Sunay Akın
Sunay Akın (born 12 September 1962) is a Turkish poet, writer, TV host, journalist, and philanthropist. He founded the Istanbul Toy Museum and was born in Trabzon, Turkey. He is best known for his poetry, which is usually short, lyrical, and gentle, often using satire and puns. His main influences are Orhan Veli Kanık and Cemal Süreya.
Akın has a collection of more than 7,000 toys, with about 4,000 on display at the Istanbul Toy Museum, which opened in 2005. He co-hosts the TV show Yaşamdan Dakikalar (Minutes from Life) on tv8 with Hıncal Uluç, Haşmet Babaoğlu, and Nebil Özgentürk. He has also hosted other programs on TRT 2, tv8, and Yaşam Radyo, including Mahya Işıkları, Stüdyo İstanbul, İzler, Gezgin Korkuluk, and Veşaire...Veşaire. He lectures at Marmara University and Müjdat Gezen Art School, as well as at his own Istanbul Toy Museum. Akın often performs one-man shows in Turkey and abroad and participates in panels and conferences. He is a regular columnist for the Cumhuriyet newspaper, with a column named after his 2004 book Kule Cambazı (Tower Acrobat), a nod to Istanbul’s Maiden’s Tower.
His first poems appeared in 1984. In 1989 he founded the poetry journal Yeni Yaprak (New Page), inspired by Orhan Veli’s Yaprak, and worked with Ramazan Üren and Akgün Akova. Yeni Yaprak was published twice a week at first, then monthly, for a total of sixteen issues. In 1990 he contributed to Olmaz (Won’t Happen), another poetry journal. In 1991, in Yaprak’s last issue, a poem titled Barış için dizeler (Lines for Peace) brought together 81 Turkish poets, including Can Yücel, Hilmi Yavuz, Lale Müldür, Semih Kaplanoğlu, and Süreyya Berfe.
Akın’s poems have appeared in many periodicals and anthologies, such as Milliyet Sanat, Yeni Düşün, Varlık, Broy, Yarın, and various poetry and literature journals. He has written essays for Cumhuriyet’s Gezi supplement on poetry and the history of art, and some of his books have been published outside Turkey.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 21:10 (CET).