Tayanç Ayaydın

Tayanç Ayaydın — Biography

Tayanç Ayaydın was born on 7 August 1979 in Istanbul; after Özel Doğa Koleji, he attended Tercüman High School and İstek Foundation High School, then trained in theatre at Mimar Sinan University. He first became known in 2004 as Doctor Kahraman in the series Aliye, and won Best Actor awards at both the Locarno Film Festival and the Antalya Golden Orange for his performance in Ben Hopkins's Pazar - Bir Ticaret Masalı (2007). His widest fame came from the military drama Sakarya Fırat, which ran for four seasons from 2009 to 2013, as the non-commissioned officer Osman Kanat.

In later years he appeared in Zeytin Tepesi (2014), Hayat Şarkısı (2016-2017), Kırgın Çiçekler (2017-2018), Tek Yürek (2019) and Yeni Hayat (2020), and played Nikos Sampson in the historical series Bir Zamanlar Kıbrıs/Kıbrıs Zafere Doğru (2021-2022) and Önder Koçak in Tozluyaka (2022). He was briefly married to actress Bulut Köpük in 2011 and has been married to American teacher Sally Ghalayini since 2015. In summer 2025, after private messages of his were made public, he denied the harassment claims that followed, conceding he might have acted thoughtlessly, and was dropped from a production he was filming at the time amid the ensuing backlash.