MIDDLE EAST PROFILES SERIES – INTERVIEW WITH TURKEY’S KARDEŞ TÜRKÜLER – PART 3
Kardeş Türküler’s Tencere Tava Havasi
Althea Middleton-Detzner of The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict on Kardeş Türküler’s song ‘Tencere Tava Havasi (Sound of Pots and Pans)’
Tencere tava havası: Anything but the “Same Old Tune” by Althea Middleton-Detzner
The use of pots, pans and other common kitchen utensils to create thunderous noises in the streets and elegant sounds of resistance may not appear to be a threatening or subversive act at first glance. However, these actions created a stir in Turkey and have been utilized as acts of resistance across the globe in a variety of nonviolent struggles throughout history.
Tencere tava havası is a song of Turkish nonviolent resistance that embodies several aspects of music of resistance including the use of cacerlazos. It is an anthem that was adopted as a musical symbol of the Turkish nonviolent struggle, it’s lyrics, rhythm, history, instrumental choice, performing artists, and cultural references capture the unity that the movement sought to create and the history of the nonviolent struggle itself, and it served as music of pop culture appropriation, co-opting a pop culture reference, remixing its meaning and amplifying the transformed speech into musical art. Furthermore, the use of the tactic of banging on pots and pans in Turkey, and the song Tencere tava havası are examples of 1) the use of symbolic sounds and 2) symbolic reclamations, 2 of the 198 methods of nonviolent action that have been meticulously documented by renowned scholar Gene Sharp.
Banging pots and pans is a tactic that was first documented in Chile in the early 1970s when people would bang of pots and pans to protest economic conditions during Salvador Allende’s rule, and again when facing economic hardships under the Pinochet regime. This method of nonviolent action has been so widely employed across Latin America that the term cacerolazo or cacerolada, meaning stew pot or casserole dish, has been coined to refer to the nonviolent method. But this tactic is not unique to Latin America nor economic crises. Cacerolazos erupted in Argentina in the early 2000s as the economic crisis hit; in Oaxca, Mexico in 2006 women marched banging pots and pans to raise awareness about the violence and repression of teachers strikes; in Iceland in 2008 “The Kitchenware Revolution” used the tactic to protest the financial crisis and in 2012 in Quebec cacerolazos were adopted in rural areas to express solidarity with student protesters in the city.
This past summer a group of Egyptians fed up with both the Muslim Brotherhood and the military organized a pots and pans protest to subvert the curfew implemented by the Egyptian military to crackdown on protests after former President Morsi was overthrown. The curfew and emergency law meant protestors couldn’t organize on the street for fear of violent reprisal. Inspired by the banging of pots and pans in Turkey, at 9 pm each night groups of Egyptians banged on their pots and pans from the safety of their homes. As one artist who was interviewed in France 24 about the decentralized form of resistance said, “The press is completely muzzled and the streets are closed off due to the state of emergency. The only place where Egyptians can still express themselves is on social media. However, that’s not enough. We want to use social media as a starting point to reclaim public spaces. And when you bang on pots and pans, that’s pretty public!”
The accessibility of pots and pans has inspired many movements across the world to adopt the relatively safe tactic. And just as the lyrics in “The Tune of Pots and Pans” bemoans the lack of public space, “They knocked down closed down cinemas and squares, They couldn’t sell their shadows so they sold the forests,” the action of banging on pots and pans itself enabled pot bangers to reclaim space that, in the case of Turkey, many people felt was being eroded.
So what makes pots and pans a symbolic sound, and what were the musicians and protesters in Turkey reclaiming?
When we look at how the banging of pots and pans has been utilized as a method of nonviolent action, we see that it is a tactic almost anybody is able to employ. In many instances, banging on pots and pans did not require people to leave their homes in order to join the action. Furthermore, pots and pans are common tools that almost everybody can access if they have one on hand in their kitchen. In this sense, pots and pans were a symbolic representation of ordinary, everyday people. When utilized by groups of women who worked in the home, the tactic could be seen as a symbol of women’s participation and a loud demonstration of their resistance to the status quo. This was certainly the case in Turkey, where pots and pans were referred to as “instruments of housewives,” as they were carried by groups of women who would leave their homes at 9:00pm each night to walk their neighborhoods banging on pots and pans in support of the ongoing nonviolent struggle.
Tactically speaking, in instances where the cacerlazo was conducted from one’s own home, hanging out of a window or while standing on a rooftop, the banging of pots and pans was a lower-risk and decentralized tactic as it did not require people to come together in one location. This would make it more difficult police or security forces to stop or repress people involved in the action, and easier for campaigns and movements to solicit widespread, or even anonymous, participation in the action.
During the street protests in Turkey, there were many times when tear gas was very thick in the air, and police presence made it intimidating and dangerous for masses of people to join. Public Radio International reported, “not everyone could make it out to the street to have their say, so they did so from home. Every night at 9pm neighborhoods throughout Istanbul have erupted with the clanking of wooden spoons against pots and pans, silverware against plates. This time, the sound has inspired musicians.”
Tencere tava havası is also an example of symbolic reclamation, a repurposing and remixing of a statement made by the Turkish Prime Minister who, in response to the nightly pots and pans protest, said, “pots and pans, it’s always the same tune.” One news agency called the song, “a musical response to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s dismissal of the people who have been supporting the ongoing protests in the country by banging on pots and pans.”
Tencere tava havası is a beautiful example of music of resistance. With its use of pots and pans – the tools of everyday people and everyday protest – as instrumentation, its lyrics singing the grievances of the people who are fed up with bans, commands, arrogance, hatred, corruption, and lack of public space, Tencere tava havası provides an anthem for the resistance that is anything but “the same old tune.”
Althea Middleton-Detzner is Senior Advisor, Education and Field Learning at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict where she has worked on core programmatic and educational initiatives for almost eight years. She is also a consultant in the field of civil resistance, has a background in music, and believes in the power of story-telling and the arts to create social change.
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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.