lit a candle 1h agoNever heard his music till today. Shame.
Their story
Soner Olgun was a Turkish singer, songwriter and stage performer whose voice sat where folk türkü, tavern song and modern band arrangement meet. He was born on 18 June 1959 in Fethiye, then a quieter Aegean-Mediterranean town in Muğla province. He finished primary school there at Atatürk İlkokulu, then won…
Soner Olgun was a Turkish singer, songwriter and stage performer whose voice sat where folk türkü, tavern song and modern band arrangement meet. He was born on 18 June 1959 in Fethiye, then a quieter Aegean-Mediterranean town in Muğla province. He finished primary school there at Atatürk İlkokulu, then won a place at the boarding school that became Bornova Anadolu Lisesi (then Izmir Maarif Koleji). From age eleven he lived most of the year away from home, a hard cut he later said taught endurance and friendship. Music was already in the household: parents and older brothers played and sang, and the Teke / Aegean sound of the region shaped his ear.
Family pressure and a youthful fascination with courtroom drama pushed him toward Ankara Hukuk Fakültesi. He left law before graduating when real Turkish courtrooms looked nothing like the American series that had drawn him in. He returned to Izmir, entered Dokuz Eylül University's Fine Arts Faculty in Theatre / Dramatic Writing, and studied under teachers including Turgut Özakman. Parallel to study he entered journalism: by his own account he began reporting in 1978, became Milliyet's supplements publishing manager in Izmir around 1980, later worked in Istanbul for Karacan publications, founded youth titles under Genç Yayıncılık, and closed his press years around 1989 as editor-in-chief of Boom Müzik. He tallied about thirteen years in newspapers and magazines before music took the centre.
Theatre remained a first love. He wrote the play Letafet and composed its music, but found professional theatre production too capital-heavy and compromising. Music, he later said, let him carry instrument, songs and repertoire and perform even alone. After parting ways with a spell as adviser and writer around Nükhet Duru, a bar owner who already knew him as a customer, Emin İgüs, offered a paid weekly set. That became his first sustained professional singing work. His debut album Letafet appeared in 1992. Her Şey Değişmeli followed in 1994, İyi Bayramlar in 1999, İyi Bayramlar Türkiye in 2004, Sevda Diye Bir Kuş in 2012, and the maxi single Yakarım Yağmurları in 2015. He published some thirty-five songs with words or music credited to him. Listeners especially kept İyi Bayramlar Türkiye and Sevda Diye Bir Kuş.
Between 1997 and 2014 he built a rare residency: every Friday and Saturday for seventeen years at the same Istanbul venue (Patika), often for multi-hour sets that mixed folk, rock colour, poetry and requests. From 2014 he toured other Turkish cities and spent two unbroken years of weekly shows at Merit Park Hotel in Northern Cyprus, a run described in his biographies as an unmatched local stage record. He also hosted Soner Olgun ile İyi Bayramlar on Cine5 and TV8. His public slogan "İyi Bayramlar" was both greeting and manifesto: he said the world is changed by people who "draw pictures into the void," the period's supposed fools whose work finds value later.
Off stage he married singer and vocalist Özlem Koldaş (often billed Özlem Olgun). They had one daughter, Elif. The couple later divorced privately; in a July 2025 Posta interview Özlem said they had kept the divorce quiet for years for their daughter's stability while still sharing home spaces and the stage, and that friendship and co-parenting continued. She also publicly raised concerns about delayed recognition of his illness after sudden diabetes appeared.
Doctors diagnosed pancreatic cancer in spring 2025. He underwent surgery, then chemotherapy and radiotherapy, finishing that course in December 2025 (Medyascope). In September 2026 high fever put him in intensive care; after a spell as an inpatient he went home at his own request. Around early October (reports cite about 6-7 October) he was readmitted, intubated and treated in ICU. He died in hospital on 16 October 2026, aged 67. A funeral ceremony is planned for Sunday 18 October 2026; the exact venue was not named in the first wave of obituaries. Turkish music audiences remembered a modern ozan who treated the stage as ritual, kept a folk inheritance while using modern instruments, and left a greeting that sounded like both blessing and defiance: İyi Bayramlar.
Biography adapted from Medyascope, Milliyet, Hürriyet, Cumhuriyet, CNN Türk, BirGün, OdaTV (16 Oct 2026 obituaries); tr.wikipedia Soner Olgun; Karar biography; Haberler.com biography; Posta interview with Özlem Koldaş (20 J. Wikipedia ↗
In their own words
“İnsanı, insan gibi yaşatmayan kariyer, kariyer değildir; o, adamı yer.”
On shaping a life-fit career rather than being consumed by one (Hürriyet, 5 May 2012).
“Dünyayı boşluğa resimler çizenler değiştirir.”
Explaining the İyi Bayramlar manifesto; those who draw pictures into the void change the world (ÖCED interview).
“İyi bayramlar diyebilmek için boşluğa resimler çizmeliyiz.”
Same manifesto framing across albums (ÖCED interview).
“Saatle yaşamak, yaşamamaktır.”
On refusing to end sets by the clock; he said he never wore a watch on stage logic (Hürriyet, 5 May 2012).
“Aslında ben tiyatro yapmaya geldim İstanbul'a. Ama İstanbul'a gelir gelmez burada tiyatro yapamayacağımı anladım.”
Career path from theatre ambition into journalism then music (Karar biography quoting his interview).
“Üç büyüklerim; aşkı ulvileştiren Yunus Emre, bireyselliğiyle Karacoğlan ve yiğit bir asi olan Pir Sultan Abdal'dır.”
Naming his three folk masters (Hürriyet, 5 May 2012).
Photos
2by People Forever
Soner Olgun, 21 September 2021
by People Forever
From social media
7Posts by Soner, and posts about them, kept here so they are not lost.