Pınar Aydınlar

Pınar Aydınlar — Biography

Pınar Aydınlar was born on 12 February 1979 in Istanbul, though her family originally comes from the Aşkale district of Erzurum. She began playing the bağlama at thirteen, taught at various associations and public education centres from the age of seventeen, and graduated from the State Conservatory for Turkish Music at Istanbul Technical University in 1995.

She has released the albums Türkü Söylemek Lazım (2003), Kırmızı Gül (2007) and Mavi Bir Düş (2011), and is also known by the name Pınar Sağ, taken during her marriage to Tolga Sağ, with whom she has twin children, Toprak and Turna. From 2012 she wrote for the newspaper soL, and in 2011 she appeared in the film Devrimden Sonra. A supporter of left-wing politics, she was the HDP's co-candidate for mayor of Istanbul alongside Sırrı Süreyya Önder in the 2014 local elections and performed at the party's campaign events.

Her public statements have led to numerous prosecutions: she received a ten-month prison sentence in 2011 over remarks made at a concert, and was detained at the airport in 2018. She was released in May 2025, and in December 2025 was sentenced to six years and three months in prison on charges of organizational membership as part of the HDK investigation.