Sevda Demirel

Sevda Demirel — Biography

Sevda Demirel was born on 28 April 1972 in Langen, Germany, to a family originally from Gaziantep. She played on her school basketball team during her high school years in Germany. When her parents divorced when she was sixteen, she moved to Istanbul that same year and began working as a model.

She gained recognition around this time as a backing vocalist for Asım Can Gündüz and spent eight years singing on stages in various places, including northern Iraq. She made her film debut in 1995 playing a village girl in Bay E; in 1996 she took the lead role in Otostop alongside Salih Güney and Engin Koç, and that same year appeared in the series Tatlı Kaçıklar, followed by Hiç Bana Sordun mu? in 1997, the TV film Altın Vuruş in 1998 and the film Tutku Suçları in 2000; she also worked as an assistant art director on the 2007 film Avrupalı. In music she released the albums Sevda Gibi (2002), Sus (2005) and Uyanma Vakti (2007), returned after a long break with the single Sevda Tokatı in 2019, and put out the self-written Yağmur in 2022.

On 9 June 1997 she was detained in a prostitution raid; the İstanbul police chief at the time, Ramazan Er, soon announced that she was innocent. A ruptured breast implant and a slap she gave Hande Ataizi on the show İki Kere Kiki both became well-known episodes in Turkish tabloid history. In May 2026 she broke her foot while walking in Maçka Park in Istanbul, and by June she reported that her recovery was progressing faster than expected.