Melodies of resistance: Islamist music in secular Turkey

Abstract

Since the mid-1980s, music has become a site of resistance and political mobilization for Turkish Islamists. Based on interviews with prominent Islamist musicians and analyses of a cross-section of their albums, this paper examines the development of Islamist music in secular Turkey. In order to elaborate upon the power struggle between the secular state and Islamist groups in the realm of music, it first focuses on how the founding elite of Turkey treated music as part of its secular nation-formation project. It then locates Islamist music as a form of protest music and analyses its development through the 1980s and 1990s, in concert with the growing visibility of political Islam in other arenas. Thereafter, the paper demonstrates how Turkey’s fourth military intervention in 1997 led to the decline of Islamist music. The final section is devoted to a discussion of the strategies of survival employed by Islamist musicians in response to government repression.

It is the social and political power of music that drives various governments to censor anti-establishment music, arrest its performers and use music for the propaganda of their own official worldview (Street, 2003). As a site of power struggles, music can provide deeper insight into the interplay between hegemony-building projects and collective resistance (Eyerman and Jamison, 1998; LeVine, 2008; Roy, 2010).

When analysing the role of music as an agent of change, most academic literature is prone to viewing culture as a symbolic and discursive realm and investing attention on the rhetorical content of music and larger meanings beyond the lyrics. For instance, the leading work in this field, Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison’s Music and Social Movements (1998), treats music as a ‘cognitive praxis’, according to which social movements make use of music to spread their truth claims and challenge existing discourses. This approach was recently critiqued by William Roy’s (2010) work on two American social movements, the Old Left Movement and the Civil Rights Movement, and their use of music as a cultural project to bridge racial boundaries. Roy relates the success of the latter to its transcendence the hierarchical performer–audience dynamic and ability to turn music into a form of collective action and a platform for solidarity. He concludes that ‘the effect of music on social movement activities and outcomes depends less on the meaning of the lyrics or the sonic qualities of the performance than on the social relationships within which it is embedded’ (2010: 2).

While content-based approaches are challenged by alternative paradigms, as in the case of William Roy’s work, this study underlines the neglected significance of the political context. I argue that it is neither the lyrical quality nor the social relations embedded in music-making, but its context-bound nature that shapes the role of music as an agent of change in social movements. Building on this idea, this paper examines how music became a site for resistance among political Islamists in Turkey and the trajectory that Islamist music, as a genre of protest music, has followed within a secular political context. It first deals with how Kemalists treated music as part of Turkish efforts towards modernization and nation-formation in the early years of the Turkish Republic, founded in 1923. It then delves into the development of Islamist music since the 1980s. The last section analyses how the secular state put pressure on this development, as well as the strategies for survival developed by the Islamist musicians. In an attempt to contribute to the academic literature on Islamist protest music, this paper utilizes insights gained through interviews with prominent Islamist musicians and analyses of their albums.

Music and the Republic

Music may constitute an enduring process whereby the ruling elite perpetuates its values and aims at the development of national identity (Turino, 2003; Bohlman, 2004) and the modern Turkish Republican experience was no exception. ¹ Reforms relating to music, along with social and other cultural reforms, were intended to elevate Turkey to the level of its European counterparts and form a national identity distinct from its Ottoman past. These reforms ranged from the founding of the Ankara State Conservatory in 1935 to the banning of radio broadcasts of Ottoman classical music in 1934 and, as Woodard (2007: 552) states, ‘were indicative of the overt political strategy of situating the Ottoman past in opposition to the bright future of an alliance with Europe’. Like the other cultural reforms, the music reform was part of the early Kemalists’ ambition to align the new secular nation with Europe while supplanting its Ottoman Islamic past with a secular national history.

Atatürk was very much inspired by Turkish thinker Ziya Gökalp’s ideas about national culture, including music. Gökalp acknowledges three categories of music, which expose his binary opposition and hierarchical distinction between Eastern and Western music:

Today we are faced with three kinds of music: Eastern music, Western music, folk music. Which one of them is ours? Eastern music is a morbid music and non-national. Folk music represents our culture. Western music is the music of our new civilization. (quoted in Woodard, 2007: 553)

Constructing an East–West dichotomy in music implied a choice between European classical music (Western music) and Ottoman art music (Eastern music). In his search for national music, Gökalp locates ‘our music’ in a temporal zone – moving beyond the Ottoman morbidity of culture to a re-enlivened sense of culture. Accordingly, a re-making of the national self (‘our’ as collective) in opposition to the non-national requires the rejection of Ottoman music for being based on the Byzantine and Arabic traditions in addition to a determination to move into a more Western-inspired future (the ‘new’). Nevertheless, there is still a struggle to maintain the national self to some extent, and Gökalp provides the formula to create a ‘genuine’ music in line with nation-building:

