Fuat Güner

Fuat Güner — Biography

Aziz Fuat Güner was born on 1 April 1948 in Istanbul to a family of partial Albanian descent; his father was the renowned photographer Sami Güner. After Saint Joseph High School he studied civil engineering, played youth football for Fenerbahçe and was a professional volleyball player for five years, before quitting engineering in 1979 after being paid handsomely for a single advertising jingle.

Inspired by the Beatles, he formed the band Kaygısızlar with Mazhar Alanson in 1965, and later played in the original lineup of Barış Manço's Kurtalan Ekspres. In 1973 he and Alanson formed the duo Mazhar-Fuat; with Özkan Uğur's addition the group became MFÖ, whose 1984 debut album Ele Güne Karşı Yapayalnız topped the charts for 26 weeks. MFÖ represented Turkey at Eurovision in 1985 with "Diday Diday" and in 1988 with "Sufi". He also wrote film scores and acted in productions such as Arkadaşım Şeytan (1988), Koltuk Sevdası (2001) and Ölümsüz Karanfiller (1995).

He broke his hip in a 1989 car accident and spent four months bedridden, and has had heart problems since the mid-1990s. Following Özkan Uğur's death in 2023, he returned to touring with Mazhar Alanson in 2024; a long-running legal dispute within the group was resolved in 2025 when Alanson and Uğur's heirs withdrew from the case and the court awarded Güner damages with interest.