Işın Funda Büyükkaraca (born 7 March 1973),şı better known as Işın Karaca (), is a British-born Turkish Cypriot pop singer.
Personal life
Işın Funda Büyükkaraca was born into a Turkish Cypriot family which had emigrated to the United Kingdom. Her mother Şeniz Büyükkaraca is a restaurant owner in Cyprus and her father Ali Büyükkaraca (died 2011) was a real estate agent originally from Afyon, Turkey. She graduated from the London IV King Edward School with a theatre major.
Karaca has a son (Erda Kıvanç, born 1993) from her first husband Soner Kıvanç, whom she later divorced. She had an affair for 12 years with arranger-composer Erdem Yörük. Karaca married director and motocross racer Sedat Doğan on 30 May 2011. She gave birth to her daughter Sasha Mia in 2011. The couple divorced 2 years later in November 2013. On 29 December 2016, she married Tuğrul Odabaş. In 2017 and 2019, her ex-husband Sedat Doğan was arrested in Brazil after being caught for stealing. In April 2019, it was revealed that Karaca was paying a 1 million debt left by Sedat Doğan. Earlier, she had changed her daughter's family name from Doğan to Büyükkaraca via a court decision. On 6 November 2019, Karaca and her third husband Tuğrul Odabaş divorced. In December 2019, she started dating musician Can Yapıcıoğlu.
In July 2023, Karaca announced that she had been diagnosed with alopecia universalis. On 27 October 2023, she married musician Can Yapıcıoğlu.
Music career
Backing vocalist and rise to fame (1997–2004)
Işın began her musical career as vocalist for Sezen Aksu. In 1997, she performed songs in the Turkish translation of Disney's Hercules' Soundtrack. She also performed the Turkish translations of this album. In 1999 she became the lead vocalist of the musical group "Panic Attack", but the group separated before releasing any albums. In 2000 she competed for Turkey on Eurovision Song Contest's pre-eliminations with "Bir Kırık Sevda". She didn't pass pre-eliminations for Eurovision but she represented Turkey in the OGAE Second Chance Contest and became 7th with 104 points. One year later she tried again with "Kaderimsin", but again she wasn't selected to represent Turkey for Eurovision. In OGAE Second Chance Contest, "Kaderimsin" became 14th with 52 points. She also appeared in Sezen Aksu's music videos "Oh oh" and "Allahın Varsa". In 2000, she was featured in "Geçmişe Yolculuk" from Fresh B's "Gerçek Kal" album. Until 2001 she continued working as back vocalist of Sezen Aksu. She also modeled for the XL fashion company "Sumak"'s Fall-Winter catalog in 2004–2005. She and her brother Akın Büyükkaraca own a musical production company: Akış Production.
In November 2009, she modeled for Adil Işık's 2009–2010 Fall-Winter catalogue "Love My Body" collection. The photoshoot was shot by famous Turkish photographer Serkan Şedele.
As she got her fame by working with Sezen Aksu as her backing vocalist, she released her debut album, Anadilim Aşk (My Native Language is Love), with help of her. The album is released in 2001 under "Power Records" label. All of the songs on this album were written by Sezen Aksu, except two of them have lyrics written by Ali İlyas. She made a great success with this album, becoming popular all over Turkey. Her first single Tutunamadım and second single Başka Bahar became hits. The video for the third single "Aramıza Yollar" was shot by Waleed Nassif. This video was the first High Definition video in Turkey. Famous Turkish actor Toprak Sergen also appears in this video. There's a video shot for "Doğum Günün Kutlu Olsun Oğlum", but this video was never aired due to conflicts with her music company. First release of this album sold-out quickly and they re-released with an addition of "Tutunamadım (remix)" in 2001. This version also sold-out quickly, and in 2006 it was re-released with "Seyhan Müzik" label. After the first album was released, she contributed to several albums like Selmi Andak's "Uluslararası Ödüllü Selmi Andak Şarkıları", Hakkı Yalçın's "O Şarkılar", Alpay's "Sessiz Kalma" and collection of "Yeni Türkiye Coşku Dolu". She performed a song in soundtrack album of Ezel Akay's movie Where's Firuze?. She also starred in this movie as guest star. In 2004 she formed a group named "Masalcılar [Storytellers]" with Erdem Yörük, Eda Özülkü and Metin Özülkü. They made their first album called "Masalcılar I" in which they tell stories to children. The group intended to make a series of albums like this and they credited this inside the cover of the album, but they never released another project.