due to financial problems.

At the age of 13, Müslüm began singing in the cotton garden he was working in. In his childhood, he also worked as a tailor's and a cobbler's apprentice. In 1967, he participated in a song contest organized by Adana Family cotton Garden, and won the title. He then began to perform at Radio Çukurova. During this time, he adopted the surname Gürses, which means literally "stentorian voice".

In 1978, during a trip from Tarsus, Mersin to Adana, he was involved in a car accident. The crash scene was so terrible that he was assumed dead as he was pulled off the wreck, and therefore taken to the morgue instead of the hospital. After discovered by chance that he was alive, he was treated and underwent cranioplasty, getting a metal plate implemented for skull repair.

Another tragedy he experienced was that in addition to his brother's murder, his father murdered his mother. Mehmet Akbaş remarried after he was released from the prison. However, Müslüm Gürses remained all the time silent and resentful because of his father's doing.

In 1980, Müslüm Gürses was on a concert tour in Malatya, where Muhterem Nur (born 1932), already a well-known movie actress and singer, shared the stage with him. They started a quarrel during the evening. This became the beginning of the ever-lasting love between the two. The couple got married following after four years in 1986. He was her second husband.