Our national music … is to be born from a synthesis of our folk music and Western music. Our folk music provides us with a rich treasury of melodies. By collecting them and arranging them on the basis of Western musical techniques, we shall have both a national and [a] modern music. (quoted in Woodard, 2007: 553)

In order to realize the goal of creating a national music, the founding elite of Turkey initiated several reforms. This state-sponsored process was based on both the promotion of European polyphonic art music and the exploration of a ‘genuine’ Turkish style (Karahasanoğlu and Skoog, 2009: 52–53). ² In the 1930s, the government began a programme of collecting Turkish music with the initial assistance of Béla Bartók, a Hungarian composer and ethno-musicologist. With Bartók’s assistance, the Istanbul Conservatory collected some 2,000 folk songs, which were published between 1925 and 1935. The initial impetus for collecting folk songs predates Bartók’s study and was motivated by Gökalp’s emphasis on the importance of such an endeavour. The collecting activities were institutionalized under the Hars Dairesi (Bureau of Culture) as early as in 1920, and the Darül-Elhan (which became the Istanbul Conservatory in 1926) joined the project. Moreover, the Ministry of Education assigned the Asal brothers, Seyfettin and Sezai, to collect folk songs, which were published in 1926 as collection of Western Anatolian folk songs, titled Yurdumuzun Nağmeleri (Melodies of Our Heartland). Another important agent in the collection efforts was the government-led People’s Houses in the period from 1931 to 1951 (Değirmenci, 2006: 58–59).

The founding elite’s self-proclaimed mission to get rid of Ottoman music and institutions included the abolition of institutions founded on the basis of Western polyphonic music. In 1924, the Palace Symphony Orchestra was closed down and replaced by the Riyaset-i Cumhur Orkestrası (Presidential Music Band). Similarly, the Palace Military Band School was replaced by the Musiki Muallimleri Mektebi (School for Music Trainers) (Değirmenci, 2006: 57). In 1923, the Istanbul Conservatory of Music abandoned its Eastern music department and replaced it with a Western music department. According to İren Özgür (2006: 177), ‘the reformists’ efforts reached such heights at the various conservatories that students caught playing “Eastern” melodies were punished’. In 1927, monophonic music education was banned at schools. Most notably, in 1934, Turkish art music was banned from radio stations for two years (Değirmenci, 2006: 57–58). Moreover, lodges and cloisters like that of the Mevlevis, which were centres of Sufi music, were abolished. The law also included a ban on Mevlevi whirling or sema. In this way, the state cut off the main source of Ottoman classical music and Sufi music. ³ As a result, these artists either left the country or sought other modes of musical expression (Karahasanoğlu and Skoog, 2009: 55).

In the following decades, two important changes marked the trajectory of Turkish music. First, from the 1950s, the overwhelming influence of American popular culture defined the development of Turkish music. Just as Turkey allied with the United States during the Cold War period, Turkish music also opened its doors to American influences, as exemplified by the development of the music genre called Türkçe Sözlü Hafif Batı Müziği (Western light music in Turkish) (Yarar, 2008: 53). Second, the state monopoly on broadcasting was broken in the 1990s when radio and television stations were opened to private companies. Globalization paved the way to a cosmopolitan culture and international taste in music in Turkey. As a result of cross-genre interaction, many urban Turks began to affiliate with a wide range of popular and artistic genres, such as heavy metal, hip-hop, and jazz (Karahasanoğlu and Skoog, 2009: 62).

The development of Islamist music in Turkey

Protest music is one of the most distinguishable intersections of music and politics. Within the philosophy of social protest, it establishes the struggle for social change as the basic purpose of music. Music is here used as a weapon or tool of propaganda to alter opinion and motivate actions through persuasion (Berger, 2000: 58–59). Songs of protest, as Sabrina Petra Ramet (1994: 1) formulates, turn into ‘an unexpectedly powerful force for social and political change’, and such music ‘brings people together and evokes for them collective emotional experience to which common meanings are assigned’.

In the Turkish case, this fundamental attribute of protest music can be traced back to the 1960s and 1970s Anadolu rock (Anatolian rock), a mixture of Turkish folk music with rock and roll. While performers in this genre, such as Erkin Koray, Cem Karaca and Moğollar, were prone to engaging in political protest and following activist agendas, performers of Turkish protest music, known as Özgün müzik (original music), with leftist leanings, such as Ahmet Kaya, Zülfü Livaneli and Grup Yorum, wrote more overtly political songs and relied more on authentic folk music (Karahasanoğlu and Skoog, 2009: 60–61). Though they were silenced after the military coup in 1980, they maintained their respected status among ideologically oriented groups and were listened to by Islamists and leftists alike. According to Mehmet Ocaktan, a journalist and later Member of Parliament with the conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP), ‘there is no one from the Islamic youth that has not listened to Zülfü Livaneli’ (Çekiç, 2010). Some Islamists, moreover, began performing a variation of Özgün müzik, which they called ezgi (melody) to mark a distinction in the content of the lyrics.

