MIDDLE EAST PROFILES SERIES – INTERVIEW WITH TURKEY’S AKIF BURAK ATLAR

Freedom Beat teamed up with Arash Sobhani of the Iranian band Kiosk, and Iranwire.com on a series of documentary profiles of contemporary Middle Eastern music artists who engage in nonviolent resistance through the medium of music. Arash traveled with journalist Jahanshah Javid of Iranwire to Turkey, Egypt, and Lebanon in August of 2013 to meet musicians, interview them, share ideas, and to play music together.

Singing With The Crowd by Cassie Balfour

In the aftermath of the Istanbul’s Gezi Park protests, Akif Burak Atlar, a musician, city planner, and  host of a weekly public radio show spoke with Freedom Beat about the tenuous position outspoken musicians occupied during and after the occupation of Gezi. Echoing an earlier Freedom Beat interview with fellow Turkish musician, Emre Yilmaz, Akif touched on the subject of hazy red lines Turkish musicians have to navigate in order to stay out of prison. He also highlighted one Turkish band, Grup Yorum, that has never bothered to heed any line, de facto or de jure, and have subsequently paid the price.

Grup Yorum, a popular and outspoken Turkish band, has been defying the Turkish government for decades before the uprising in Gezi. Akif, who was arrested for his involvement in the protests, talked about how musicians in Turkey policed themselves for fear of being imprisoned by the Erdogan administration, a regime that liberally applied “anti-terrorism” laws to anyone bold enough to speak out (or sing) about the crackdown on protesters or the undemocratic tactics often employed by the Turkish government.

This had a chilling impact on not only musicians who Akif claims would support the Gezi protests one day, but then walk back their statements for fear of reprisal, but on journalists as well. For example, CNNTurk famously aired a documentary on penguins while protests raged in Gezi park. Akif accused many journalists and musicians as essentially acting as spokesman for the government to save their own careers. According to some, however, the Gezi Park uprising did create an opening for musicians to “drop fear” and speak out, and Grup Yorum, a wildly popular band, is the brave predecessor to musicians like Akif who dared to deny the official story being handed down by the regime.

The Turkish government has a history of trying to silence musicians who crossed the red line. Grup Yorum, has a decades long history of defying the red line to speak out politically and incite nonviolent action by actively organizing demonstrations, during the Gezi Park protests, the band sang to thousands of supporters and activists. On May 23rd, 2013 Grup Yorum spearheaded a protest that led to police crackdowns and peaceful citizens getting pepper sprayed. This apparently backfired on the police because this led to a slew of articles in the international press sympathetic to the peaceful protestors, and Grup Yorum themselves hailed this event as an “international PR victory” for the movement.

Grup Yorum, which means “interpretation” or “comment” in Turkish, was formed by university students in 1985 and has taken on many different forms since their founding, but they have remained loyal to their revolutionary, socialist roots despite their rotating membership. The group has taken part in numerous demonstrations and direct actions throughout the last few decades.

According to the Danish organization, Freemuse, Grup Yorum has been under intense surveillance by the Turkish government due to their political activities and music and many members have been arrested. Members of Grup Yorum have been tortured in addition to their music facing official censorship.

Their supporters are also actively targeted by the Turkish government, which utilizes  anti-terrorism laws to silence dissent and, in this case, musicians. Many regimes use broadly worded and vague anti-terrorism laws as a way to justify imprisoning journalists, activists, or politically outspoken musicians. The Turkish government has employed their broad anti-terrorism laws to arrest a French student accused of supporting a terrorist group just for going to a Grup Yorum performance and participating in demonstrations for free education in Turkey (the evidence used to ultimately sentence the student to five years in prison included a ticket stub from a Grup Yorum concert). Simply listening to Grup Yorum is tantamount to supporting terrorism in the eyes of the Turkish government. Human Rights Watch condemned the arrest and Turkey’s liberal use of anti-terrorism laws to target nonviolent activists.  Music of resistance is deemed dangerous enough by the Erdogan administration to be criminalized.

Grup Yorum was active during the Taksim Square protests, not only because they were performing music, but as organizers of demonstrations on behalf of members of their group who had been imprisoned during the protests. Grup Yorum even came out with a song called “Taksim Direnisi” or “Sings for the Resistance of Taksim.” When Grup Yorum is both organizing demonstrations on behalf of free speech, or their falsely imprisoned members, and reclaiming public space during the Gezi protests, they are blurring the line between protester and musician. They sing not to the crowds, but with them.

