Turkish dances

Arabic dance

Halay is the national dance of Turkey. It refers to all traditional circular and line dances performed across the country. The term is used among Turks, Kurds, Araps, and Asia Minor Greeks (particularly Pontic Greeks, Karamanlides, and Cappadocian Greeks).

folk dance of Turkey

Kolbastı is a popular Turkish dance. It was originally created in the 1930s in the seaport of Giresun on the Black Sea coast of north-eastern Turkey. Loosely translated, 'kolbastı' means 'caught red-handed by the police.' According to legend, the name comes from nightly police patrols of the city to round up drunks, who made up a song with the lyrics: 'They came, they caught us, they beat us' (in Turkish: 'Geldiler, bastılar, vurdular'). In the past few years this dance has grown very popular and is spreading in popularity outside the region. These days this dance is mostly used for weddings o

Tamzara is an Armenian folk dance native to the Armenian Highlands. In Armenia the dance originally had a ritual character, it was a wedding song and dance. Now "Tamzara" has lost its former ritual significance, when it was performed during almost all community events and parties. It is today performed by Armenians, Assyrians, Azerbaijanis (in the regions of Sharur, Nakhchivan and parts of Iranian Azerbaijan), Greeks and Turks. In post-Soviet Armenia, tamzara dance is gaining more and more popularity among all strata of the population.

Tsifteteli () or Çiftetelli, is a rhythm and belly dance of Anatolia and the Balkans (particularly Greece). In Turkish the word means "double stringed", taken from the violin playing style that is practiced in this kind of music. There are suggestions that the dance existed in ancient Greece, known as the Aristophanic dance Cordax. It became popular in Greece through the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923. Despite this, it has established itself as the most popular and most common Greek dance together with Zeibekiko. Nowadays it is found not only in Greece and Turkey, but also in the en