Scene · Anatolia
Belly dance in Turkey
Home of Turkish Oriental — a faster, floor-working, 9/8-loving branch of the dance with Romani roots and a distinctive stage tradition of its own.
Heritage
Styles born here
People
Dancers
London · Turkey
Süreya
Süreya is an internationally active Turkish belly dancer, instructor and choreographer based in London. Her training includes Turkish Oriental alongside Egyptian, Lebanese, Iraqi and Gulf dance material. She has performed and competed internationally, including in Türkiye and Egypt. Her approach combines a strong connection to Turkish cultural identity with continued study of multiple Middle Eastern traditions. She represents a younger generation of internationally mobile artists whose professional identities are built through performance, competitions, workshops and online education simultaneously.
Dancer · Turkey
Reyhan Tuzsuz
Reyhan Tuzsuz is best known as a specialist in Turkish Romani dance rather than as a generic belly-dance performer. Her work is rooted in the cultural movement vocabulary of Turkish Roma communities. Since the early 2000s she has become an internationally recognised teacher and performer. Her workshops place strong emphasis on cultural context, gesture, rhythm and the social character of Roman dance. For Raqs Atlas, she should be cross-listed with Turkish dance but clearly identified as a Roman dance specialist rather than inaccurately categorised simply as Turkish Oryantal.
London · Turkey
Özgen Özgeç
Özgen Özgeç is a Turkish Cypriot dancer who established his international career from London. His repertoire centres on Turkish Oriental and Turkish Romani dance while also incorporating theatrical storytelling. He has worked extensively as a performer, teacher, choreographer and director. Özgen's productions often move beyond the conventional solo belly-dance format toward fully staged dance theatre. His international teaching has made him one of the better-known male representatives of Turkish dance traditions outside Türkiye.
Dancer · Turkey
Azad Kaan
Azad Kaan is a Turkish Oriental dancer, choreographer and teacher with more than two decades of professional experience. His background includes serious dance training in Europe as well as extensive work within the international belly-dance festival circuit. He became known for combining strong theatrical technique with Oriental movement vocabulary. As a male dancer, Kaan has also contributed to widening perceptions of who can perform and teach Oriental dance professionally. He continues to appear internationally as a teacher, performer and competition judge.
Dancer · Turkey
Serkan Tutar
Serkan Tutar is a Turkish-born dancer who developed an extensive international career from his European base. He became known as both a male Oriental performer and an instructor of Turkish dance styles. His professional activities include choreography, festival organisation and judging as well as performance. Tutar's work has helped expand the visibility of male artists within contemporary Oriental dance. His long-running international activity also makes him an important representative of the Turkish dance diaspora in Europe.
Istanbul · Turkey
Tanyeli
Tanyeli was a prominent Turkish Oriental dancer and television personality whose career made her widely recognisable in Turkey. Born in İzmir, she became part of the highly visible generation of dancers associated with television and popular entertainment in the 1990s and 2000s. Her stage image combined classic Oryantal glamour with the increasingly modern presentation of Turkish dance. She also appeared in entertainment programming beyond dance. Tanyeli died in Istanbul in March 2025, leaving a strong nostalgic legacy among audiences familiar with Turkey's modern Oryantal scene.
Istanbul · Turkey
Didem Kınalı
Didem Kınalı became one of the most internationally recognisable Turkish Oriental dancers of the twenty-first century. She gained major public visibility through recurring appearances on İbrahim Tatlıses's television programme. Her style combines strong Turkish Oryantal technique with movement qualities connected to Turkish Romani dance culture. Online video later introduced her performances to an enormous international audience of dancers. Didem's speed, isolations, floorwork and highly individual stage presence made her one of the artists most responsible for renewed global interest in Turkish Oryantal.
Dancer · Turkey
Asena
Asena became one of the most recognisable Turkish Oryantal personalities of the late 1990s and 2000s. Her career grew through nightclub appearances, television exposure and highly theatrical performances. She belonged to a period in which Turkish dancers became mainstream entertainment celebrities rather than remaining primarily nightclub specialists. Asena later expanded into music and television, further increasing her public profile. Her style and media visibility make her an important link between the classic television era and the contemporary celebrity culture surrounding Turkish Oriental dance.
Istanbul · Turkey
Prenses Banu
Prenses Banu rose to prominence in Turkish Oriental dance during the 1970s. Born in İzmir, she moved toward professional entertainment after initially dreaming of an acting career. She studied with established dancers including Kudret Şandra and developed knowledge of both Turkish and Egyptian approaches. Banu performed internationally and represented Turkey at cultural events in several countries. Her career is particularly interesting because she combines classic Turkish Oryantal technique with a strong appreciation for Egyptian musical interpretation.