Turgut Özal’s liberal policies in the 1980s provided Islamist groups with the opportunity to expand in all facets of life (Yıldırım, 2013: 323). Islamic magazines, newspapers, media outlets and other businesses appeared one after another. The increasing visibility of Islam asserted itself in music, too. Yet, the emergence of Islamist music was surprising considering the frequently-voiced assertion that music is forbidden within Islam. ⁴ Religious groups were familiar with traditional religious music, as developed in the Sufi orders, with its emphasis on spiritual self-development. However, the Turkish Islamists in the 1980s, who had more political and social concerns regarding the context they lived in, were not content with either Sufi music or the Ottoman military band music, called mehter, the two genres Turkish religious groups had been accustomed to listening to until then. They felt the need to find new ways to express their politico-religious motivations.

Islamist music in Turkey did not arise from conscious efforts to find an ‘Islamic’ style of music, but first appeared in the realm of the theatre. The key figure at the beginning was Ulvi Alacakaptan, a former leftist and prominent theatre actor educated at the Dostlar Theatre School. He chose to follow a pious way of life, unlike his leftist secular friends like Ferhan Şensoy. In 1985, Alacakaptan founded his own theatre group called Çağrı Sahnesi and staged ‘İnsanlar ve Soytarılar’ (‘Humans and Buffoons’). Written by İbrahim Sadri and the first drama to employ Islamist rhetoric, it was performed in several Anatolian cities and applauded by religious groups. Alacakaptan’s works represent the first crucial use of art to voice Islamist arguments. There soon followed a series of taped dramas (recorded on music cassettes), widely known in religious circles as bant tiyatroları, which also contained early examples of Islamist music. Directed by Ulvi Alacakaptan with the contributions of Barbaros Ceylan, İbrahim Sadri and Ahmet Mercan, and similar to Arkası Yarın (To be continued tomorrow), the radio drama playing on state radio at that time, these taped dramas re-enacted historical events during the life of the Prophet Muhammad, in the early 7th century. They were produced by religious production companies such as Zaman Yayıncılık and Azim Dağıtım to promote the Islamist children’s magazine Selam in 1986 and 1987. In order to offset the prolixity of the plays, the producers added songs that paralleled their theme. The first taped drama to include Islamist songs was Mute Destanı (The saga of Mute), written by İbrahim Sadri and produced by Barbaros Ceylan in February 1987 (Ö Karaoğlu, personal interview, 19th January 2011). Then, in the late 1980s, the amateur music group Selika, consisting of Ömer Karaoğlu, Taner Duman and Hakan Aykut, contributed to the taped drama Hicret (Holy migration) and others that followed, such as Tevbe (Pledge), Hudeybiye and Mekke’nin Fethi (Capture of Mecca) (Karaoğlu, 2011: 19).

Even the limited use of musical instruments in the songs sparked considerable debate within Islamist communities. For instance, Mute Destanı included music played with the saz (a Turkish long-necked lute), which elicited so much negative reaction that the producers felt compelled to release two versions of the album: one with the saz and another without any musical instruments (Ö Karaoğlu, personal interview, 19th January 2011). Some Islamists even accused these musicians of küfür (infidelity) (A Taşkıran, personal interview, 29th May 2010). A few years later, however, Mekke’nin Fethi, in which the songs were accompanied by a keyboard, a wind instrument and the bağlama (a Turkish musical instrument with three double strings, played with a plectrum), did not elicit such a negative reaction.

The early performers of Islamist music believed that the role of music had not been sufficiently analysed and discussed in Islamic intellectual circles, with the exception of some very early studies. In their own interpretations, the performers concluded that the related passages from the Koran and Hadith mostly associate music with dance and drink. For them, music could be used in the service of Islamic ideals, and thus had to be permissible as long as it preserved the religious framework (Ö Karaoğlu, personal interview, 19th January 2011). Those contributing to the production of the first Islamist songs considered themselves pious and observant Muslims. Like the Muslim practices of praying and fasting, music was treated as a way to serve God and increase Islamic awareness in Turkish society.

