Ajda Pekkan

Born in Beyoğlu in 1946, Pekkan started as a nightclub singer with Los Çatikos in the early 1960s, then pivoted hard into film - nearly 50 black and white pictures between 1963 and 1969, starting with Adanalı Tayfur. She walked away from acting to chase music full-time. For two decades she rode covers, working with Fikret Şeneş on songs like "Palavra Palavra" and "O Benim Dünyam" that became Turkish pop standards. The 1970s brought European tours and a French album in 1978; by 1980 she was drafted for Eurovision, placed fifteenth with "Pet'r Oil", and stepped back for years, stung. She returned in the 1990s with new collaborators - Şehrazat, Sezen Aksu - and a second wave of hits: "Yaz Yaz Yaz", "Vitrin", "Yakar Geçerim". Fifteen million records sold, a State Artist title, and France named her an Officier des Arts et des Lettres. The Hollywood Reporter put her on its Power 100 list in 2016, and the songs kept landing - stories of women who took up space, sung by a voice that never left.