Sertab Erener

Sertab Erener is a Turkish singer, songwriter and composer. With her coloratura soprano voice, she started working as a backing vocalist for Sezen Aksu, and with Aksu's help she released her first studio album in the 1990s. Because of her education in classical music, she initially had difficulties in performing pop music. Although she did experimental works from time to time, she eventually preferred to focus on making pop music instead of making avant-garde works, in order to make her music heard by a larger audience. In some of her works, she combined Western music and Eastern music, and benefited from operas as well as classical Turkish music together with ethnic elements. With her entrance to Europe's market in the early 2000s, many of her works were also sold in Turkey as well as European countries.