Istanbul · Turkey
Birgül Beray
Birgül Beray is remembered as a notable performer from Istanbul's professional Turkish Oryantal scene. Recordings associated with venues such as Orient House show a strongly Turkish performance vocabulary. Her dancing is particularly useful for observing dramatic arm work, floorwork and the stylistic treatment of Arabic music within a Turkish Oryantal framework. Unlike television celebrities such as Asena or Didem, reliable biographical documentation about her is limited. Raqs Atlas should therefore preserve her as an important performance reference while clearly marking uncertain career dates rather than filling them with unsupported information.
Istanbul · Turkey
Tülay Karaca
Tülay Karaca became one of the best-known Turkish Oryantal dancers of the 1980s and 1990s. She developed a reputation for powerful stage presence and especially sophisticated finger-cymbal technique. Television performances made her familiar to Turkish audiences during the same broad period as Nesrin Topkapı. Her dancing clearly demonstrates the importance of zills, floorwork, dramatic arms and Turkish rhythmic phrasing within classic Oryantal. Recordings of her performances remain widely studied by dancers interested in vintage Turkish technique.
Istanbul · Turkey
Nesrin Topkapı
Nesrin Topkapı became one of the most culturally significant Turkish Oriental dancers of the television era. She began professional work abroad before returning to Turkey and building a major career. Topkapı became famous as the first belly dancer to perform on TRT, Turkey's national television broadcaster. Her appearances made Oryantal visible to an enormous domestic audience at a moment when the dance occupied a complicated cultural position. She later moved increasingly into teaching and choreography, influencing subsequent generations of Turkish dancers.
Istanbul · Turkey
Sema Yıldız
Sema Yıldız grew up in Istanbul's historic Sulukule Romani community and became one of Turkey's most respected Oryantal performers. Her professional career developed during the late 1960s and 1970s in major Istanbul venues. She later carried Turkish Oryantal and Roman dance to international audiences through performances, workshops and cultural projects. Yıldız was among the Turkish teachers who helped foreign dancers understand the relationship between Oryantal and Turkish Romani movement. Her long career makes her one of the strongest living links to Istanbul's classic nightclub era.
Legend · Turkey
Seher Şeniz
Seher Şeniz became a prominent figure in Turkish nightlife, dance and popular culture during the 1960s and 1970s. She worked as an Oriental dancer while also appearing as an actress and model. Her public image reflected the glamorous nightclub culture surrounding Turkish Oryantal before its later television boom. Film and media exposure brought her recognition beyond specialist dance audiences. She represents an important part of Turkish entertainment history in which Oryantal performers moved fluidly between nightclub stages, modelling and cinema.
Legend · Turkey
Kudret Şandra
Kudret Şandra was one of the notable male figures in twentieth-century Turkish Oriental dance. He began performing professionally as a teenager and developed a career in both dance and acting. His presence is particularly significant because male professional Oriental dancers are frequently omitted from simplified histories of the form. After leaving regular stage performance, Şandra continued to teach and influenced other performers. His career demonstrates that Turkish Oryantal has never been an exclusively female professional tradition.
Legend · Turkey
Özel Türkbaş
Özel Türkbaş was a Turkish dancer, singer, actress and author who became highly influential in the United States. After an early career in Turkish entertainment and cinema, she moved to America in 1959. Her performances, recordings and instructional publications introduced many Western audiences to Turkish music and belly dance. She became part of the first major wave of Middle Eastern and Turkish performers shaping the American belly-dance scene. Her legacy is especially important for understanding how Turkish dance was taught, packaged and popularised in the West during the second half of the twentieth century.
Legend · Turkey
Özcan Tekgül
Özcan Tekgül was a Turkish dancer and actress who became prominent during the Yeşilçam cinema period. She began performing professionally in the 1950s and developed a reputation for dramatic stage presentations. Her repertoire included Oriental dance as well as theatrical speciality acts. Tekgül also appeared in numerous films, linking dance closely with popular Turkish screen culture. Her long performance career makes her a useful representative of the generation that preceded the nationally televised Oryantal stars of the 1980s.
Legend · Turkey
İnci Birol
İnci Birol began dancing professionally at an exceptionally young age and performed in Aleppo while still a child. She later toured cities across the Middle East and North Africa before becoming prominent in Turkey. During the 1950s and 1960s she combined Oriental dance with a career in Turkish cinema. Her international touring demonstrates how mobile professional dancers already were long before modern festival culture. Birol belongs among the early artists who connected Turkish Oryantal with the broader entertainment networks of the Middle East.
Legend · Turkey
Nergis Mogol
Nergis Mogol belongs to an early generation of professional Turkish Oriental dancers whose careers predate the television stars of the 1970s and 1980s. She began appearing on stage extremely young and later became known in Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries. Her career included both live entertainment and film work. Later generations of Turkish dancers cited or studied with performers from her generation. She is important to Raqs Atlas because she helps document the development of Turkish Oryantal before its best-known television era.
Istanbul · Turkey
Leyla Demir
Istanbul performer specialising in Turkish Oriental and 9/8 musicality, with a signature zil-heavy stage show. (Demo profile.)