List of people from Izmir
Encyclopedia
This is a list of famous people from İzmir
Izmir
Izmir is a large metropolis in the western extremity of Anatolia. The metropolitan area in the entire Izmir Province had a population of 3.35 million as of 2010, making the city third most populous in Turkey...



In alphabetical order
  • Rita Abatzi
    Rita Abatzi
    Rita Abatzi was a Greek rebetiko musician who began her career in the first part of the 1930s.She was born in Smyrna, Asia Minor, now İzmir, Turkey. A versatile singer of rebetiko, Smyrneika and other music, she was a popular performer on gramophone records in the 1930s...

     (1914–1969) Greek rebetiko singer
  • Burak Aksoylu – Applied mathematician at Louisiana State University.
  • Sezen Aksu
    Sezen Aksu
    Sezen Aksu is a Turkish pop music singer, song-writer and producer who sold over 40 million albums worldwide. Her nicknames include the "Queen of Turkish Pop" and Minik Serçe ....

     – Turkish singer–songwriter
    Singer–songwriter
    Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

    , musician
    Musician
    A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

    , record producer
    Record producer
    A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...

    ; born in Sarayköy
    Sarayköy
    Sarayköy is a town and district of Denizli Province in Turkey, 20 km west of the city of Denizli, on a plain between mountains and watered by Büyük Menderes River...

    , Denizli
    Denizli
    Denizli is a growing industrial city in the Southwestern part of Turkey and the eastern end of the alluvial valley formed by the river Büyük Menderes, where the plain reaches an elevation of about a hundred meters. Denizli is located in southwestern Turkey, in the country's Aegean Region.The city...

     and raised in central İzmir.
  • Ekrem Akurgal
    Ekrem Akurgal
    Ekrem Akurgal was a Turkish archaeologist. During a career that spanned more than fifty years, he conducted definitive research in several sites along the western coast of Anatolia such as Phokaia , Pitane , Erythrai and old Smyrna Ekrem Akurgal (March 30, 1911 – November 1, 2002) was a ...

     – Turkish archaeologist born in Tulkarem, explorer of Old Smyrna
    Smyrna
    Smyrna was an ancient city located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Thanks to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. The ancient city is located at two sites within modern İzmir, Turkey...

    , Pitane
    Pitane (Aeolis)
    Pitane , near Çandarlı, Turkey, was an ancient Greek town of Aeolis, in Asia Minor. In ancient times it was a port city and a member of the Delian League. About 334 BC, Alexander the Great tried to take over the city, but was repulsed by Memnon of Rhodes and 5,000 Greek mercenaries provided by...

    , Phocaea
    Phocaea
    Phocaea, or Phokaia, was an ancient Ionian Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia. Greek colonists from Phocaea founded the colony of Massalia in 600 BC, Emporion in 575 BC and Elea in 540 BC.-Geography:Phocaea was the northernmost...

     and Erythrai
  • Necati Ateş
    Necati Ates
    Necati Ateş is a Turkish footballer who plays for Antalyaspor in the Süper Lig, as a forward.-Club career:Ateş made his professional debut with Altay SK and Adanaspor, scoring for both at an impressive rate. In 2004, he signed with Süper Lig giants Galatasaray SK.In 2005–06, Ateş played an...

     – Turkish soccer player for Galatasaray
    Galatasaray
    Galatasaray Spor Kulübü is a Turkish sports club based in Istanbul, most notable for its football section, also known as Galatasaray S.K.. It also fields teams in Athletics, Basketball, Wheelchair basketball, Volleyball, Water polo, Swimming, Rowing, Sailing, Judo, Bridge, Equestrian, Handball,...

  • Pınar Aylin – Turkish singer
    Music of Turkey
    The music of Turkey includes diverse elements ranging from Central Asian folk music and has many copies and references of Byzantine music, Greek music, Ottoman music, Persian music, Balkan music, as well as more modern European and American popular music influences...

  • Azra Ebru Pehlivan – Turkish Architecture www.ox.ac.uk
  • Édouard Balladur
    Édouard Balladur
    Édouard Balladur is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 29 March 1993 to 10 May 1995.-Biography:Balladur was born in İzmir, Turkey, to an Armenian Catholic family with five children and long-standing ties to France...

