Lale Orta

Lale Orta — Biography

Lale Orta opened many doors in Turkish football: she was the country's first female football coach, its first female football referee and the first woman to write a doctoral thesis on football. As one of the world's first FIFA-badged women referees she took charge of 60 international matches. Today a professor of sports science, she was appointed chair of the Central Referee Committee in 2023 and remains a frequent voice in debates on refereeing.

She first played as goalkeeper and captain of Dostluk Spor, Turkey's first women's football club, from 1976 to 1989, and in 1985 finished a coaching course first in her class to become the first woman coach. She then moved into refereeing in the men's leagues: she began in 1990, became the first woman to referee in the professional first, second and third divisions, handled her first Süper Lig match in 1999 and ended her domestic refereeing in 2004. In 1995 she was among 54 women worldwide chosen for the FIFA list, in 2003 UEFA named her one of Europe's 17 best referees, and in 2005 she refereed the UEFA Women's Cup final. Alongside this she built an academic career: she completed her doctorate in 2000 and worked at Istanbul Technical, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart and Okan universities.

Her work has brought recognition: in 2002 she received the International Olympic Committee's Women and Sport award for Europe. She is also known for her work on gender equality, and in March 2026 she publicly backed the woman referee appointed to a Süper Lig match.