Turkish classical music (Türk sanat müziği, 'Turkish art music') is the makam-based urban art music systematised at the Ottoman court from the 16th century onward. Makam is not the Western major/minor system but a body of 80-plus modal scales including microtones — Rast, Hicaz, Uşşak, Segah, Nihavent, and so on — each with its own scale, ornament rules, and emotional colouring. The fasıl ensemble base is ney (end-blown reed flute), oud (short-necked lute), kanun (zither), tanbur (long-necked lute), kemençe (bowed), kudüm (small kettle drums), and a solo vocalist; 20th-century arrangements added Western violin and cello. Vocals move from gazel (free-metre improvised opening) to metrical vocal body; ornaments are fine-grained — gargara, çarpma, tremolo, hançere — and codified.

The roots lie in the 16th-century Ottoman court, where Sultan Selim III (r. 1789-1807) himself composed and is credited with introducing the Suzidilara makam. 19th-century composers Dede Efendi (1778-1846), Zekai Dede, and Muallim İsmail Hakkı Bey (1866-1927) codified the classical repertoire. After the 1923 Republic, Kemalist policy dismissed the tradition as 'Eastern and obstructive to modernisation'; from November 1934 to September 1936 it was even banned from radio broadcast. A generation of composer-performers led by Sadi Işılay (Saki Dost, 1885-1943) kept the tradition alive semi-underground. In the second half of the 20th century, Münir Nurettin Selçuk (1900-1981), Zeki Müren (1931-1996), Bülent Ersoy (1952-), and Muazzez Ersoy (1958-) carried the sanat music tradition into coexistence with the pop market.

Zeki Müren's 'Şimdi Uzaklardasın' (1971) demonstrates the specifically Turkish-classical vocal elegance (zarafet) — neither operatic nor arabesque. He sustains a thin head-voice with fine gargara ripples across it. Bülent Ersoy's 'Maçka'nın Yolları' (1990) adds synth strings but retains the classical vocal at its core. Tanburî Cemil Bey's early-20th-century wax-cylinder tanbur solos (already in the DB) are the instrumental peak of the tradition; his 1900s recordings remain the reference document for current classical players.

The DB baseline: Zeki Müren's 'Manastır Türküsü' (1955), Tanburî Cemil Bey's 'Çeçen Kızı' (1910), Münir Nurettin Selçuk's 'Endülüs'te Raks' (1955). Add Zeki Müren's 'Şimdi Uzaklardasın' (1971), Bülent Ersoy's 'Maçka'nın Yolları' (1990), and Muazzez Ersoy's 'Sensiz Olmuyor' (1998) to hear the 20th-century pop-adjacent evolution. Late night, decent speakers — the makam microtones need physical air to be legible.

Zeki Müren (1931-1996) performed for decades in gender-nonconforming stagewear and full makeup, long before Bülent Ersoy came out publicly as trans. He never made a personal statement about sexuality, but the total commitment to elegance in his stage costumes, makeup, and even his dressing-room furniture made him a foundational gay icon in 20th-century Turkish culture. He died on live television in 1996 during a broadcast, aged 65 — 'Turkey's biggest live-broadcast death,' remembered nationally. Bülent Ersoy had gender-affirming surgery in London in 1981 and was banned from public performance in Turkey until the Özal government's 1988 civil law reform recognised her as legally female; during those seven years she worked mostly in Germany and Western Europe's Turkish diaspora. Muazzez Ersoy is unrelated by blood to Bülent Ersoy — the surname coincidence is genuine — but both are jointly credited with bridging sanat music to the 1990s pop market.