Neşe Karaböcek

Neşe Karaböcek — Biography

Neşe Karaböcek (real name Neşecan Göktürk; born 1 April 1947 in Istanbul) is the daughter of a railway-employee father and a homemaker mother; she received the surname "Karaböcek" after appearing on stage in a play at age five and was for a time trained as a soprano at the State Opera. Her first marriage was to Atilla Alpsakarya, founder of the Elenor record label, with whom she had a son, Alper; after they separated in 1974, Alpsakarya married her younger sister Gülden Karaböcek a year later, setting off a rift between the two sisters that lasted for decades. In 1975 she married journalist Tevfik Yener, with whom she had a second son, Hasan; she lost Hasan in 2019 and Yener, her husband of 51 years, in June 2026. Known as the "mother of arabesque," she rose to fame with her first record, "Artık Sevmeyeceğim," and released more than fifty albums over roughly six decades, with "Yalı Yalı," "Ateş Benim Kül Benim" and "İntizar" among her best-known songs. She also appeared in Yeşilçam films such as "Aşk Sepeti," "Sevda Yolu" and "Almanya'da Bir Türk Kızı." Her autobiography, "İşte Benim Masalım," was published in 2025.