     – Former French
    France
    The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

     Prime Minister
  • Halil Berktay
    Halil Berktay
    Halil Berktay is a Turkish historian at Sabancı University and columnist for the daily Taraf.-Biography:Berktay was born into an intellectual Turkish Communist family. His father, Erdogan Berktay, was a member of the old clandestine Communist Party of Turkey...

     – Turkish historian
  • Tarkan Bulut
    Tarkan Bulut
    Tarkan Bulut is a Turkish comedian who does stand-up shows all around Turkey and the USA. He also does camera pranks and humour programmes on tv8 in Turkey.-External links:*...

     – Comedian
  • Demetrios Capetanakis
    Demetrios Capetanakis
    Demetrios Capetanakis or Kapetanakis or Capetanaces was a Greek poet, essayist and critic. For the last five years of his life he lived in Britain, and wrote some poetry in English....

     (1912–1944) Greek poet, essayist and critic
  • Anton Christoforidis
    Anton Christoforidis
    Anton Christoforidis was a Greek light heavyweight boxer.Christoforidis was born in Messenia prefecture, Greece. His first bout was against Francisco Garcia Lluch in Paris, France which he won by decision. He made his United States debut on January 5, 1940 in Madison Square Garden defeating...

     (1918–1985) Greek light heavyweight boxer
  • Hüsamettin Cindoruk
    Hüsamettin Cindoruk
    Hüsamettin Cindoruk is a Turkish politician and the 17th Speaker of the Parliament of Turkey between 1991-1995. He has also been the leader of two political parties, notably of the True Path Party.-Biography:...

     – Turkish politician, former party leader and Speaker of the Parliament
  • Necati Cumalı
    Necati Cumali
    Necati Cumalı was a Turkish writer of novels, short-stories, essays and poetry. He was born in Florina, Greece, and his family had settled in Urla near İzmir in the framework of the 1923 agreement for the population exchange between Greece and Turkey.-Biography:He grew up in Urla and did his...

     – Turkish novelist born in Florina
    Florina
    Florina is a town and municipality in mountainous northwestern Macedonia, Greece. Its motto is, 'Where Greece begins'. It is also the Metropolitan seat for the region. It lies in the central part of Florina peripheral unit, of which it is the capital. Florina belongs to the periphery of West...

    , raised in nearby Urla
  • Meltem Cumbul
    Meltem Cumbul
    Meltem Cumbul is a Turkish actress and TV personality.- Biography :At 21, Meltem graduated from a university with a major in drama. She then worked as an actress for the Shakespeare Company in London...

     – Actress
  • Mahir Çağrı
    Mahir Çagri
    Mahir Çağrı became an Internet celebrity in 1999. His picture-laden personal homepage, which exclaimed in broken English his love of the accordion, travel, and women was visited by millions and spawned numerous fansites and parodies, one featured on Fox's MadTV...

     – Turkish Internet phenomenon
  • Cybele
    Cybele (actress)
    Cybele was the stage name of the famous Greek actress Cybele Andrianou .She was born in 1887 to an unmarried couple in Smyrna and spend the first two years of her life in an Athens orphanage. At the age of two-and-a-half, she was adopted by Anastasis and Maria Andrianou...

     (1888–1978) Greek actress
  • Michel Elefteriades
    Michel Elefteriades
    Michel Elefteriades is a Greek-Lebanese politician, artist, producer and businessman. He is noted in the Arab world for his eclectic style, as well as his unorthodox beliefs and opinions, which have generated controversy and ignited passionate responses from his supporters and detractors alike.-...

     – Greek-Lebanese composer/producer/politician/Emperor of Nowheristan
  • Stéphan Elmas
    Stéphan Elmas
    -Life:Elmas was born into a family of wealthy entrepreneurs in Smyrna , a city in the Ottoman Empire. It was soon discovered that the little boy was a child prodigy: he began taking piano lessons and writing short piano pieces under the tutelage of a local music teacher, Mr...

     (1862–1937)- Armenian composer and pianist
  • Nehir Erdoğan
    Nehir Erdogan
    -Biography:In 2005 she became famous in both Turkey and Greece for starring in the TV mini series Yabancı Damat , concerning the problems encountered in an intercultural marriage between a Greek man and a Turkish girl.She also starred in various Turkish movies, including Okul and Hababam Sınıfı...

