Sudi Özkan

Sudi Özkan was born in Adana, Turkey, in 1939. Obituaries and Princess International company biographies describe him as the son of a local grocer (bakkal). That humble start became a fixed part of his public story as he later built one of the widest geographic casino-and-hotel networks associated with a Turkish entrepreneur.

Growing up in Adana, he entered commerce rather than politics or academia. He later moved into Istanbul's commercial world, studying at the Istanbul Academy of Economics and Trade. Before casinos, his early businesses were in real estate sales and car dealing (galericilik), trades that taught him deal-making and cash flow in Turkey's fast-changing urban economy of the 1960s and 1970s.

Those years left him comfortable with property, hospitality, and high-turnover retail. When Turkey's legal casino regime opened wider opportunities in the 1980s, Özkan was positioned to shift from trading assets into operating nightlife and gaming floors inside major hotels.

Özkan graduated from the Istanbul Academy of Economics and Trade (İstanbul Ticari İlimler Akademisi), a commercial higher-education institution that trained many Turkish business managers of his generation. Company materials on the Princess International website highlight that degree as part of his path from Adana to international hospitality leadership.

Public sources do not detail primary or secondary schools. His later philanthropy toward Turkish primary, middle, and vocational schools suggests a lasting interest in formal education as a social good, even though his own fame came from entrepreneurship rather than academic life.

Özkan's career has two clear chapters: Turkish casino kingpin of the 1980s - 1990s, then international Princess International operator after the 1998 ban.

He opened his first Istanbul casino in 1985. Over the next decade he expanded into a portfolio that, by the 1998 closure, numbered about 19 casinos inside well-known hotels and resorts across Istanbul, Ankara, Antalya, Bodrum, and Kuşadası. Period reporting said Turkey then had roughly 78 casinos, with Özkan's group controlling about a quarter. In the mid-1990s he was already described as among the largest figures in the industry, sometimes ranked ahead of rival Ömer Lütfü Topal.

After casinos were outlawed in Turkey on 11 February 1998, Özkan moved capital and management abroad. Princess International became the vehicle for hotels, casinos, entertainment venues, and real estate in countries including Bulgaria, Romania, Belarus, Georgia, North Macedonia, Albania, Suriname, Belize, Guyana, Trinidad, Aruba, and Saint Martin / Sint Maarten. Signature projects mentioned in the press include the Svilengrad border casino aimed partly at Turkish visitors; the restored Svisloch Hotel project in Minsk; Port de Plaisance on Saint Martin; and Guyana's first casino under the Princess name. Group figures cited around his death commonly included 16 countries, on the order of 28 casinos and 16 hotels, 100-plus companies, 60-plus properties, and more than 15,000 staff (some tributes used slightly higher casino/hotel counts).

He remained a hands-on chairman in company storytelling. In later years he spent more time out of the Turkish spotlight while continuing education gifts at home and hospitality investments overseas.

Özkan's first marriage, to Sitare Özkan (later Sitare Özkan Bilginer), began when he was about 23 and lasted roughly 35 years. They had two children, Anibal Enis Özkan and Venüs Neslihan Özkan Colamarino. Both appeared on boards of family tourism companies in the early 2000s; Enis was often called a business heir in the Turkish press and represented Princess openings abroad, including in Bulgaria. Sitare died in Dubai in 2024 and was buried in Istanbul.

His second long relationship was with Belarusian Katsiaryna Schulkevitch (Katya), who according to contemporary reports came to Turkey around 1997 to work at one of his hotels. They lived for periods in the United States and on Saint Martin, married in a large 2004 ceremony at Princess Casino with about 200 guests from Turkey, and had four children: King, Royal, Sudihan, and Princess Özkan. In 2011 Özkan told a Russian newspaper interview, republished in Turkey, that the marriage was ending after years of luxury living on Saint Martin, that he had bought a private jet because his wife disliked scheduled flights, and that the four children would stay with their mother while he continued financial support.

In 2004 the family suffered the death of grandson Sudi Emirhan Özkan, aged 11, in a traffic accident near Keşan. Özkan's grief was widely quoted in Turkish coverage at the time.

Residences associated with him included Istanbul and Saint Martin. He kept a lower public profile in Turkey in his final years while still appearing for school openings such as Bodrum Güvercinlik in 2024.

