Selda Bağcan

Selda Bağcan — Biography

Havva Selda Bağcan was born on 14 December 1948 in Muğla; after her Macedonian-descended veterinarian father, Selim, died of typhoid in 1957, the family moved to Ankara, and she moved from the mandolin she had played since age five to the guitar. She began her music career in 1971 while studying engineering physics at Ankara University; her first singles sold close to a million copies, turning her professional and making her one of the leading voices of Turkish folk music and Anatolian rock.

Her songs' social and political criticism made her a pioneer of protest music; she was imprisoned three times after the 1980 coup, and her passport was confiscated until 1987, keeping her from attending the WOMAD festival in person in 1986. Her 1993 song "Uğurlar Olsun," written after the assassination of journalist Uğur Mumcu, became a symbol of the era, and she was badly injured in a car accident on the way to a concert in Antakya in 2000. Her music has been sampled by artists including Mos Def and Dr. Dre, she voiced solidarity with the 2013 Gezi Park protests, and she headlined the Le Guess Who? festival in the Netherlands in 2014.

In the summer of 2026 she drew wide attention after meeting young singer Aleyna Tilki in Bodrum and praising her, while that same year she joined Cahit Berkay in objecting to the use of her compositions after a court ruling, and in August she performed with a 50,000-strong choir, underscoring her continued public visibility.