Taner Öngür has been the torch-bearer for Turkish pop rock for decades, even baptising the genre with the name ‘Anatolian Pop’. The bass guitarist cum multi-instrumentalist has played with many of Turkey’s seminal artists, including Barış Manço, Erkin Koray, Ersen Dinleten and Selda Bağcan, and feat...
RootsThe effects of the French Revolution in 1789 reached the Ottoman Empire nearly fifty years later. Starting from 1839 until 1876, during the regression period of Ottoman Empire, a set of reforms were implemented to modernise, centralise and improve the legal, economic, social and political struc...
Blessed with a heavenly voice, Olcay Bayır has been singing for as long as she can remember. She was born in Gaziantep to a Kurdish Alevi family steeped in the âşık (wandering minstrels) tradition, and her career as a classically-trained singer-songwriter is a perfect marriage of her roots and globa...
With two degrees under his belt, former male model Mem Ferda could have secured a steady, well-paid job. Instead the South Londoner plumped for the life of an actor and all the risks that this brings. And he’s never looked back!The first thing that strikes you when you meet Mem is his height. At 6ft...
On 3rd Oct., a capacity 300 people packed into a North London theatre to be wowed by this spectacular Turkish dance production. A cast of 42, dressed in stunning costumes, performed exquisitely in a show internationally acclaimed Turkish Cypriot dancer Özgen wrote, choreographs and stars in.&nb...
A song by Turkey’s Selda Bağcan features on Compton – the new chart-topping Hip Hop album by Dr Dre that was released worldwide earlier this month. The superstar producer samples the psychedelic guitar riffs from Bağcan’s 1976 classic İnce İnce for Issues, which features Ice Cube, Dem Jointz and And...
It’s been an incredible 12 months for Çiğdem Aslan. Described by the Guardian as, “one of the best British-based discoveries of the year”, she released her debut album Mortissa last October to critical acclaim in both the UK and in her native Turkey. Among her many achievements this past year w...
With 200 rejections for her first novel, Sibel could have easily given up. She persevered and is now an award-winning, international best-selling author with 16 titles under her belt. Tell us about your background? My mum is English and my dad Turkish Cypriot. Dad’s originally from G...
