Ajda Pekkan

Nightclubs, film sets and a magazine competition

Ayşe Ajda Pekkan was born in Beyoğlu, Istanbul, on 12 February 1946, the daughter of a Turkish Navy commander, into a family of Bosniak descent. She started singing in public in 1961 at the Çatı club with the group Los Çatikos, then won a singing competition run by the magazine Ses in 1963.

What followed was not an immediate recording career but a decade of film work. Through the 1960s Pekkan appeared in close to fifty Turkish pictures, and only narrowed her focus to music once the records began to outrun the screen work. That order of events still shows in how she performs: the stage business, the costume changes and the between-song talk come from someone who learned the job in front of cameras and nightclub tables rather than in a studio.

Fikret Şeneş and a repertoire built to last

From 1970 onwards Pekkan worked with the lyricist and producer Fikret Şeneş, whose Turkish-language adaptations of foreign melodies supplied her with the material that became permanent: 'Sensiz Yıllarda' and 'Kimler Geldi Kimler Geçti' among them. The partnership is the hinge of her discography, and the songs from it are still the spine of a two-hour set half a century later.

She signed to Philips and the ambition widened. Pekkan cut singles aimed at markets outside Turkey, with 45s issued in Germany, Spain, Japan and France, and in 1978 recorded a French-language album, Pour Lui. The albums Süperstar (1977) and Süperstar 2 (1979) gave her the billing she has carried ever since; the word is now used in Turkish press copy as a straightforward identifier rather than a compliment.

Eurovision, a pause, and the title that stuck

Pekkan was reluctant about the Eurovision Song Contest and had reason to be. She represented Turkey in 1980 with 'Pet'r Oil' and finished 15th, a result that pushed her away from recording for roughly two and a half years.

The return was methodical. Sen Mutlu Ol arrived in 1981 on Yaşar Kekeva Plak, Sevdim Seni in 1982, and Süperstar '83 in 1983, which took a light-music LP award and settled the matter of her standing in Turkish pop. Süperstar 4 followed in 1987.

The later catalogue is less frequent but not thin: Cool Kadın in 2006, Aynen Öyle in 2008, Farkın Bu in 2011, a joint album with Muazzez Abacı in 2014, and Ajda in 2021 — twenty studio albums in total, with sales reported at more than 15 million. She holds Turkish State Artist status, and France made her an Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2013. Several of her songs about women who refuse to be managed were adopted as feminist anthems in Turkey, a reading she has never claimed for herself.

Eighty years old and signing new singles

Pekkan turned 80 on 12 February 2026, marked publicly with her sister, the singer Semiramis Pekkan, and across Turkish magazine press. She has since put out two singles, which is a heavier release year than most of the previous decade.

The first, 'Hileli', landed on 8 May 2026, a duet with the girl group Manifest released through Hypers Music. Ateş Atilla wrote and composed it; Mali Ergin directed the video, shot partly at Istanbul's Büyük Han and leaning on carpets, tea service, prayer beads and backgammon for its imagery. It took close to 1.9 million YouTube views inside sixteen hours. The pairing was not a label contrivance — Pekkan had already brought Manifest onto her own stage in Istanbul and told them from the microphone that she was behind them, at a point when the group was dealing with convictions arising from a September 2025 performance.

The second, 'Şahsen Ben', was written and composed by Tamer Gürsoy and arranged by Volga Tamöz, and issued by Poll Production. She premiered it live at Harbiye in September 2026 before any recording existed in public, and it reached digital platforms on 2 October 2026. Turkish coverage described it as a modern production with a sharper rhythmic base than her recent work, and the live premiere drew the loudest response of that night.

The 2026 diary

The touring year has been built around Turkish open-air theatres through summer and indoor European halls in autumn. Pekkan played the Harbiye Cemil Topuzlu Açıkhava Tiyatrosu in Istanbul on 28 June, the Istanbul Festival on 2 August, Harbiye again on 9 August, and returned to Harbiye on 11 September. Bursa Kültürpark Açıkhava Tiyatrosu followed on 18 September and the Oran Açık Hava Sahnesi in Ankara on 30 September.

Four dates remain. İzmir Açıkhava Tiyatrosu on 25 October closes the Turkish open-air stretch, then the run crosses into Germany at the RuhrCongress in Bochum on 31 October. London's indigo at The O2 takes her on Sunday 15 November, with doors at 7pm, tickets through AXS, under-16s required to be seated with an adult over 18 and no under-threes admitted. Stadthalle Offenbach on 27 November ends the year.

What the show is now

The 2026 shows are long by any standard and unusually long for a performer of her age. The Harbiye concert on 9 August ran around three and a half hours, with dancers, flower-garden staging and costume work that the Turkish press covered as closely as the music. At the September Harbiye date she wore two outfits by the designer Burak Bayraktaroğlu and worked the audience through dancing, jokes and extended talk between songs; that concert sold out and she was given a standing ovation on arrival.

The set itself is chronological in feel rather than in order. A 13-song Ankara setlist from June 2025 ran through 'Aynen Öyle', 'Vitrin', 'Bir Köşede Yalnız', 'Affetmem Asla Seni', 'Bir Günah Gibi', 'Ya Sonra', 'Sensiz Yıllarda', 'Flu Gibi', 'Yakar Geçerim', 'Arada Sırada' and 'Olanlar Oldu Bana'. Earlier documented shows, including Kuruçeşme Arena in June 2020, added 'Sihirli Aşk', 'Amazon', 'Bana Yalan Söylediler', 'Dostum Dostum' and 'Her Yaşın Ayrı Bir Güzelliği Var'. The Şeneş-era material is the load-bearing part; the new singles get one slot each.

Reaction has concentrated on stamina rather than nostalgia. The columnist Habib Aytekin wrote after the September Harbiye show that her energy on stage and the bond she keeps with her audience genuinely deserve admiration, singling out her stage discipline and vocal strength. Fans posting about the August concert pushed her dancing into trending topics, with comments running along the lines of her flatly refusing to age. Pekkan's own framing is less about endurance than appetite: even meeting every fortnight, she said, the gap between shows feels to her like years.