Gürkan Uygun

Gürkan Uygun — Biography

In İzmit, on 27 May 1974, Gürkan Uygun was born to a Georgian-descended family, originally from Ordu, that had settled after his father took up barbering there. He discovered theatre in high school, took his first amateur stage roles in 1990, trained at Istanbul's state conservatory while performing with the Dormen theatre troupe, and moved into television in 1994 with series such as Kaygısızlar and Tatlı Kaçıklar.

He is best remembered for playing Memati Baş for nine years in Kurtlar Vadisi, a part he owed to a recommendation from Osman Wöber, and he later took on a range of different characters: the policeman Serhat Hakeri in Kaçak (2013–2015), Halil Halid Bey in Payitaht Abdülhamid (2018–2020), and, in Uyanış: Büyük Selçuklu (2020–2021), the Assassin leader Hasan Sabbah. Since 2021 he has appeared in Teşkilat, first as Yıldırım and later as Efkar (Hasan Atmaca); he also had a brief turn as Mimar Sinan in Muhteşem Yüzyıl and featured in the 2019 film Cep Herkülü: Naim Süleymanoğlu.

He married Şebnem Ceylan in 2008; the couple have two children, Mihriban Balım (b. 2008) and Ateş (b. 2010). His role as Kürşat Kilimci in Bir Gece Masalı followed in 2024, and as Mahmud Pasha in Mehmed: Fetihler Sultanı in 2025, and he joined the cast of Kantin, shooting in 2026.