Nesrin Sipahi

Nesrin Sipahi — Biography

Zehra Nesrin Sipahi was born to a Crimean Tatar family in Istanbul's Yeşilköy district. Her talent, noticed by teacher Ahmet Nuri Canaydın at the Istanbul Municipal Conservatory, led her to study under Şerif İçli; she passed an exam to join TRT's Ankara Radio in 1953 and cut her first record for Odeon in 1957. Her only film role came in 1965, sharing the lead with Tamer Yiğit in Kalbimdeki Serseri; that same year her recording of Veda Busesi broke sales records, and in 1974 she sang Yaşa Fenerbahçe, considered the football club's earliest anthem. Composer Münir Nurettin Selçuk allowed only her to sing his piece Endülüs'te Raks solo, reportedly donating its royalties to a mosque.

She toured widely abroad, singing in Azerbaijani and Russian on a Soviet Union tour and performing on stages in many countries, and spent long years as a headline act on the gazino circuit. Named State Artist in 1998, she received a special award from the Ministry of Culture in 2016, presented by President Erdoğan. Reports of her death that circulated in spring 2024 turned out to have confused her with a similarly named artist; later that year, at ninety, she performed without a microphone, and in 2025 a journalist published a book about her life.