At the demand of listeners, the songs were combined into an album, Gün Batıdan Doğmadan (Before the sun rises from the west). Ömer Karaoğlu (personal interview, 19th January 2011) refers to this album as a ‘music album without music’, as the songs are chanted, without any instrumental accompaniment. The group soon produced another album, Adı için Yaşamak (Living for one’s name), and, over time, several other Islamist musicians emerged with new albums.

The first examples of Islamist music had three basic characteristics. First, they had a martial tone and more closely resembled military marches than other musical genres. The Islamist band Grup Genç, for instance, directly translated some marching songs of the Iranian Revolution into Turkish and used them in their first album Şehadet Vakti (Time for martyrdom), released in 1994 (A Taşkıran, personal interview, 29th May 2010). While the Iranian Revolution definitely prompted a militarist revolutionary fervour among Turkish Islamists, it was not their first encounter with religious militarist music, since Ottoman military band music remained one of the few musical styles to which religious people were accustomed. Locating Muslims as oppressed subjects in Turkey, Islamist music encouraged activism, as its militarist style implies. The song lyrics such as ‘Her eylem yeniden diriltir beni’ (‘Each protest revives me’) from Karaoğlu’s album Doğ Ey Güneş (The Sun Shall Rise) and ‘Sabrımız artık yeter merde meydan konuşur’ (‘Enough is enough! The field is now for the brave’) and ‘Zulmü kaldırıp atacak eller senindir’ (‘The hands removing the oppression are yours’) from the album Bir Güneş Doğuyor 2 (A Sun Rises 2) exemplify this motivation.

The militarist tone in Turkish Islamist music is quite telling about its performers’ approach to their work. Simple melodies and the rare use of musical instruments in their music reflect the rationale that musical quality comes second to the Islamist message in lyrics and should not overshadow it. Naming their musical pieces ezgi instead of simply şarkı (song) manifests their intention to differentiate their music from popular music, too. While popular songs were related to leisure and popular enjoyment, Islamist music carried with it a definite stance of contestation. The religio-political message was the foremost element in these works. Unlike the popular albums highlighting the singer, it was difficult to imagine the performers on the covers of these Islamist music albums. The cover of the first album, Gün Batıdan Doğmadan, did not even indicate the names of the singers. Only in 1993 did illustrations of the three singers appear on the cover of the album Bir Güneş Doğuyor 2.

A second characteristic of Islamist music was the allegorical style of the song lyrics. The common themes, such as injustices against Muslims (with references to ‘the problems of Bosnia’ and ‘the blood in Palestine’) and the ‘inferior’ political position of religious groups in Turkey were expressed mostly through symbolism. For instance, the cover of Selika’s album Doğ Ey Güneş, illustrating the song lyrics, shows the sun under barbed wire, which portrays the oppression faced by Muslims. ⁵ Victim discourse manifests itself in many pieces in this album, though not overtly pointing to certain figures: ‘Yansım içim yansın alev alev/ Babamın nesline katletmesine/ Aydınlık yoluma küfretmesine/ Ve zulmüyle gurur duymasına’ (‘My soul shall be on fire/ because they massacred my father’s generation,/ cursed my enlightened path/ and were proud of their cruelty’). In some cases, the group set a poem to music, as in the song that gave the album its name: ‘Doğ ey güneş, erit taştan adamı/ Ve kurut taşları diken elleri’ (The sun shall rise, melt down the man of stone and wither the hand that installed those stones). Gesturing to the adverse effects of urbanization and, more profoundly, demanding the demise of Kemalist ideology (described here as ‘the man of stone’ with reference to the abundant erection of Atatürk monuments in early Republican Turkey), this poem, written by the Islamist poet Akif İnan, represents the anti-establishment stance of Islamist music. In contrast to this general trend were albums released illegally (that is to say, produced and sold without the permission and approval of the Ministry of Culture, which all commercial albums were required to obtain), which contained a more rebellious discourse (Taşkıran, personal interview, 29th May 2010). Şehitler Kervanı (The caravan of martyrs), for instance, released more than eight such albums.

A third characteristic of the early Islamist music was its constant reference to the ‘Golden Age of Islam’, the time of the Prophet Muhammad. Whereas the Prophet and his companions were referred to in many songs, the prominent figures of Turkish Islam, such as the Ottoman Sultans Mehmet the Conqueror and Yavuz Selim and the Turkish Sufi figures Yunus Emre and Mevlana Rumi, found no place in these albums. Places relating to early Islamic history, such as Mecca, Medina and Akabe, were also common references, whereas finding something local and peculiar to Turkish Islam was quite difficult. Karaoğlu (personal interview, 19th January 2011) believes that the source of inspiration for a Muslim should be the time of the Prophet, as all other periods of Islamic history are imperfect on account of the human failings of Muslim leaders. This understanding fits with the general formulation of political Islam as a return to, or the revival of, the Prophet’s time. In line with this, the early albums made room for some Arabic marches, like Nahnu Asakiru (We are soldiers) in the album Doğ Ey Güneş, produced by Zaman Yayıncılık. In the following years, with the growing diversity in Islamist music, local elements were added. Bir Güneş Doğuyor 2, produced by the Kunuz Agency in 1993, for instance, makes references to Fatih Sultan Mehmet and Yunus Emre in its song lyrics and uses vernacular symbols like the rose, which symbolizes the lover in Ottoman literature and the Prophet in the Sufi tradition.

