1. Ahmet Kaya was granted the Musician of the Year Award in February 1999 during a controversial award ceremony involving Turkey's most popular singers, at which he declared that he wanted to sing a song in Kurdish.
12 Facts About Ahmet Kaya
1. 2.
Ahmet Kaya, He was born in Malatya as the youngest of a family of 5 children.
3.
Ahmet Kaya's father worked at the local textiles factory and the family lived in only one room until in 1959, which was the year the factory began to provide better accommodation to its workers.
4.
Ahmet Kaya often visited his relatives in the country side where he made his first experiences with music.
5.
Ahmet Kaya's uncle Yusuf was a singer and a musician, who inspired him to build his own baglama.
6.
Ahmet Kaya's life circled around music, and he toured the region giving concerts and in later years took up a job at a record store where worked after school.
7.
Ahmet Kaya played as a musician in the band of Ferdi Tayfur, through which he got to know the organized crime leader "Kurt Idris".
8.
The musical relationship with Demirel terminated in tatters as the success did not follow the release of their first album, but Ahmet Kaya married his second wife Gulten Hayaloglu, whom he got to know through Selda Bagcan, a well-known Turkish left-wing musician.
9.
On 11 February 1999 during the televised annual music awards ceremony at which he was to be named Musician of the Year, Ahmet Kaya said that he wanted to produce music in his native language, as he was of Kurdish background.
10.
Ahmet Kaya announced that he had recorded a song in Kurdish and intended to produce a video to accompany it.
11.
Ahmet Kaya died from a heart attack in Paris in 2000, at the age of 43, and is buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery.
12.
In October 2013 Ahmet Kaya was given the Grand Presidential Prize in Culture and Arts in the music category on the day that would have been his 57th birthday.