Scandal at the GQ Turkey Award Ceremony

The GQ Award has always been considered one of the most prestigious in Turkey. However, this time an extremely unpleasant controversy has arisen around the ceremony that may cast doubt on that status.

The pandemic continues to affect the functioning of the Turkish show business. This time the award ceremony of GQ Turkey was completely digital and held online. Of course, fans of Turkish stars were disappointed, because they were accustomed to grand ceremonies with huge numbers of stars and journalists. But alas, the 2020 ceremony was quite modest.

However, there was a scandal, too, and the scandal was large enough to seriously undermine the prestige of the award. Şükrü Özyıldız received the award «Actor of the Year», that was announced by Serenay Sarıkaya and the famous host Ibrahim Selim. The award angered fans of Turkish cinema, who pointed out that the actor had last appeared on screens in 2018. However, the organizers of the ceremony stressed that the award was given for his work in the musical “Alice in Wonderland”. But it’s not that simple. In 2020, the musical group had only a few performances and the musical  was then shut down due to the epidemic.

Fans consider that the award was simply “bought” by the ATV channel, which promotes the new series Striker / Akinci starring Şükrü Özyıldız. He could be awarded as the best theater actor, because the award “actor of the year” was always given to those who starred in movies and TV shows. It is a blatant spit in the face of those Turkish actors who continued to work in an epidemic, risking their lives every time they go on set. How this will affect the future of the award and whether it will lose its prestige is not entirely clear.

The awards were also given to: Kenan İmirzalıoğlu as “screen face”, Alina Boz as “rising star”, singer Kalben as “woman of the year”, George Clooney as “international star of the year”, Haluk Bilginer as “icon of the year”. Boran Kuzum received the Equality Award and Engin Oztürk received the Award as the “Gentleman of the Year”.

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