Popularization of Islamist music

Islamist music showed a dramatic rise in the mid-1990s, when globalization and Islamism began to pose serious challenges to the State. While the state-owned media could still promote the official nationalist vision and use censorship effectively, new media technologies and the diversity of private radio and television channels made it more difficult for the State to control the ‘mediascape’ (Appadurai, 1990).

In the early 1990s, private radio channels became popular after legal permission was granted to establish private television and radio channels. This also applied to Islamic radio stations. AKRA FM was the first Islamic radio station, and by 1994, of the 525 privately owned radio and television stations, Islamic groups owned 19 television and 45 radio stations (Yavuz, 2003: 104). Through their television channels, such as TGRT and Samanyolu, or their radio stations, such as Burç and Akra, Islamist groups were able to demarcate cultural boundaries by employing tools of modern technology. However, they had little to broadcast. The popularization of the taped dramas and the first Islamic albums resulted in the emergence of a new sector. New production companies, such as Asır Ajans and Kunuz Ajans, appeared in the market. Nevertheless, they demarcated their cultural difference in their choice of location in Fatih, a religious district of Istanbul, instead of Unkapanı, which still hosted most of the secular popular music companies.

Islamist music albums were mostly listened to at home by high school and university students. ⁶ With this intra-community popularization, Islamist singers such as Ömer Karaoğlu, Aykut Kuşkaya, Taner Yüncüoğlu and Hakan Aykut began giving concerts throughout Anatolia, as well as in Germany, which has a large population of Turkish immigrants. This period also coincided with the rise of the Islamist Welfare Party (Karaoğlu, 2011: 43, 59). Mostly organized by religious youth organizations, some of which were affiliated to the Welfare Party, concerts opened with a Koranic recitation, followed by a speech given by a politician or religious scholar, and finally the performance. These concerts were not seen as a leisure activity; rather, they were considered as platforms through which the religiously oriented could reinvigorate their activist inclinations. In the early years, the attendees were not even allowed to applaud the singers after each song, which gave the tone or spirit of prayer to the event rather than of a pop concert.

Despite their increasing popularity among Islamist circles, Islamist musicians could not give a specific name to their music. Nevertheless, this music without a name created an ‘ethical soundscape’, to use Charles Hirshkind’s (2006) term. The ethical soundscape motivated ethico-religious self-cultivation and activism, which also worked as a platform for resistance to political marginalization.

Islamist music under the shadow of guns: The ‘February 28th coup’

‘Jerusalem Night’, a special event hosted in Sincan, Ankara, by its Welfare Party-run municipality on 4th February 1997, was the event that prompted the 1997 military intervention, which resulted in the downfall of the Islamist-led government, popularly known in Turkey as the ‘February 28th coup’ or ‘postmodern coup’. What was staged on Jerusalem Night was similar to the taped dramas listened to by the religious groups. It included a play protesting against the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem and a re-enactment of the Palestinian Intifada. Islamist songs like Şehid Tahtında (On the throne of the martyrs), once played in the taped dramas, were sung at certain points in the play. The next morning, some twenty tanks rolled into the town. The mayor of Sincan was forced to resign and was later tried at the State Security Court for having violated the principle of secularism, and the Iranian ambassador Reza Baghri, who had attended the event as the guest of the honour, was sent back to his country.

The postmodern coup is also known as the ‘February 28 process’, as this anti-Islamist purge lasted till 2002, when the AK Party came to power. The National Security Council (MGK) met on 28th February 1997 and released an official communiqué consisting of 18 ‘recommendations’ for the government. The seventh recommendation declared: ‘Media groups that oppose the TAF [Turkish Armed Forces] and its members should be brought under control’ (Günay, 2001: 11). This made the development of Islamist music almost impossible. Upon this MGK recommendation, the government was expected to increase its surveillance of the growing number of Islamic radio and television stations. On 24th March 1998, Prime Minister Mesut Yılmaz announced the creation of investigative units in every town to monitor radio stations and television channels claiming to be Islamist and to inform state prosecutors and the Higher Council for Radio and Television (RTÜK) about any possible illegalities (Houston Chronicle, 1998). In September 2000, the RTÜK announced that it had issued warnings to 46 radio stations and 28 television channels since 1994 for their ‘fundamentalist’ broadcasting and had suspended broadcasting by 22 radio stations for 1,590 days in total and eight television channels for a total of 676 days (Günay, 2001: 11). The MGK went further and, on 30th March 2001, announced the establishment of Media Prosecutors’ offices in Adana, Bursa, Malatya, Diyarbakır and Samsun, who would watch for signs of reactionary Islam in the media (Çevikcan, 2001).

