Tolga Tekin

Tolga Tekin — Biography

Tolga Tekin was born on 19 March 1973 in Ankara; he finished Özel Arı Koleji in 1992, graduated from the Theatre Department of the Hacettepe University State Conservatory in 1996, then passed the Turkish State Theatres exam and worked at the Adana State Theatre from 1996 to 2004 and afterward at the Ankara State Theatre, appearing in nearly thirty plays. He began his screen career in 2008 with Bizim Evin Halleri, and went on to appear in Deniz Yıldızı, Kapalıçarşı, Kardelen, as Gorbaçov in Behzat Ç., in Reis, as Cihan in Zenne, as Barbaros Hayreddin Pasha in Muhteşem Yüzyıl, and in Paramparça, later playing Mehmet Âkif Ersoy in Vatanım Sensin. He won the Baykal Saran Theatre Award for Yastık Adam in 2011 and a best actor award in 2017.

He married actress Zeynep Koltuk in 2013 and separated from her in 2014. In 2020 he reached an international audience through the Netflix series Rise of Empires: Ottoman and 50m2; he later appeared in Kuruluş Osman and Taçsız Prenses, and his portrayal of Müslüm Çermik in Eşref Rüya (2025) drew wide attention before he announced, in May 2026, that the character's death had ended his run on the show.