Grup Yorum is not just narrating the movement, they’re deeply embedded in it. They are also documenting the movement, which is important when, like Akif says, you can’t trust the official narrative parroted by the mainstream media in Turkey. They wrote a song about Berkin Elvane who died during the Gezi Park protests because he was hit in the head with a gas cannister. They’re activists, journalists, and musicians. This potent combination makes them dangerous to the regime. When Grup Yorum members were arrested and tortured for participating in the popular Gezi uprisings, it backfired on the Erdogan administration. Now his regime’s assertions of terrorism seem anemic and transparent to protestors now accustomed to the mainstream media’s bias in favor of the party line.

Akif smirks when asked about the basis for the arrests of Grup Yorum members during the Gezi protests, simply saying, “it depends on the imagination of the prosecutor.”

Despite having been targeted for their blatantly political music, Grup Yorum is one of the most successful groups in Turkey, with 19 albums under their belt and top selling albums, a demonstration of the Turkish people’s support for the band’s message and political actions. Grup Yorum is also popular internationally, giving concerts across Europe and  also producing their own media such as a magazine called Tavir which covers art and culture.

Since the military coup in 1980 shut down political opposition, Grup Yorum has been protesting issues related to torture, imperialism, and the implicit ban on identifying as Kurdish. The simple act of singing in Kurdish is a form of cultural resistance in Turkey, where claiming Kurdish identity is considered a political act. They have also incorporated Turkish folk traditions and the poetry of famous Alevi poets into their work (Alevis are part of a sect of Shi’a Islam in Turkey who utilize song and dance to worship, but their liberal views have led to the persecution of practitioners of Alevism).

Grup Yorum is constantly swapping out members (especially as other members are imprisoned or forced into exile), which blurs the line between the musicians in the band and their many supporters. Also, the fact that Grup Yorum’s lineup has changed throughout their decades-long run, seems almost tactical. The government can arrest a few members, but others simply step in to take their place, making the revolutionary band harder to completely shut down. Grup Yorum is literally “of the people” because they’ve rotated through so many bandmates.

Grup Yorum was just one of many groups of musicians who participated in the Gezi Park protests. Freedom Beat also profiled Kardes Turkuler, who were behind the famed, folksy pots and pans song. However, as Akif mentions in his interview with Freedom Beat, many mainstream news sources deliberately ignored the resistance happening in Gezi Park while the Erdogan administration arrested countless protesters and censored musicians that dared to speak out. In a tone deaf move, Erdogan tried to demonstrate his commitment to the arts world (despite simultaneously arresting numerous artists for political reasons) by meeting with the lead actor of an “ultra-nationalist” tv series and an actresses infamous for her insensitivity toward ethnic minorities. Unimpressed, the Turkish social media ridiculed the meeting for being shallow. One tweet cited in a Hurriyet Daily News article reacting to the meeting said, “Imagine Obama calling Kim Kardashian to the White House after a civil uprising.”

Post-Gezi, it isn’t enough to pay lip service to the arts while simultaneously imprisoning musicians on baseless terrorism charges. During winter 2014, Grup Yorum announced a hunger strike to protest the Justice and Development Party’s (otherwise known as AKP, the ruling party in Turkey) crackdown on the arts, which included closing theatres, removing actors from TV shows, and imposing travel bans on musicians (including several members of Grup Yorum).

Like Akif says in his interview with Freedom Beat, the Turkish people have become much more skeptical of the news media in the wake of Gezi. Grup Yorum will undoubtedly only gain more supporters (and possibly members) as well as inspire other musicians to become active in movements in Turkey, as Erdogan continues to desperately crack down on music of resistance in Turkey.

Cassie Balfour is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan and a Communications and Media Associate at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.  She had the opportunity to study and intern in Cairo, Egypt in 2012 where she witnessed first-hand how art was leveraged to create meaningful social change. Follow her on Twitter.

Executive Producers: Maziar Bahari, Daryn Cambridge, Tim O’Keefe
Produced by Jahanshah Javid
Directed by Tim O’Keefe, Arash Sobhani, Irene Su
Edited by Irene Su
Interviews by Jahanshah Javid, Arash Sobhani
Camera & Sound by Mohammad Talani, Jahanshah Javid
Freedom Beat logo animation by Sang Un Jeon
Freedom Beat Middle East Series animation by Beth Wexler
Music by Tim O’Keefe

Special thanks to Iranwire.com and The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict for their support & collaboration in the making of this series.