Jerusalem Night, which sparked the February 28 process, also marked the start of a troubling period for the Islamist music sector. Now, producers had to deal with more bureaucratic challenges if they wished to organize an Islamist music concert. In many cases, they were discouraged by local police officials and cancelled the events. Though none of the concerts held led to violent clashes, police officers began monitoring them throughout the February 28 process. The large number of police personnel at the concert halls added an element of psychological tension among singers and attendees alike. Even the singers could only enter the concert hall after a police check (Ö Karaoğlu, personal interview, 19th January 2011). Prior to the concert, they were warned by police chiefs not to make any Islamist statements and reminded of the ‘outcome’ of so doing, which would be criminal prosecution. Moreover, the concert organizers had to provide local security forces with information about the attending musicians, as well as the song lyrics (A Taşkıran, personal interview, 29th May 2010).

It was not only concerts that faced such state repression; Islamist music albums were also seized and removed from sale. Marmara FM, a religious radio station, was closed down for a month for broadcasting Karaoğlu’s song ‘Kurtuluşun Ölümü’ (The Death of Salvation), which took a critical stance towards the Independence Tribunals in the early Republican period. ⁷ In this hostile environment, consumers hesitated to buy albums and attend Islamist concerts, as the events themselves were treated as political demonstrations and buying even one such album could be interpreted as a sign of being a radical Islamist.

In 2002, the RTÜK banned from radio airwaves any and all songs containing certain words, such as şehit (martyr), mazlum (oppressed), zulüm (oppression), başörtüsü (headscarf), Imam-Hatip (Imam-Preacher), Ayasofya (Hagia Sofia) and Mescid-i Aksa (Al Aqsa Mosque). These words were claimed to be deepening the religious and sectarian divides within the country. The ban put more than 70 Islamist music albums on the ‘prohibited list’. Some radio channels were shut down for between two weeks and four months for violating these bans. Özel FM, for instance, was closed down for 120 days for having broadcasted two songs by the Islamist band Grup Genç: ‘Şehidan’ and ‘Mescid-i Aksa’. In addition, its director, Ünal Özyıldırım, was sentenced to jail for 15 months (Bilici, 2002). Most of the appeals to the higher courts against the RTÜK’s decisions were dismissed, and other radio channels took appropriate precautions to avoid being shut down, refraining from playing Islamist protest songs. Many began broadcasting only Sufi music, which aided the rise in popularity of performers such as Mustafa Demirci, Mehmet Emin Ay and Avni Sami Özer (Bilici, 2002).

Strategies of survival

According to one of the best known Islamist singers, Ömer Karaoğlu, Islamist music was a form of resistance (personal interview, 19th January 2011). In the eyes of its performers, this music was a reaction to the social injustices around them, such as the marginalization of Islamists in Turkey, and crystallized their protest against the secular ruling elite, who were undermining the presence of pious Muslims. Nevertheless, the late 1990s saw ruptures within the world of Islamist music.

The main current in this sector has become Yeşil pop (green pop), which surfaced as light Islamist music at the peak of the February 28th process. It was Sadık Albayrak, a columnist in the religious daily Yeni Şafak, who coined the term ‘green pop’. Although Albayrak’s intention was to criticize the way Islamist music had developed, the term was popularized in the secular media. Performers of Islamist music have never accepted this label. According to Ömer Karaoğlu (personal interview, 19th January 2011), their music was protest music that was in competition with ‘pop’ music. Mehmet Emin Ay (personal interview, 28th May 2010) points out that pop cannot be green at all. Nevertheless, the label green pop represented a substantial transformation in both the substance and style of Islamist music.

Faced with state repression, many former Islamists tried to integrate themselves into mainstream popular music. They began composing songs using instruments and melodies similar to Turkish pop music and abandoned the Islamist and protest tone in their productions. Aykut Kuşkaya, for instance, who sang on the early albums of Islamist music such as Doğ Ey Güneş and Bir Güneş Doğuyor, released in 1998 a new album called Nereye Kadar (Until where), in which the earlier emphasis on holy struggle was replaced by a strong sense of individualism, love and complaints about urban life and moral erosion. In the early 2000s, Kuşkaya’s video clips were playing on Kral TV, the Turkish popular music television station. There was no difference between his romantic songs, mostly played with an acoustic guitar, and other popular hit songs.

