Mehtap Ar

Mehtap Ar — Biography

Mehtap Ar was born in Istanbul on 6 April 1956; her mother was the lyricist Aysel Gürel and her father the journalist Vedat Akın, making her the couple's second daughter. Her parents divorced when her sister, actress Müjde Ar, was only three; their mother, pregnant with Mehtap and busy with work, had both girls raised by their grandfather. She began acting at the Lale Oraloğlu theatre, then joined the companies of Nejat Uygur and Tevfik Gelenbe, and worked as a film extra before her screen career took off; starting with 1974's Ayrı Dünyalar, she appeared in over fifty films and series, known for playing Hülya in 1980's Devlet Kuşu.

Her first marriage, to a fellow stage actor at seventeen, ended quickly; a second marriage to former national footballer Arif Kocabıyık produced a son, Söz Ar. In 2000 she founded a children's theatre company, Mehtap Ar Çocuk Tiyatrosu, touring Anatolia with it. In 2017 she won a lawsuit after utility company İGDAŞ used "Sen Ağlama" -- written by her mother, sung by Sezen Aksu -- as unlicensed hold music; a court ordered damages paid with interest.

Treated for lung cancer at Koç University Hospital in Topkapı, she died of multiple organ failure on 10 April 2021, four days after her sixty-fifth birthday; two days later she was buried beside her mother at Zincirlikuyu Cemetery after a service at the Zincirlikuyu Mosque.