The Miserable Turks Sitting in the Garden Where Adam Was Expelled;
Türkçe Rap asla ölmez çünkü bir hikayesi vardır. Rap'in beklenmedik yükselişi, anlaşılma çabalarını da beraberinde getirdi. Her şey nasıl başladı? Türk rap bugünün ışıltılı zamanlarına ulaşmadan önce nerede ve nasıl doğdu?
In recent years, Turkish rap has taken over the mainstream music market. The ease of reaching the masses through social media is an important factor in this case. Shared songs reach millions of views within days or even hours. This genre of music, which used to be a subculture with a limited audience, is now listened to all over the country.
The unexpected rise of rap has brought with it efforts to be understood. How did it all start? Where and how was Turkish rap born before it reached today's glittering times? In order to answer the questions, it is necessary to go back a little to the 1960s.
The post-World War II redevelopment of the Federal Republic of Germany needed a significant workforce. Immigrants from different countries were coming to Germany. The first group of four hundred Turkish workers landed on German soil in October 1961. In the agreement between the two countries, it was thought that about six thousand workers would be brought to Germany, but this number soon reached hundreds of thousands.
Before guest workers were admitted, they were inhumanely controlled from top to bottom. These people, who were not given sufficient orientation, did not know the way of life, society and culture of the country they came from. Since they were already brought as "guests" and were planned to be sent back after a while, no policy was carried out to get these people used to German society.
Those who came spoke almost no German. Working-class families lived in remote corners of cities, such as in Kreuzberg next to the wall in Berlin, and in Offenbach, on the border of Frankfurt. On the other hand, the vast majority of the workers who came here dreamed of returning to their hometowns and buying houses or fields after saving money here.
In order to protect their children, parents had to set rules such as "No going out of the neighborhood!", "No German friends!". They would endure all these conditions for a year or two in order to live a comfortable life with their wives and children in the future. But years and years followed, and they could not return to their homeland.
Due to Turkey's complex political environment, in which coups from the 70s to the early 80s followed each other, the workers constantly postponed their return dates, and due to the living conditions in Germany, they could not reach their target amount.
The children of the expatriates would say that they were shaken by the news that they would not return to Turkey at that time. The children were suddenly homeless. The "home" that he went on leave every year and renewed his longing for was no longer home. The places where they had lived temporarily until now would become permanent—but how? Suddenly, they became "Germanists". They didn't talk to anyone other than Turks at school or on the street. They were not part of German society.
In any case, German society did not see them as part of itself. Situations that were unobtrusive at first began to attract the attention of Turkish youth. The unique half-German-half-Turkish languages they spoke, their way of life and their behavior in public spaces were despised. This disdain even extended to the color of his hair.
Sometimes they were verbally abused. On the wall of the streets where they lived, "Turken Raus!" (Turks out!) they were confronted with his writings.
Racist groups, which are thought to have started to organize immediately after World War II and have generally started to be called "Neo-Nazi", began to increase their activities, especially from the end of the 60s.
Over time, these fascist organizations also acquired hostility to Turkish immigrants. Neo-Nazis began physical attacks on Turks on their way to work in the morning, from throwing liquor bottles to lynching attempts. On May 29, 1993, neo-Nazis set fire to a Turkish house in the Solingen region. Four children, aged between 4 and 18, were burned to death. This incident was the last straw for the Turkish youth. Young people began to gather.
Turkish youth gather
Turkish gangs had already begun to appear in various parts of Germany, where immigrants lived. The most influential of these gangs was in Berlin Kreuzberg, where there were also the largest number of expatriates. They called themselves "36 Boys" because 36 was the zip code they used to send letters home. Founded in 1987, 36 Boys determined the borders of Kreuzberg as "Little Istanbul" after the Solingen disaster.
They stood guard at night and roamed the streets. This gang, which set out to protect families, did not hesitate to resort to violence. They were engaged in major street fights with neo-Nazi groups. One of the members of the gang, Soner Arslan, would later say the following in an interview.
Someone who doesn't know about 36 Boys thinks about us, 'They're dangerous, they beat people every day.' But the truth is not like that, we fought here for our own safety. It has come to the point that neo-Nazis are killing us, but the German police, politicians, none of them are doing anything. It means that our calculation has been made as 'We will destroy them when the time comes'. But I was born and raised here, this is my country. My parents built this place.