Ibrahim Sadri, although he has never been a singer, is an embodiment of this transformation. In the late 1980s, Sadri emerged as a promising young Islamist figure after participating in taped religious dramas as an actor, poet and playwright. However, in 1996, the erstwhile Islamist Sadri released his first album of poetry, Memleket Havaları (The country’s atmosphere), which was followed by other recordings of his poetry, such as Adam Gibi (Like a man) in 1998 and Öylesine Sevmiştim (I loved that much) in 1999. Mostly based on themes of love and disappointment, his recitations were broadcast on national music channels and his recordings ranked on the bestseller lists of Turkish popular music. Moreover, he became a television star after the success of his poetry programmes, first on the religious channel Kanal 7 and later on the more centre-right TV channels TGRT and Kanal 6 (Binark and Çelikcan, 2000).

As has been mentioned, a second current in post-February 28th Islamist music was the revival of Sufi music. Mehmet Emin Ay, a leading name in Sufi music, describes this trend as ‘self-return’ (öze dönüş) (personal interview, 28th May 2010). Accordingly, people began discovering their cultural roots, of which Sufi music was very much a part. Mehmet Emin Ay released his first album, Taleal Bedru Aleyna, in 1989, soon after the first taped Islamic dramas. The album is named after a traditional Islamic song, which the people of Medina sang to the Prophet upon his arrival after the Hijrah from Mecca in 622. The album, containing a long explanation of the history and importance of this song, had a didactic style. It sold more than a million copies and featured on the best sellers list in its first two years. While Ay followed the same line from his first album to the latest, after the February 28th coup many other Islamist musicians turned away from Islamist music toward Sufi music, which had no political messages. Additionally, many municipalities and private organizations set up their own Sufi choirs and well known singers began incorporating Sufi songs into their albums or performing them at their concerts and on television.

Another consequence was that fewer musicians continued to produce Islamist music; those that did, used less confrontational and martial rhetoric. In 2002, Ömer Karaoğlu released a retrospective album, called İzler (Traces), which contained covers of his earlier songs and was well received by religious groups. Ironically, the Islamist musicians who had expressed the oppression of Muslims worldwide did not release a single album dealing with the February 28th process and its repercussions, though there were a few songs on the subject of the headscarf ban at universities, which was the most visible effect of the anti-Islamist purge during the February 28 process (Gurbuz, 2009). One of these was Grup Genç’s song on their 1997 album Sevdaları Yaşamak (Living the Passionate Loves): ‘Biz Maraş’ta siper olduk, Erzurum’da düşman sürdük, Bir orduyu yola vurduk örtü uğruna. Ağaların paşaların sözü boşuna, dalga dalga özgürlüktür parya yurdumda’ (We had been barricaded in Maraş, expelled the enemy in Erzurum, sent out an army for the sake of the headscarf. The aghas’ and pashas’ words are in vain. There are waves of freedom spreading out in my pariah country) (A Taşkıran, personal interview, 29th May 2010). With references to the Turkish National Struggle, this band criticizes the headscarf ban during the February 28th process and locates pious Muslims as the pariahs of Turkey. With similar rhetoric, in his 2000 song ‘Başörtüsü’ (Headscarf), the famous Islamist singer Taner Yüncüoğlu described the headscarf as a ‘flag’, which is then ‘a slave in its own homeland’. Another song that became popular among veiled female students was ‘Ağlama Karanfil’ (Oh carnation, don’t cry), performed by Eşref Ziya, which came out in 2003: ‘Aldırma söylenen o sizlere, sen dağıt etrafa mis kokunu, umudu, sevgiyi, özlemlerini ve hasretlerini. Susadım karanfil, çöllerde kavrulan toprak gibi, kelepçe vurulmuş yemyeşil gövdene, ben özgürlüğe hasret’ (Do not care what they have said, just spread your fragrance, hope, love, your aspirations and longings. Oh carnation, I am thirsty like the sand in the deserts, your body is all manacled, and I long for freedom). Ziya here symbolizes the oppressed Muslim female subjectivity by the carnation lacking any freedom. Similarly, Ömer Karaoğlu expressed Muslim oppression in his song ‘Kuşlar’ (Birds) from the album Karayel (Mistral): ‘Sizin kadar hür olmaktı hayalim kuşlar … Kanatlarımı kırdılar, umutlarımı vurdular’ (Oh birds, my dream was to be as free as you … They have broken my wings, shot my hopes).

Conclusion: The death of Islamist music?

