Metin Akpınar

Metin Akpınar — Biography

Metin Akpınar's part as Şaban in Vatan Kurtaran Şaban, the first play staged by Devekuşu Kabare, made his name, and he ran the troupe's administration until it disbanded in 1992. Describing himself as a socialist, he twice turned down offers to run for parliament for the DSP, in 1991 and 1995; in business, he became a partner in the KİPA supermarket chain founded in 1992 and later helped establish a hospital in İzmir.

Married to Göksel Özdoğdu since 1961, Akpınar made headlines in 2023 when it emerged that he had twin daughters, Duygu Nebioğlu and Sevgi Nebioğlu, from a single encounter thirty-six years earlier; raised in an orphanage and later adopted, the two women had tracked him down, and he publicly acknowledged them as his children, with Duygu's civil registration formalized that October.

A recipient of honorary awards from the İsmail Dümbüllü Awards in 2008, the Golden Orange festival in 2010 and the Istanbul Film Festival in 2011, Akpınar has lectured on the history of cabaret at Haliç and Okan universities. A documentary drawn from his life story, İyi ki Yapmışım, screened at a festival's closing night in 2020, and his memoir, Sahneye Adanmış Bir Ömür: Metin Akpınar, was published two years later.