Gülçin Yahya Kaçar

Gülçin Yahya Kaçar — Biography

Gülçin Yahya Kaçar is a musician and musicologist known for her oud playing, her compositions and her academic work in Turkish music. In July 2026 she was appointed rector of Ankara Music and Fine Arts University and took up the post; since April 2025 she has also been a member of the Presidential Culture and Art Policies Board.

Born in Ankara, Kaçar began with private music lessons as a child; she graduated from Çankaya High School in 1984, entered the Music Department of Gazi University and studied flute there for four years. In 1986 she became a student of the oud virtuoso, composer and architect Cinuçen Tanrıkorur; she was the first and only student to finish his oud method in six months. In 1988 she began her academic career as an oud and flute lecturer at Selçuk University; she completed her master's degree in 1993 and a doctorate on Yorgo Bacanos's oud improvisations in 2000. She moved to Gazi University in 1997 and became a professor in 2009.

In 2010 she founded the Gazi University Turkish Music State Conservatory, served as its founding director for six years, and pioneered master's and doctoral programmes in Turkish music. She has 216 compositions, among them Bergüzâr-ı Çanakkale, Hoca Ahmet Yesevî'den Hikmetler and Mehmet Âkif'e Vefâ, and she was the first oud player to perform Mozart's piano concerto with a symphony orchestra. She has written books on the oud and Turkish music, and won two third prizes in the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's composition competition in 2006 and the Turkish Music Composition award of the International Rast Music Congress in 2024.