Dubai Welcomes Tarkan

By Şeyda Canepa reporting from Dubai, courtesy of NTV

In complete contrast to Tarkan's German concert, Tarkan played to a capacity crowd audience Thursday evening, as all 9,000 tickets were sold.

With Dubai's media reporting Tarkan's concert as front page news, and tickets sold out months ago, the concert crowd was expected to be large. Filling the arena hours before the start of the concert and coming from all across the region, including the Lebanon, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Tarkan's fans helped him forget the Dortmund turnout in style.

Independent Turkish news channel NTV reported the event, and managed to interview Tarkan backstage.

Expressing that he had been surprised all tickets had been sold and he and his team had given a "squeal of joy" at the news, he revealed that he was was only at the beginning of where he wanted to be, even hinting that a romantic-comedy film was already in the works.

"There are still many things I want to do, the English album still needs to break ground and I'm working on a new Turkish album, a new sound, new songs and I want to do a movie. There's so much I want to do but I don't know if I'll do it all in one lifetime."

Explaining that he wanted to discover Istanbul more, and help in its modernisation and development, he also reflected on the news reports about him in the celebrity press.

"Ninety-nine percent are false," he said, "but on the whole it doesn't bother me. My fans know me and my music."

Tarkan has two more concerts in November, in Denmark and Germany, but Dubai's welcome will be difficult to repeat.

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