Çağla Şıkel

Çağla Şıkel — Biography

Trained professionally as a ballet dancer in her youth, Çağla Şıkel went on to become a Turkish model, actress and TV presenter. Born in Istanbul on January 2, 1979, she was the second child of a financial-advisor father of Azerbaijani descent from Kars and a housewife mother of Circassian descent from Adana, and has an elder sister. From the fourth grade she studied ballet at Istanbul University State Conservatory, continuing through middle and high school and into a bachelor's degree at Mimar Sinan University State Conservatory, from which she graduated in 1999.

She won the Miss Turkey pageant in 1997 and, the same year, was named Europe's Queen of Beauty at Miss World, finishing fourth overall; she went on to walk runways in France, the United States, Germany, China, Russia, Greece, Switzerland and Egypt through 2003.

She began acting with the role of Sultan in Cennet Mahallesi and went on to appear in Görgüsüzler, Avrupa Yakası, Kavak Yelleri, Yalan Dünya and Dostlar Mahallesi, alongside hosting numerous television programs, including the long-running Çağla ile Yeni Bir Gün and, more recently, Çağla ile Bu Yaz. After dating pop singer Emre Altuğ for about four years, she married him in 2008; they had a son and divorced in 2015. In 2013, sixteen years after leaving it behind, she returned to the stage in a ballet performance at the Bodrum Ballet Festival.