Ebru Gündeş sings the kind of desperately tragic Arabesque love songs that are the core of Turkish pop music.

[citation needed] Her debut album, Tanrı Misafiri, was released in 1992, and was successful, selling 1,250,000 copies nationwide.

At this stage, she was regarded as a very sweet and innocent-looking girl, slim, dressed in white and with a habit of raising one eyebrow.

However, the general perception of music critics had been one of disappointment, as the album consisted solely of covers and was therefore considered to be 'repetition'.

[7] Ebru Gündeş has made hundreds of television appearances in Turkey as a singer and as an actress in the comedy series İmkansız Aşk (Impossible Love).

Every week Ebru was joined by a variety of other Turkish singers, most notably her long-time friends Serdar Ortaç and İbrahim Tatlıses.

[citation needed] In 2010, Gündeş who was presenting a television program on TGRT at the time, repeatedly performed a song based on verses from Ataol Behramoğlu's poem Yaşadıklarımdan öğrendiğim bir şey var, without asking permission or paying for the copyright.

Behramoğlu later filed a lawsuit against Gündeş, the program's producer and broadcaster for violating his rights, asking for compensation due to material and moral damages.

[11] Reza Zarrab was arrested on 17 December 2013 by Istanbul police in light of a corruption scandal, which involved some members of the AKP being accused of giving bribes totaling 63 million dollars to government ministers or their proxies.