     – Actress
  • Gül Gölge
    Gül Gölge
    Gül Gölge is the well-known former host of the program "Canlı Canlı" which is aired on Kanal D. She is also a model and actress, having acted in Çiçek Taksi, Yapayalnız and Köpek among others dramas and soaps...

     – TV show host, model and actress
  • Homer
    Homer
    In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

     – Greek epic poet, see discussion above
  • Attilâ İlhan
    Attila Ilhan
    Attilâ İlhan was a Turkish poet, novelist, essayist, journalist and reviewer.-Early life:Attilâ İlhan was born in Menemen in İzmir Province, Turkey. He received most of his primary education in İzmir. However, because of his father's job, he completed his junior high school education in different...

     – Turkish poet, novelist, essayist, journalist, and reviewer.
  • İsmet İnönü
    Ismet Inönü
    Mustafa İsmet İnönü was a Turkish Army General, Prime Minister and the second President of Turkey. In 1938, the Republican People's Party gave him the title of "Milli Şef" .-Family and early life:...

     – 2nd President of Turkey
  • Irenaeus
    Irenaeus
    Saint Irenaeus , was Bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul, then a part of the Roman Empire . He was an early church father and apologist, and his writings were formative in the early development of Christian theology...

     (2nd–3rd century), theologian, bishop of Lugdunum
  • Azra Ebru Pehlivan – Turkish Architecture
    Architecture
    Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

    , art
    Art
    Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

    ; born in Alexandria
    Alexandria
    Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...

      and raised in central İzmir.
  • Sir Alec Issigonis
    Alec Issigonis
    Sir Alexander Arnold Constantine Issigonis, CBE, FRS was a Greek-British designer of cars, now remembered chiefly for the groundbreaking and influential development of the Mini, launched by the British Motor Corporation in 1959.- Early life:Issigonis was born into the Greek community of Smyrna ...

     – Greek-British car designer whose most famous work is the Mini
    Mini
    The Mini is a small car that was made by the British Motor Corporation and its successors from 1959 until 2000. The original is considered a British icon of the 1960s, and its space-saving front-wheel-drive layout influenced a generation of car-makers...

  • Nevzat Güzelırmak - Turkish Soccer player of Göztepe
    Göztepe
    Göztepe can refer to:*Göztepe, Istanbul, a neigbourhood in the Kadıköy district of Istanbul, Turkey*Göztepe, İzmir, a district of İzmir, Turkey*Göztepe A.Ş., a football club in İzmir...

    , Technical Director and Football commentor for Yeni Asır
  • Manolis Kalomiris
    Manolis Kalomiris
    Manolis Kalomiris ), was a Greek classical composer. He was the founder of the Greek National School of Music.-Biography:Born in Smyrna, he attended school in Constantinople and studied piano and composition in Vienna. After working for a few years as a piano teacher in Kharkov he settled in...

     (1883–1962) Greek composer
  • Selâhattin Kantar
    Selâhattin Kantar
    Ömer Selahattin Kantar was a Turkish archaeologist, museum director, journalist and playwright....

     – Turkish archaeologist who pioneered Smyrna
    Smyrna
    Smyrna was an ancient city located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Thanks to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. The ancient city is located at two sites within modern İzmir, Turkey...

     excavations
  • Ertan Kayıtken – Turkish Fashion Designer
    Fashion design
    Fashion design is the art of the application of design and aesthetics or natural beauty to clothing and accessories. Fashion design is influenced by cultural and social latitudes, and has varied over time and place. Fashion designers work in a number of ways in designing clothing and accessories....

  • Vedat Kokona
    Vedat Kokona
    Vedat Kokona is an Albanian translator, writer and lexicologist of the 20th century, well known for his dual dictionaries English-Albanian and French-Albanian and his contributions in Albanian lexicology and lexicography.-Early life:...

     – Albanian writer and translator
  • Adamantios Korais
    Adamantios Korais
    Adamantios Korais or Coraïs was a humanist scholar credited with laying the foundations of Modern Greek literature and a major figure in the Greek Enlightenment. His activities paved the way for the Greek War of Independence and emergence of a purified form of the Greek language, known as...

