Saide İnaç

Saide İnaç — Biography

Saide İnaç, known by the stage name Hozan Canê, was born in 1971 in Karayazı, a district of Erzurum province in eastern Turkey. A Kurdish-language singer who later settled in Germany and took German citizenship, she is generally described as a German-Kurdish artist and works as a filmmaker as well as a musician.

Her recordings are catalogued on streaming and music-database services including Spotify, Deezer and MusicBrainz, and her repertoire is built mainly around Kurdish songs.

Since 2018 her name has also appeared in coverage of Turkish court proceedings. She was detained and jailed in June 2018 over an accusation of terrorist propaganda; Deutsche Welle reported a sentence of six years and three months in November 2018, followed by a 2019 conviction for insulting the president, the year her daughter was also arrested. She was released in October 2020. In October 2024 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the insult conviction breached her rights, and Kurdish outlets reported a further release that same month.