Özkan rarely published political manifestos. In the 2011 Komsomolskaya Pravda interview he described himself as Muslim and spoke about personal hurt and family duty during his second divorce. His public acts emphasized business expansion, tax disputes with the Turkish state, and education philanthropy rather than party politics.

Toward education he was consistently affirmative. At the 2024 Bodrum Güvercinlik school opening he spoke about the importance of schooling and said he was working toward bringing a fisheries university project to Muğla. On Sint Maarten, officials later framed his university rebuilding gift after Hurricane Luis as a civic contribution beyond pure profit.

On gambling, his career itself was the statement: he stayed in casinos after Turkey banned them, arguing with his feet by building legal venues abroad rather than exiting the industry.

Özkan's legacy sits at the intersection of Turkey's brief legal casino age and a global hospitality brand that outgrew it. Domestically he remains a symbol of the 1990s casino boom, its wealth, and its controversies. Internationally, Princess International left bricks-and-mortar casinos and hotels across multiple continents, employing thousands and embedding the Princess name in destinations from Svilengrad to Georgetown to Philipsburg.

In Turkey his named schools in Büyükçekmece and Bodrum, and the Mumcular school completed in Sitare Özkan's name, are concrete community legacies. Sint Maarten's prime ministerial tribute in 2026 underlined education and community outreach alongside Port de Plaisance.

He also left a complex succession story: six children from two marriages, and a privately held multinational group whose future ownership drew intense media attention the day he died.

Özkan was not primarily known for state medals in Turkish public records compiled at his death. Recognition more often took the form of commercial scale (tax-record rankings in the casino years), naming rights on schools he funded, and official thanks from local governors and, abroad, from Sint Maarten's government for university and community support.

Princess International's own marketing describes industry awards and guest recognition across its properties; individual prize lists for Özkan personally are sparsely documented in English- and Turkish-language obituaries from October 2026.

Turkish newspapers and television nicknamed Özkan "Kumarhaneler Kralı" for decades. His tax cases, foreign investments, and marriages were regular magazine and broadsheet fodder from the late 1990s through the 2010s. After his death on 2 October 2026, major outlets including T24, Sözcü, Nefes, Patronlar Dünyası, OdaTV, and Cumhuriyet ran career retrospectives focused on the 19 Turkish casinos, the Princess empire, and his six children.

Internationally he appeared in Caribbean and Guyanese business coverage around Princess openings and in Sint Maarten news at his death. YouTube channels published biographical explainers and funeral-news clips within hours of the announcements. He did not cultivate a heavy personal social-media celebrity presence in his final years.

Özkan's public record includes several contested chapters.

Casino-era security politics: After Ömer Lütfü Topal's 1996 murder, later accounts said Özkan received a warning from MIT official Mehmet Eymür and left Turkey for a time. In 2006 Özkan hired Eymür into company management, a relationship both men later described as having ended professionally while personal acquaintance continued.

Susurluk: Coverage of the 1996 Susurluk scandal noted that figures later killed or injured in the crash had stayed at Özkan's Izmir Princess Hotel beforehand. That association kept his name in Turkey's deep-state debate even though he was not the case's central defendant.

Tax and invoice cases: After 1998, tax inspectors claimed vast undeclared casino transfers abroad. Özkan fought the numbers, restructured under the 2003 tax peace framework, and later said he paid tens of millions of dollars while rejecting the scale of the original claims. Separately, a Manisa criminal case alleged false invoices connected to a pasta factory; Özkan and family members denied wrongdoing in court statements reported by Hürriyet.

Lifestyle coverage of his second marriage and divorce, including disputed quotes in Turkish tabloids that he denied in 2011, added a long-running celebrity controversy layer to the business story.

Sudi Özkan died in Istanbul on 2 October 2026 at the age of 87. Multiple Turkish outlets reported that he had been receiving hospital treatment there. Family-linked accounts cited organ failure related to age and chronic illness; other reports stressed that a detailed official medical statement had not been widely released.

English Wikipedia and Turkish Wikipedia both record the same death date. Sint Maarten Prime Minister Luc F.E. Mercelina issued condolences the same day, citing Özkan's Port de Plaisance ownership and education support. Turkish business media said funeral prayers were planned at the Satı Çerçi ve Oğulları Mosque in Büyükçekmece Kamiloba, with burial in Kumburgaz.

Attention immediately turned to succession across Princess International and to his six children from two marriages.