Nazan Öncel

Nazan Öncel — Biography

Nazan Öncel was born on 6 February 1956 in the Karşıyaka district of İzmir, the child of a schoolteacher mother and a civil-servant father. She learned to read music from her mother at the age of six, performed with orchestras in her teens, and won an İzmir Radio song contest in 1975. She released her first single in 1978, and when her debut LP failed to draw much attention in 1982 she withdrew for a time into live performance alone. Known by the nickname “Sokak Kızı” (Street Girl), she found lasting fame with 1991's Bir Hadise Var, an album written entirely by herself, and went on to become one of the established names of Turkish pop with albums such as Ben Böyle Aşk Görmedim, Göç, Sokak Kızı, Demir Leblebi and Yan Yana Fotoğraf Çektirelim. Beyond her own catalogue, she has written songs for artists including Tarkan and İbrahim Tatlıses. As a child she had a guest role in the 1961 film Acı Tesadüf, and in 2018 she appeared as a guest performer in Bizi Hatırla. In 2026 she returned to headlines after a decades-long friendship with fellow singer Sezen Aksu became publicly strained.