These young people, who started to form a unique culture, would strangely cross paths with rap music. Kreuzberg, the "little Istanbul", was at the foot of the Berlin Wall, and the soldiers in charge of guarding the Berlin Wall were American. The children of these soldiers also had difficulty entering civilian life.
Turkish youths, who could not go to the entertainment venues of the Germans, could easily enter those of the Americans. The only type of music played in these venues was rap. Qaboos Karim would say, "The bitterness of not belonging anywhere in society brought us together with Americans." Turkish youth and American youth had made a fateful union.
Istanbul inscribed records
Turkish youth had finally found a space where they could express themselves. Boe B, who is considered the founding father of Turkish rap, founded the first Turkish rap group "Islamic Force" in 1986. The group consisted of Maxim, Nellie, Dj Derezon, Dj Cut'em T. Boe B would later include Killa Hakan, a member of the 36 Boys gang who had just been released from prison.
Islamic Force was rapping in English because no one had figured out how to use Turkish in this music yet.
The band, which has been giving concerts since the end of the 80s, was only able to release their first record, My Melody/Istanbul, in 1992. Thus the first spark was struck. The children of Turkish workers, who were seen as vagabonds, were achieving something in Germany. Rap music came with an authentic culture, just like when it first emerged in America. New rappers, DJs, graffiti artists and dancers were popping up in different parts of Germany, gathering in underground venues.
Germany, why were we brought here?
The Nuremberg-based band King Size Terror included a song called "A Stranger's Life" on their 1991 album The World is Subversion. Alper Ağa would go down in history as the first Turkish rapper by starting the second part of the song with the lyrics "Germany, why were we brought here?".
Later, Alper Ağa formed the band Karakan with Kabus Kerim and released the song "Defol Dazlak". The song was an outburst of anger with the lyrics, "Get out, skinhead, don't let my eyes see you!/ I don't love your nation anyway/ Your language, your type, this cold country of yours." Now the shell was broken and new names were emerging from everywhere: Fuat, Erci E, Mic Force, Microphone Mafia, Karakan, Cinai Network, Sert Muslims. They all had different styles but a common problem: being a German in Turkey and a foreigner in Germany.
Representing different regions of Germany, Karakan and Cinai Network groups came together to establish Erci E and Cartel. This supergroup released the Cartel album of the same name in 1995. The album received unexpected attention. His cassettes were also distributed in Turkey through expatriates and reached the sale of one million copies. Cartel made İnönü Stadium groan with the words, "You are a Turk, in Germany!" The children of workers had become "stars".
I'm an expatriate kid!
Islamic Force, the first group of Turkish rap who initially rapped only in English, finally wrote the lyrics in Turkish in their third album in 1997, which they named Message.
- Considering the conditions of that period, it is quite surprising that the album, which should definitely be listened to by those who want to understand how Turkish rap was in the early period, contains lyrics from Yunus Emre to Tevfik Fikret and melodies from folk songs to Barış Manço.
The message mentions drugs, which are causing serious problems among Turkish youth in Germany, and tells families, "They are your children, don't hurt them!" While the song "Loot Table" offered a satire to the socio-political structure of the period based on Tevfik Fikret's poem "Han-ı Loot", songs such as "Candır, Bu Dünya" emphasized brotherhood against racism and discrimination.
- In response to the nationalist messages given by other rappers as a reflex to the intense pressure they experienced, Islamic Force's statement "This world is the home of all of us" is noteworthy. The song "Gurbet", on the other hand, perhaps best summarizes the emotional state we have been focusing on throughout the article.
The song, which does not contain any hope, is quite different from the general structure of the album.
"I forgot my folk songs in the mountains," says Boe B, who killed my dreams/ I had some land left in my homeland/ And the wind carried it away
This is more or less how Turkish rap was born. For a long time, rappers are not the children of downtrodden workers. At the point reached today, the albums released are the products of the entertainment industry, marketed in professional hands. The themes of some of the songs were not accumulated screams, but time-passing pastimes or short-term fads.
As such, there are comments that rap is becoming more and more Pop, and that it will eventually die. Muci, a member of the 36 Boys gang, disagrees: "[Rap] never dies. Because it has a story. The children of expatriates fought against right-wing extremists. It's a beautiful story." Muci seems to be right. In your opinion?
Follow Me