Career
His pen name means "the Exemplary Ashik". Âşık Mahzuni Şerif mentioned him as "a progressive and revolutionary ministrel". Hıdır Gürel was born in Kırkısrak village of Sarız, Kayseri in 1920 to Ali and Sultan.
His ancestry had emigrated from Akçadağ village of Malatya.
His mother died when he was 3 years old and his father was married to another woman. He started working with a shoemaker.
After military service, he went to Afşin, Kahramanmaraş and learned tailoring in a little while. He returned to his hometown Sarız as a tailor.
Because of this he is also known as Terzi Hıdır ("Hıdır the Tailor").
In this period, he began playing bağlama and writing poetry. Other than shoemaking and tailoring, he dealt with lots of job like mining, musical instrument making and amateur dentistry. He went to Elbistan, Kahramanmaraş and started to working as a photographer but he couldn"t adapt to the city and returned to his hometown.
He died on 5 November 1976 in Istanbul.
