Pastirma or bastirma is a highly seasoned, air-dried cured beef in the multiple counties throughout the Caucasus, Middle East, and Balkans.

The name bastirma is from Turkish: bastırma et (pressed meat).bastırma is the gerund of the verb bastırmak (bastırmak in modern Turkish), which means "to depress, restrain". The word is used with minor variants in the various languages of the region: Albanian: pastërma, Arabic: بسطرمة (basterma)‎, Armenian: բաստուրմա (basturma), Azerbaijani: basdırma, Macedonian: пастрма (pastrma), Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian: pastrma, Bulgarian: пастърма (pastărma), Greek: παστουρμάς (pastourmás) or παστρουμάς (pastroumás), and Romanian: pastramă. The word pastrami, although used for a differently prepared type of meat, also goes back via Yiddish: פּאַסטראָמע (pastrómeh) to pastırma.

Wind-dried beef has been made in this region for centuries, since at least Byzantine times.

There are various stories about the origin of pastirma, none well documented. One story gives its origins as the city of Caesarea Mazaca (modern Kayseri) in Anatolia, where there was supposedly a dish called pastron; but this is not supported by standard Greek dictionaries.

Ahmet Kaya (October 28, 1957 – November 16, 2000) Kurdish singer from Malatya, Turkey, who died on November 16, 2000 in exile in Paris. He formerly sang in Turkish. Some of his most popular songs include Ayrılık Vakti, Söyle, Ağladıkça, Oy Benim Canım, Birazdan Kudurur Deniz, Arka Mahalle, Nereden Bileceksiniz, Hani Benim Gençliğim, Yakarım Geceleri and Şafak Türküsü.

Ahmet Kaya was the fifth and last child of his Kurdish father, who had immigrated from Adıyaman to Malatya, and Turkish mother.^{[citation needed]} He first encountered music at the age of six when his father bought him a bağlama for his birthday. Ahmet Kaya worked for a while as a taxi driver in Istanbul before becoming well known as a singer in the mid-1980s.

His first album, Ağlama Bebeğim, was released in 1985. His popularity continued to rise into the 1990s when in 1994 he released the album Şarkılarım Dağlara which was sold a record 2.8 million copies. All of his 1990 albums to chart-toppers.

During his career he recorded approximately 20 albums and was known for his protest music and positions on social justice. Recurring themes in his songs are love towards one's mother, sacrifice, and hope.

Yılmaz Erdoğan (born 4 November 1967, Hakkâri, Turkey) is a Turkish filmmaker, actor and poet, who is most famous for his box-office record-breaking debut comedy film Vizontele (2001) and the television series Bir Demet Tiyatro (1995–2002/2006-2007).

Yilmaz Erdoğan spent his childhood in Ankara until he moved to Istanbul along with his family.His family is of Kurdish ethnic. In 1987, he dropped out of his civil engineering studies at Istanbul Technical University and joined the On Duty Theater Staff (Turkish: Nöbetçi Tiyatrosu) managed by Ferhan Şensoy. He also became chief screenwriter at Levent Kırca’s long-running television sketch show, Olacak O Kadar. In 1988, he founded his own theatre company, Güldüşündürü, and staged a successful production of his self-penned Suleiman the Magnificent and Rambo (Turkish: Kanuni Sultan Süleyman ve Rambo).

In 1994, he founded Beşiktaş Cultural Center (Turkish: Beşiktaş Kültür Merkezi) with business partner Necati Akpınar and achieved recognition as Mükremin Abi alongside actress Demet Akbağ in the ground breaking television series Bir Demet Tiyatro (1995–2002) on Star TV. He also continued his theatrical success with a series of plays and musicals, including his one man show, Cebimdeki Kelimeler, and recorded a poetry album called, Kayıp Kentin Yakışıklısı, which includes seventeen poems accompanied by traditional Turkish music composed by Metin Kalender, Nizamettin Ariç and Ali Aykaç.