When you hear the country Turkey mentioned, it may remind you of holidays, baths, the Ottoman Empire, kebabs and Turkish delight but in the underbelly of the country is a strong movement of angry, pissed off people who have had enough of the current economic crisis. The cost of living is getting more expensive as the Turkish Lira is losing value due to the increasing value of the Dollar and Euro and unemployment is rising. On top of all this, they like all of us, are having to endure the current pandemic. One such band, Rotting System based in Kadikoy/Istanbul, formed in 2016 decided it was time to voice their opinions. Guney Yakar (lead vocalist) sent us the four tracks from their latest EP release 'Stolen Future' to have a listen to. Before we listen to it though, Guney wrote to us and gave us an insight as to what the current punk scene is like in Turkey but before we find out about that, I'd like to go back in time to the beginnings of the punk rock scene in Turkey. I did some research and found an article by Lottie Brazier on DazedDigital.com I've taken a few extracts from that to provide the uninitiated (like me) an insight into what the early scene was like.
‘In 1978, the Turkish rock musician Tünay Akdeniz informed the country’s press – to subsequent horror – that his band were “punk rock.” Akdeniz was mostly sporting a bad boy image to push record sales rather than to make political history (his music was probably closer in style to glam or hard rock), but his words nevertheless made a huge impact. Before then, no musician in Turkey had dared describe their band as punk.
In the 1970s, Turkey saw rising tensions between the left and the right, resulting in a 1980 coup d’etat during which hundreds were rounded up to be killed, arrested, and imprisoned. With punk seen as part of an antagonistic, anti-establishment youth culture, there were risks of violence from both police and the nationalist far-right for associating yourself with it. 40 years on from his comment, Akdeniz now explains that “youngsters could only secretly lose their heart to rock music and listen to it from cassettes on the quiet.”
Akdeniz believes that there was no real punk movement in Turkey – certainly not in the same directly confrontational and anti-authoritarian sense as the British one. “The Sex Pistols sing, ‘she ain’t no human being’ about Queen Elizabeth in ‘God Save The Queen’,” he explains. “In Turkey at the time, you couldn’t imagine attempting something like this. The same is true even now. If you do, in the best scenario, no one plays your song. In a worse scenario, you find yourself engaged in a lawsuit.”’
Given this backdrop, it’s hardly surprising that little written history on punk’s small but potent presence in the country’s youth culture existed until recently. The book An Interrupted History of Punk and Underground Resources in Turkey 1978-1999 elaborates on the sporadic presence of the genre and youth culture movement – visually, musically, and socially – in the country. With the genre associated with nihilism and teenage delinquency in the popular consciousness, those who took on the mantle of punk were either brave or reckless.
That’s not to say that political music didn’t exist in Turkey in the 20th century, but it took on guises more embedded in traditional Turkish folk, with the most iconic example being Selda Bağcan, a singer popular among left wing activists during the 70s for songs that expressed solidarity with Turkey’s working class population. She was imprisoned three times between 1981 and 1983, but continued to write political songs, including the lament “Uğurlar Olsun” for the assassinated journalist Uğur Mumcu in 1993.
In the case of some bands, like Tampon and Rashit in the 90s, their flavour of punk was more of a left wing rebellion. Conversely, some on the Turkish left saw punk as a sign of individualism creeping in from the west. ---
So this is where the roots were planted and forged a solid foundation for the scene to expand, evolve and increase in popularity with the irked youth who like most people with a brain that were fed up of local governments, politicians, etc to have their voices heard. Fanzines and records also began to appear too.
‘Murat Ertel, member of psych band BaBa ZuLa and contributor to Esat C. Başak’s punk fanzine Trasho Mondo, explains that the Turkish pop magazine HEY acted as an introduction to The Sex Pistols and the punk movement at large. The controversy that surrounded “God Save the Queen” in the UK completely passed Turkey by, but the visual presence of British punk was alluring. “We were reading German pop magazines like Bravo and Pop and they were giving away some punk posters,” he says. Joe Strummer would also make an appearance in these magazines, having been born in Ankara himself.
There were few opportunities for Turkish fans of punk to buy records, although this changed when record dealer Deniz Pinar set up his stall in Istanbul. It was through him that a member of the jazz punk group Maximum Punch Effect started to sell the records he’d found after visiting Sweden. Murat Ertel remembers that things started to pick up when Pinar opened up his own shop in Narmanlı Han, a building that previously served as a Russian Embassy in Turkey until 1920, when it was sold off and instead became a cheap place for artists and writers to buy studio space. “(It became) where we gathered,” he says. “So many punk and experimental musicians got their education there.”