     (1748–1833) Greek humanist scholar
  • Çağla Kubat
    Çagla Kubat
    Çağla Kubat is a Turkish model, actress and windsurfer who is member of Fenerbahçe sailing & windsurfing team. She is 5 feet 10¾ tall....

     – Turkish fashion model
    Model (person)
    A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....

  • Alex Manoogian
    Alex Manoogian
    Alexander "Alex" Manoogian was an Armenian-American industrial engineer, businessman, entrepreneur and philanthropist who had most of his career in Detroit, Michigan. He and his wife Marie donated their home to the city, which uses the Manoogian Mansion as the mayoral residence...

     – Armenian-American industrialist, philanthropist, and founder/CEO of MASCO Corporation.
  • Udi Marko Melkon (1895–1963) – Armenian oud player and singer of Turkish, Greek, Armenian music; made his career in New York.
  • Darío Moreno
    Darío Moreno
    Darío Moreno was a Turkish polyglot singer of Jewish origin, as well as an accomplished composer, lyricist and guitarist, who was born in Aydın, Turkey, in 1921, and who attained fame and made a remarkable career centered in France which also included films, during the fifties and the...

     – Turkish
    Turkish people
    Turkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...

    -Jewish singer who made a career in France;
  • James Justinian Morier
    James Justinian Morier
    James Justinian Morier was a British diplomat and author noted for his novels about Qajar dynasty Iran, most famously for the Hajji Baba series.-Early life:...

     – British diplomat, traveler and writer
  • Magali Noël
    Magali Noël
    Magali Noël is a Turkish-French actress and singer. Originally from Izmir, she emigrated from Turkey to France in 1951, and her acting career began soon thereafter. She acted in multilingual cinema chiefly from 1951 to 1980, doing several films in Italian with renowned director Federico Fellini,...

     – French actress and singer
  • Metin Oktay
    Metin Oktay
    Metin Oktay nicknamed the Uncrowned King by Galatasaray fans, was a legendary Turkish footballer and one of the most successful goalscorers in Turkey....

     – Footballer
  • Aristotle Onassis
    Aristotle Onassis
    Aristotle Sokratis Onassis , commonly called Ari or Aristo Onassis, was a prominent Greek shipping magnate.- Early life :Onassis was born in Karatass, a suburb of Smyrna to Socrates and Penelope Onassis...

     (1906–1975) Greek tycoon
  • Alpay Özalan
    Alpay Özalan
    Alpay Fehmi Özalan is a former Turkish footballer.Alpay is currently a member of the management committee of Siirtspor.-Playing style:...

     – footballer
  • Ferdi Ozbegen – Singer
  • Leonidas Paraskevopoulos
    Leonidas Paraskevopoulos
    Leonidas Paraskevopoulos was a Greek military officer and politician.Paraskevopoulos was born in 1860 on the island of Kythnos to a family that hailed from Smyrna, Asia Minor...

     (1860–1936) Greek military man and politician
  • Polycarp
    Polycarp
    Saint Polycarp was a 2nd century Christian bishop of Smyrna. According to the Martyrdom of Polycarp, he died a martyr, bound and burned at the stake, then stabbed when the fire failed to touch him...

     – Overseer of a Christian congregation
  • Giacomo Pylarini
    Giacomo Pylarini
    Giacomo Pylarini was a Venetian physician and consul for the republic of Venice in Smyrna who in 1701 on the children of the English ambassador to Constantinople, gave the first smallpox inoculation outside of Turkey...

     gave the first smallpox inoculation outside of Turkey
  • Ahmed Adnan Saygun – Turkish composer, musician and writer
  • Giorgos Seferis
    Giorgos Seferis
    Giorgos or George Seferis was the pen name of Geōrgios Seferiádēs . He was one of the most important Greek poets of the 20th century, and a Nobel laureate...

     (1900–1971) Greek poet, a Nobel
    Nobel Prize
    The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

     laureate, born in nearby Urla
  • Quintus Smyrnaeus
    Quintus Smyrnaeus
    Quintus Smyrnaeus, also known as Kointos Smyrnaios , was a Greek epic poet whose Posthomerica, following "after Homer" continues the narration of the Trojan War....