Despite the academic literature’s emphasis on the content of music and the social relations within music-making, the case of Islamist protest music in Turkey illustrates a rather different aspect of the role of music in social movements. The political context is responsible for the extent to which a movement can integrate music into collective action and mobilize the masses towards its ideals. Only after contextualization can music perform as a window through which to observe and unpack the dynamics of power relations in any setting.

The trajectory of Turkish Islamists was inseparably linked to its secularist context. ‘Secularist regimes’, wrote Van Nieuwkerk (2008: 169), ‘perceive art and entertainment as important strongholds that are in need of defence’. Turkey’s February 28th coup, as an attempt to restore secularism in every aspect of life, followed the same rationale. Turkey’s secularist policies, which paved the way to an Islamist resistance in many facets of life, including music, eventually suppressed its channels of growth. Islamist music, which was not strong enough to swim against the tide, followed different paths to survive the coup. While some singers converted their style into green pop in line with the imperatives of the capitalist music industry, others leaned towards apolitical Sufi music, while a dwindling minority kept producing Islamist music – though with a much less revolutionary tone. Nevertheless, for both its performers and listeners, Islamist music in Turkey has already died – which is not surprising when many have also proclaimed the death of political Islam (Roy, 1994).

Within Islamist circles, attempts at self-assertion in the 1980s turned to concessions after the February 28th process. In the late 1990s, when many pious people were fired from their posts and many female students suffered from the headscarf ban, this oppression did not lead to the radicalization of their discourse; instead, they tended to employ alternative forms of self-expression. In the case of music, many Islamists, who once listened to taped dramas about holy jihad and stories from the Prophet’s time, started to buy Sufi music albums, which have no explicit political ambitions. Many more also turned their attention to Turkish folk and art music.

One can count two basic reasons for the ‘death’ of Islamist protest music. On the one hand, the state repressed all the mediums through which Islamist music could continue to develop. On the other, capitalist industry had its own rules and some Islamists preferred more popular music genres to appeal to wider audiences and make more money. In the 1980s and 1990s, the free market economy of radio, characterized by the motto ‘whatever sells well gets air time’, influenced the social system within which Islamists lived. The expanding neoliberal atmosphere and the emergence of a new, private mass media provided fertile ground for a new appreciation of other kinds of music (Özbek, 1997: 222).

Early Islamist music, parallel to the spirit of political Islam in the 1980s, was dominated by themes such as mass mobilization, Islamic militancy and a demand for the implementation of Islamic rule. Yet, in the late 1990s and 2000s, the revolutionary discourse declined and a distancing from collective political militancy took place. The new Islamists started to merge into modern urban spaces, use global communication networks, follow consumption patterns and have more individualistic beliefs. As a result of this process, which many pronounced as the end of political Islam, Islamist music was replaced by Sufi music and green pop, which have a more individualistic and humanist stance.

The Islamists were no longer employing the discourse of the victim and instead began reaping the benefits of being in power. Especially after the AKP came to power in 2002, conservative Anatolian businessmen formed a new bourgeois class with their vast enterprises, malls, private schools, summer resorts, fashion shows and professional organizations (Demir et al., 2004: 172). In this way, many could no longer be considered as anti-establishment groups. An (ex-)Islamist would no longer listen to Islamist protest music when enjoying his/her holiday at the Caprice Hotel, an Islamic investment. In this context, the performers and producers of Islamist music could not produce new albums to reinterpret Muslim sensitivities. Yet they also did not manage to renew themselves according to the changing context of religious groups.

Globalization has brought a new dimension to this sector. Ayhan Erol, who relates the development of Islamic pop music to globalization, points to ‘a relative harmony between the young Islamist pop musicians, who resist being identified with a single style, and the urban Muslim audience, whose expectations are shaped by global popular music styles’ (Erol, 2011: 198). As a result of increasing globalization, Islamic stars like convert Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, have been admired throughout Muslim communities in Europe and the Middle East (Van Nieuwkerk, 2008: 172). More recently, Sami Yusuf, a British-born Azerbaijani singer, has risen as the new Islamic pop star. ⁸ Sami Yusuf, like Yusuf Islam, reinvigorated traditional Islamic music using the aesthetic forms of Western popular music (El Asri, 2006). Globalization in this area also manifested itself in the diversification of Islamic music and the emergence of mutated cultural forms, such as Islamic rap, Islamic heavy metal, or Islamic hip hop (Miyakawa, 2005; LeVine, 2008; El Asri, 2009). Moreover, some performers in Turkey, like Grup Yürüyüş, have begun singing in Arabic and Kurdish (Özköse, 2013). One can predict that the Islamist music will gain a new impetus in keeping pace with globalization, but it will certainly not resemble that of the 1980s.