Biography

Hülya Avsar is a Kurdish-Turkish actress, pop folk singer, businesswoman, columnist, fashion designer, magazine editor, professional tennis player, and former beauty pageant titleholder.

She graduated from Ankara Cumhuriyet Lisesi and started swimming professionally for DSI. In 1982, she and her family moved to Istanbul. Avsar attended a beauty pageant organized by Bulvar magazine, which she finished first. Later, the organization revoked her crown when it was discovered that she had been married for a brief period. In 1983, she debuted as an actress in the movie Haram. In the following years, she starred in over 70 films and won the Best Actress prize in the 18th Moscow International Film Festival. In addition to this, she launched a singing career that saw a nationwide concert tour, the release of eight albums and two singles.

In 2000, Avsar won the Best Female Singer award by Kral TV. Later that same year, she wrote for Günaydin newspaper as a columnist. Avsar was also the editor of Hülya (a monthly magazine). She plays tennis on an amateur basis and won a championship in the TED 2001 tennis tournament. She is also a television personality who served as a coach and judge for the first two seasons of The Voice from 2011 through 2013.

Avsar also has been a judge on Turkey's Got Talent (Turkish: Yetenek Sizsiniz Türkiye) since 2009. Hülya Avsar was the editor-in-chief of the magazine Hülya, a position she has held for 8 years. She is also the founder of the Turkish "by H" luxury brand, not to be confused with the similarly named New York-based clothing store.

Hula Avsar was born in Edremit, Balikesir, to a Kurdish (mix Assyrian people, Jewiishs people, Farsi, Armenian, Turkic people) father from Ardahan and a mother from Edremit. While Ottoman collapsing, other part of her maternal family is Turkish descent who immigrated from Crete, Greece. Other part of her maternal family is of Yörük descent which a Turkic ethnic subgroup. In television show she told that her father's Kurdish name is Ello, and her Kurdish birth name is Malakan. In 2015 Hulya Avsar told Turkish media in her own TV host that her father was Kurdish and that her name is Malakan in Kurdish. In 1979 Avsar married Mehmet Tecirli, an engineering student; however, they divorced shortly after. Avsar married for a second time in 1997 to Kaya Çilingiroglu which ended in divorce in 2005; they have one daughter named Zehra. She has also dated former 1987-88 European Golden Shoe football player Tanju Çolak and businessman Sadettin Saran between 2007-10.