Savaş Ay

Savaş Ay — Biography

Savaş Ay was born on 26 March 1954 in Istanbul, the son of singer Şükran Ay and magician-entertainer Turan Ay, and grew up in Üsküdar's Selamsız neighbourhood. After studying at the Marmara Academy of Commercial Sciences, he began as a reporter at the newspaper Dünya in 1974, then worked at Tercüman, Vatan, Milliyet and Sabah, before moving into television on Mehmet Ali Birand's programme 32. Gün. He became the journalist who took the last photograph of 17-year-old Erdal Eren before his execution following the 1980 coup, an image that inspired Sezen Aksu's song "Son Bakış."

He became known for the panel show A Takımı, which he launched in 1993, discovered presenter Defne Joy Foster in 1994, made headlines in 1998 by airing footage exposing problems at SSK hospitals, and led an overnight fundraising campaign that collected 1 trillion lira for a school in Doğubayazıt, Ağrı; he won more than 600 professional awards and wrote six books. Around the same period he directed, wrote and starred in the film Dansöz. Diagnosed with throat cancer in 1998, he fought the disease for fifteen years and could speak only in a whisper by his final years. He died in Istanbul on 9 November 2013 at 59 and was buried at Topkapı Cemetery beside his mother; the inheritance dispute among his children was not settled until 2024.