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Possible Connections~

business partners ~ while his best friend is his main business partner, Tuncay likes to dip his toes into promising adventures in many areas of the business world. He mainly focuses on architecture but enjoys the idea of providing affordable and sustainable housing to people. Your character could be a fellow architect, they could be currently working together on a build, they could work for or with him in any capacity. Perhaps, they only know of each other in the business world.

friends ~ Tuncay is career focused and likes to surround himself with like-minded people but he also loves meeting people with different perspectives and opinions than he has. He tends to listen more than speak and grows protective over the people that he harbours fondness for. Most of his friendships have been surface level up until this point in his life, whether they are old friends or new budding ones, your character may find it difficult to delve deeper into a friendship with him or very easy depending on the situation.

childhood friends

ex-partners / current partners

neighbours

pet-sitters / walkers

live-in nanny

assistant

Personality ~

positive traits: driven, philanthropic, kind, respectful, honest, family oriented, open-minded, critical, quick witted, playful.

negative traits: apathetic, blunt, sarcastic, noncommittal, over-protective, judgemental, critical, reckless, closed off, difficult, aggressive.

likes: learning, traveling, reading, music, exercise, health and nutrition, psychology, language, working, dark chocolate.

dislikes: disrespect (towards himself and others), feeling suffocated, itchy fabric, boredom, slow movement, small spaces, dull knives, disorganization, sleep.

hobbies: cooking, writing, pottery, volunteering, drawing, painting.

The biography ~

tw: transmissible disease (hiv), medical issues, partner death, brief mentions of internalized homophobia/toxic masculinity, fertility issues, infidelity, pregnancy/surrogacy, PTSD, Grief, and abandonment issues.

   Affluence by default was the expectation for the first-born and only son of Mehmet and Sevda Çelik, a power couple of the Turkish high society. Mehmet, the heir of a chain of international hotels and Sevda, a fierce fashion designer held preconceived notions about the little boy who had changed their eternity of fertility issues. For a while after his birth, these preconceived notions were their reality, however, the undertone of Sevda’s concern for her son’s late blooming clouded some of the joy that she felt in being a mother. Tuncay didn’t crawl until 10 months, couldn’t stand for long periods of time until 22 months, and when he finally walked, his gait was wobbly and abnormal. Physicians assured them that their son was perfectly healthy, that he was simply a strong-willed boy who didn’t want to follow traditional standards. 

It was late in the afternoon when he was three that things went awry. He had gone to bed early, had slept through the night and into the early hours of the morning but he was difficult to wake, lethargic, his fever so high that after refusing to eat his breakfast, he had start convulsing in the middle of the garden, attended to by one of the landscapers. It was at this moment that all of Sevda’s worries became reality. Her healthy baby boy was reduced to nothing, a consistent patient of the pediatric ward for two more years before her own medical emergency made them understand exactly what was going on with her child. 

She had passed HIV to her son unknowingly. 

Although putting a name to the reason that her son had gotten so sick in a rapid manner was a relief, the guilt that she felt for being the cause of it made it difficult for her to truly enjoy her son’s health when it finally came. After a couple of years of medication therapy and when Tuncay was old enough to understand his condition, Sevda was happy to learn that Tuncay, instead of hating her, started to open up to her more. They became closer than ever, made a routine of their medical upkeep, and in his teenage years, didn’t quite fall out as often as most teenagers and their parents did. 

Moving abroad to Germany for university was harder than he thought. Although he saw his parents more often than most kids, being away from his parents affected him more than he supposed it affected his parents. As difficult as the change in culture, language, and society was, he found it fun and interesting and studying made it easy. What wasn’t easy, however, was meeting Amman Ulusoy, a Turkish-born student from Canada. Their ideas clashed, their cultural morals were vastly different, but their opinions on business, life, and art was where chemistry was born. Tuncay didn’t make it easy, his attitude toward his sexuality screamed internalized homophobia and Amman called him out every time that it came up. 

He worked through it for years before he finally accepted him as a partner. By that time, they had spent so much time together that they decided not to wait - they got married in Canada, moved to Vancouver after graduation, and talked about children. Sevda was glad despite her apprehension, Mehmet became distant so as not to offend his son with his ignorance and even though he struggled, even though in the present day, he still made comments that made the architect internally cringe, his effort in acceptance was the most important thing for Tuncay. 

Mehtap, their first daughter, was the consequence of a slight misalignment between Amman and Tuncay. His infidelity weighed heavily on him for a long time after Amman passed away from an accident on the scene of one of their new constructions. Mehtap’s mother decided that it would be best for their daughter to live with her father, her intention being that having an infant to focus on would help him through the grief that came with the loss of Amman and it worked for the most part; the only issue was the distraction of tending to his daughter kept the grief away. 

He moved back to Istanbul very quickly afterward, hoping that being near his family would help ease some of the pain, he started treating life as if it was normal but once again, he used the distraction of building his own architecture company as a way to prolong dealing with the grief of losing his partner. 

There was something about grief that made his art better.

He gained notoriety, his designs were admired, his opinions were sought after, and when an opportunity to take his work to the U.S came up, he decided that he was ready to face his demons head on; they had always talked about living in the mountains and raising their children there, whether those mountains were in Canada, Turkey, or anywhere else on the planet they felt drawn toward.