     – Greek epic poet
  • Yavuz Tatış
    Yavuz Tatis
    Yavuz Tatış is a businessman from İzmir, Turkey, who has accumulated over the years one of the richest private collections in Turkey of historical artifacts dating from the Anatolian, Ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine periods....

     – Private collector
  • Yıldız Tilbe
    Yildiz Tilbe
    Yıldız Tilbe is a Turkish pop folk singer and one of the best selling musical artists in Turkey, known especially for her eastern-infused ballads.-Early life and career:...

     – Singer
  • Dr. Andrew Turnbull
    Dr. Andrew Turnbull
    Andrew Turnbull was a Scottish doctor and later a British Consul at Smyrna. He organized the largest attempt at British colonization in the New World by founding New Smyrna, Florida, named in honor of his wife's birthplace...

     – 18th century British Consul at Smyrna, founder of New Smyrna
    Nea Smyrni
    Nea Smyrni is a southern suburb of Athens, Greece. Nea Smyrni is located about 5 km SW of downtown Athens, about 5 km SW of Kifissias Avenue, W of Vouliagmenis Avenue, about 6 km E of Piraeus, and NE of Poseidonos Avenue....

     Colony, Florida, United States
  • Tryfon Tzanetis
    Tryfon Tzanetis
    Tryfon Tzanetis was a Greek football player and coach. Born in 1918 in Izmir, he was a best known as a forward for AEK Athens FC during the 1930s and 1940s, partnering Kleanthis Maropoulos in AEK's front line...

     (1918–2001) Greek footballer and coach
  • Bilge Umar
    Bilge Umar
    Bilge Umar is a Turkish writer, researcher and jurist born in Karşıyaka, İzmir in Turkey.He did his studies in Istanbul University Law School, where he also worked, after graduation in 1958, as an assistant and received his doctorate degree in 1962, with a thesis entitled Annulment Suit under...

     – Turkish jurist and writer
  • Esin Uner – Miss Aegean 1968, famous fashion model
  • Ece Uslu – Turkish actress
  • Latife Uşşaki – Wife of Atatürk (founder of modern Turkey)
  • Sabbatai Zevi
    Sabbatai Zevi
    Sabbatai Zevi, , was a Sephardic Rabbi and kabbalist who claimed to be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. He was the founder of the Jewish Sabbatean movement...

     – Self-proclaimed messiah
    Messiah
    A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...

     and founder of the community of Sabbateans

Famous personalities with connections to İzmir include Greek diva Haris Alexiou
Haris Alexiou
Haris Alexiou is a Greek singer. She is considered one of the most popular singers in Greece and has been commercially successful since the 1970s. She has worked with important Greek songwriters and composers, has performed at top musical theatres all over the world and has received several awards...

, granddaughter of Anatolia
Anatolia
Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...

n Greeks from Bulgurca
Bulgurca
Bulgurca was a village about 20 km south of Izmir, Turkey. Bulgurca's geographical coordinates are 38° 9' 35" North, 27° 8' 44" East.At a central rural location, Bulgurca was a well catered and popular village with health centre, primary and secondary schools, wide array of shops and trades...

 village near İzmir, whose discography deals with the city. A branch of the Forbes family
Forbes family
The Forbes family is a wealthy extended American family originating in Boston. The family's fortune originates from trading between North America and China in the 19th century plus other investments in the same period. The name descends from Scottish immigrants, and can be traced back to Sir John...

 lived in İzmir in mid-19th century, exporting Aydın figs
Ficus
Ficus is a genus of about 850 species of woody trees, shrubs, vines, epiphytes, and hemiepiphyte in the family Moraceae. Collectively known as fig trees or figs, they are native throughout the tropics with a few species extending into the semi-warm temperate zone. The Common Fig Ficus is a genus of...

 to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and opium
Opium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...

 to China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, and their mansion (Forbes köşkü) stands intact in Buca
Buca
Buca is a district of İzmir Province of Turkey. It is one of the main districts of İzmir Metropolitan Municipality.Buca was one of the preferred settlement areas of İzmir's community of Levantines...

. David Josiah Brewer, Associate Justice US Supreme Court 1890–1910, born Izmir 20 June 1837.
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