[3] Her military officer father fell in the Turkish War of Independence and the family had to move to the new capital when her mother found employment with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
[1][2] Born into a wealthy and educated family with a piano-playing and singing mother and violin-playing father and elder brother, İkesus developed an interest in music.
She was impressed by a performance by a visiting Soviet musician group that featured members Dmitri Shostakovich, David Oistrakh, and Lev Oborin.
[4] İkesus appeared on stage and continued her musical artistic life in Germany during the early years of World War II.
[5] She performed as a mezzo-soprano at Theater Duisburg in the operas Rigoletto, Hansel and Gretel, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Don Carlos, Così fan tutte, and Carmen.
[5] Thanks to her knowledge of Italian, German, and English, İkesus translated nearly fifty librettos, including La traviata, The Queen of Spades, Don Carlos, Hansel and Gretel, Salome, Un ballo in maschera, Eugene Onegin, and La fille du régiment , as well as numerous lieder by Brahms, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, and Mussorgski.
A memorial ceremony was held in the Atatürk Cultural Center, where Franz Schubert's lied An die Musik was performed in accordance with her will.
[4][9] By November 2019, the Süleyman Demirel University in Isparta named its concert hall in the Faculty of Fine Arts in honor of İkesus.