Kemal Aydemir, the recently deceased ringleader of a small scene based around Pinar’s record shop, discovered Turkish punk in 1977 when he went to study graphic design in the UK. There, he saw bands like X-Ray Spex, Siouxsie & the Banshees, and The Lurkers perform live. As he reminisced in an interview with the Turkish culture zine Fütüristika in 2016, Aydemir described how he hung around in Deniz’s Bookstore and read the fanzine Trasho Mondo that Esat C. Başak created: “Everybody went to Deniz’s shop. Başak was publishing a magazine called Mondo Trasho all by himself. Aydemir could see that the magazine had been designed with the UK punk scene’s DIY aesthetic in mind, something he was originally attracted to when he stumbled upon Malcolm McLaren’s SEX shop (a punk fetish boutique that the Sex Pistols manager co-ran with Vivienne Westwood) when he was living in the UK. When he was forced to return to Turkey after having been caught faking a marriage certificate, he found few common allies in his own country who would also appreciate the bands he’d seen.
Full recordings of punk albums didn’t fully emerge in Turkey until cassettes appeared in the 80s. “In the end of 80s, we were using cassette tapes, or if some people were lucky they were using portable studios, which were multitrack recorders using cassette tape,” says Murat Ertel. “This was a select few: they taught the younger generation things such as the link with punk and ska and popular groups like Athena were born like this. Normal studio recordings for punk music were unheard of before 90s.”’
I could carry on copying and pasting more from the article but I won't, if you want to know more, I have included the link to my resource at the bottom of this blog. So on to the scene today in Turkey. As mentioned earlier in this write-up, I had a conversation with Guney Yakar, current vocalist for Rotting System. I asked him about punk in Turkey today. He explains that a lot of people have an 'orientalistic look to Turkey and when they see a typical punk rock band, they can't believe it or when you that you're in a band, they can't imagine it' This leads me to draw a conclusion that the scene is very much underground, possibly driven underground by authorities, maybe they are scared of punk or even, don't understand it! Guney is based in Kadikoy, Istanbul so he refers to that specific area when we had our brief chat and Istanbul houses almost a quarter of the Country's population. 17 million out of 80 million. Another place he mentions is Eskisehir which is a University City so obviously plenty of youth to explore the non-commercialised music of the day. Current bands on the scene he tells me are Poster-Iti, The Raws, Norelics Cemiyette Pişiyorum (who write in Turkish), Radical Noise and Ofisboyz. Poster - Iti and Ofisboyz have been around for about 17 to 18 years and some of the other bands have been going for 20 years or more.Guney also plays bass in another band called Project Youth and has done a European tour with this band as well as playing festivals with the likes of GBH, The Partisans, Oi Polloi and Peter & The Test Tube Babies. Again this blog could turn into an essay so at this point, I'm now going to focus back on Rotting System and their record releases.
From their bandcamp page, their first offering is the eight track self-titled mini album featuring eight tracks, recorded back in 2016. Track listing is: This Is The Only Way, Rotting System, Capitalist Democracy, Mad City, Inside My Head, Between Life And Death, Charge Me and Fake Dissidents. After listening to the album, it's plain to see that they are influenced by the UK 80's sound but it's interspersed with a Metal sound as well as the heavy guitars pound your ears. They have a D-Beat sound about them, angry vocals spitting out their angst, the powerhouse drums and rattling bass complement the whole sound to create a very enjoyable musical experience. Fast forward a couple of years and we find the boys releasing a four track EP called Black Reflection. Track listing is: Anxiety, Black Reflection, Flaneur Life and White Line. The sound follows on from their debut release with just slight difference, the pace has quickened on this Ep which (in my opinion) adds to their sound and makes it even more likeable and genuinely adds to the experience. Job well done on both releases. Their most recent recording is another four track EP called Stolen Future. Track listing is: Panic Attack, Big Joke, No Gravity and Stolen Future. For me, this is their best release, they have upped the ante again and have got quicker. After a first listen they remind me a bit like the American band Crucifix and after listening a second time, it confirms this. Fast, in your face, no nonsense punk. Excellent stuff. This third EP is currently unreleased (if I'm correct) so the band are looking for a label in the UK who would release it via cassette or vinyl. If anybody has any contacts that may be able to help them, please get in touch with Last Stop Sounds and we can forward the information onto them. Cheers DLW.
Words: DLW, Photos: Band Media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rottingsystem
Black Reflection EP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B--v43_FckY&ab_channel=grindwarchannel
Anxiety - Official Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPvjt5QrbZc&ab_channel=WargasmRecords
History of punk in Turkey: https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/39298/1/the-complicated-history-of-punk-rock-in-turkey
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