Behiye Aksoy

Behiye Aksoy — Biography

Behiye Aksoy (born Behiye Tetiker; died 31 May 2015 in Istanbul) was one of the most celebrated voices of Turkish classical music. Her birth year varies by source: Wikidata and the English Wikipedia give 19 September 1933, while the Turkish Wikipedia and SinemaTürk place it in 1929; both describe the same career, but no single date is confirmed here.

Drawn to music by her mother and aunt's piano and ud playing and by the era's famous singers, she sat Ankara Radio's 1947 entrance exam after finishing middle school, was chosen as one of five out of two hundred candidates, and sang there steadily for nine years. After moving to Istanbul she became the second great star of the Maksim nightclub after Zeki Müren, releasing roughly a hundred singles and some twenty albums, and was given a platinum tiara by a record label in place of a gold disc.

Her marriage to musician Halil Aksoy produced her only son, Ahmet Kazım; she later had two brief marriages, to producer Berker İnanoğlu in 1973 for nineteen days, and to her longtime partner Fahrettin Aslan, which lasted about a year. She starred in the films Kederli Günlerim (1967) and Falcı (1972), and appeared in Deli Deli Tepeli (1975) and the series Taş Plaktan Bugüne (1989). Diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2001, she was moved into a care home, taken into intensive care in December 2014, and died in Istanbul on 31 May 2015, being laid to rest at Zincirlikuyu Cemetery. In September 2025 Turkish media reported that her life story was being adapted for film.