Günseli Başar is a former Turkish

Turkish people

Turkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...

 beauty contest

Beauty contest

A beauty pageant or beauty contest, is a competition that mainly focuses on the physical beauty of its contestants, although such contests often incorporate personality, talent, and answers to judges' questions as judged criteria...

ant and Miss Europe

Miss Europe

Miss Europe is a popular regional beauty pageant among female contestants from the nations of the European continent established in 1928 and re-established at the end of World War II by Roger Zeiler of the French Committee of Elegance and Claude Berr...

 1952.

Biography

She was born on January 22, 1932 to an officer's family in Diyarbakır

Diyarbakır

Diyarbakır is one of the largest cities in southeastern Turkey...

, where her father was stationed. However, her birth was registered some time later in Erzurum

Erzurum

Erzurum is a city in Turkey. It is the largest city, the capital of Erzurum Province. The city is situated 1757 meters above sea level. Erzurum had a population of 361,235 in the 2000 census. .Erzurum, known as "The Rock" in NATO code, served as NATO's southeastern-most air force post during the...

 due to her father's transfer. Her great-grand uncle was Grand vizier

Grand Vizier

Grand Vizier, in Turkish Vezir-i Azam or Sadr-ı Azam , deriving from the Arabic word vizier , was the greatest minister of the Sultan, with absolute power of attorney and, in principle, dismissable only by the Sultan himself...

 Halil Rifat Pasha

Halil Rifat Pasha

Halil Rifat Pasha , was an Ottoman statesman and a grand vizier for six years between 1895 till his death 1901, under the reign of Abdülhamid II.- Education :...

, founder of the almshouse in Istanbul and commissioner of the İzmir Clock Tower

Izmir Clock Tower

İzmir Clock Tower is a historic clock tower located at the Konak Square in Konak district of İzmir, Turkey. The clock tower was designed by the Levantine French architect Raymond Charles Père and built in 1901 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Abdülhamid II's accession to the throne.The...

.

While a student studying sculpture at the Fine Arts Academy

Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts

Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University is a Turkish state university dedicated to the higher education of fine arts. It is located in the Fındıklı neighborhood of İstanbul, Turkey.-History:...

 in Istanbul

Istanbul

Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

, Günseli

Günseli

Günseli is a common Turkish given name. The name is produced by using two Turkish words: Gün and Sel. In Turkish, "Gün" means "Day" and/or "Sun"; and "Sel" means "Flood" and/or "Stream". Therefore it means "stream of sun" or "stream of daylight"...

 participated at a beauty pageant organized by the newspaper Cumhuriyet

Cumhuriyet

Cumhuriyet is a centre-left Turkish daily newspaper, founded on May 7, 1924 by journalist Yunus Nadi Abalıoğlu. Based in Istanbul, it has been situated since October 17, 2005 in Mecidiyeköy. Cumhuriyet was the last newspaper to leave the old press district Cağaloğlu...

, and won the title Miss Turkey

Miss Turkey

Miss Turkey ® is a national beauty pageant for unmarried women in Turkey, who personify beauty with intelligence. The first beauty contest was held on September 2, 1929 with the backing of the government, and the title holder was Feriha Tevfik....

 1952 on October 13, 1951. The next year, she represented her country at the Miss Europe beauty contest held in Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

, Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, and became Turkey’s first ever Miss Europe winner on August 20, 1952.

She dropped out of her arts education, and at the age of 23, married Mehmet Kutsi Beğdeş, a charitable businessman. Günseli made her second marriage in 1959 to the Mayor of İzmir

Izmir

Izmir is a large metropolis in the western extremity of Anatolia. The metropolitan area in the entire Izmir Province had a population of 3.35 million as of 2010, making the city third most populous in Turkey...

, Faruk Tunca. Both her marriages were short. She has one daughter, Aslı, from her second marrıage and two grand daughters.

In 1977, she accepted an offer from Erol Simavi, the owner of the daily newspaper Hürriyet, to write a column under the title "Günseli Oradaydı" (literally: "Günseli Was There") in order to finance her daughter's education abroad. After only one year of travelling across the country to write her column, she was involved in a traffic accident in which she was seriously injured. She underwent repeated operations on her head and arm. After recovery she did not return to her writing career.

Günseli Başar currently lives in Bodrum

Bodrum

Bodrum is a port city in Muğla Province, in the southwestern Aegean Region of Turkey. It is located on the southern coast of Bodrum Peninsula, at a point that checks the entry into the Gulf of Gökova. The site was called Halicarnassus of Caria in ancient times and was famous for housing the...

, Turkey.