Turkish hip-hop refers to hip-hop produced by members of the Turkish minority in Germany, and to a lesser degree by hip-hop artists in Turkey. The Turkish minority, called the Turks, first drew inspiration from the discrimination and racism they received while living as migrant workers in Germany in the 1960s. Turkish hip-hop uses Arabesk music, a folk style that finds its roots in Turkey during the 1960s, and is influenced by the hip-hop music of America and Germany. Album artwork, lyrical content, and the Turkish language are used by hip-hop artists to express their uniquely Turkish identity.
The first Turkish hip-hop album was recorded by the Nuremberg, Germany group King Size Terror in 1991. Islamic Force (now known as KanAK) is often recognized as the beginning of Turkish hip-hop. Turkish hip-hop is still used as an outlet for many who feel marginalized as Turks living in German society.
History Before Turkish hip-hop took hold in Turkey, specifically Istanbul and Ankara, it originally grew out of Turkish ethnic enclaves in Germany. Owing its large population to the Turkish migrants that came to Germany in the 1960s as Gastarbeiter (guest-workers), 2/3 of all Turks in Germany are under the age of 35 and half are under 25.(Statistiches Landesant Berlin, 1999) Exclusionary practices on behalf of the government, particularly in terms of citizenship status, create systematic discrimination of Turks in Germany that fuels racism against migrant workers. Although born in Germany, the children of these Gastarbeiters are not recognized as citizens by Germany or their parents' country of origin. Often living in dilapidated neighborhoods and marked as outsiders by their "eastern" traditions and poor command of the German language, Turkish urban youth gravitate towards hip-hop as means of expressive identity construction. From the first rap vinyl recorded in the Turkish language—‘Bir Yabancının Hayatı’ (The Life of a Foreigner) by King Size Terror—to the creation of an entire subgenre—Oriental hip-hop—Turkish youth in Germany have embraced and moved beyond pure imitation of African American hip-hop culture. Localizing hip-hop, Turks in Germany have reworked it to “act as a mode of expression for a range of local issues” particularly those related racism and the problem of national identity experienced by younger members of ethnic minority groups.Bennet, Andy. "Hip Hop Am Main: the Localization of Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture." Media, Culture, and Society 21 (1999).
Turkish hip-hop had risen to prominence in Germany with the success and popularity of the Turkish rap group Cartel in the mid 1995s throughout Turkey. After the success of their first album, the members of Cartel had a fight almost killing some of their members. The group was forbidden to perform together again and the members of Cartel were jailed. Cartel's album was banned from the music market.
In Turkey, Ceza, Dr. Fuchs (formerly "Nefret"), Fuat Ergin and Sagopa Kajmer were spearheads of the genre. Sansar Salvo, Pit10, Şehinşah, Hayki, Saian, Allâme are popular figures of second wave contemporary rap music in Turkey. New generation or 'Drill' include Ezhel, UZI, Ben Fero and LVBEL C5.
Turkish Migration to Germany After being recruited by the German government to fill the labor shortages in specific industries, Turkish migrants relocated to German cities such as Berlin and Frankfurt under the ‘myth of return’.Kaya, Ayhan. Constructing Diasporas: Turkish Hip Hop Youth in Berlin. New Brunswick: Transaction, 2001. 1-236. The first generation of migrants came to Berlin as individual workers and then slowly brought their families over. Gastarbeiters, by nature of the very word (translated as ‘guest worker'), expected to return to their homeland and did not identify with Germany. This mentality combined with government exclusionary practices caused many Turks to feel alienated and displaced; they maintained an outsider position in society. Whereas the German government could recruit temporary guest workers, they could also be controlled and sent away as the interest of capital dictated. Turks in Germany, excluded because of German policies regarding citizenship, rallied around ethnic lines as a political strategy.
Because of poor integration policies in Germany, Turkish immigrants isolated themselves in ethnic enclaves away from the dominant society and created their own vibrant communities. After Germany passed a law in 1983 to pay foreigners to leave the country, Turks set up their own services to mediate between individuals and the government, creating institutionalized space. Discrimination in Western Europe forced immigrants to constitute their own communities and to define their group boundaries in cultural terms. Children of migrants who were born in Germany and grew up in these ethnic enclaves carry the norms and traditions of their parents' culture and the dominant society. Kreuzberg, a densely populated area in Berlin with a history of hosting guest workers, is dubbed ‘Kleines Istanbul’ or ‘Little Istanbul.’ Reminiscent of the atmosphere in Istanbul, Kreuzberg is full of local Turkish businesses, open Turkish markets, travel agencies offering regular flights to Turkey, and a Turkish language library. Turks in Germany maintain strong connections to their homeland while constructing local Turkish networks through the conduits of globalization; Turkish language mass media is salient in Berlin.
Influences Before Turkish hip-hop took root in Germany, it was influenced by American and German hip-hop. Whereas German hip-hop gained widespread appeal throughout the early 1995s, it wasn't until Advance Chemistry's single “Fremd im eigenen Land” (“Strangers in Our Own Land”) that plight of the immigrant was addressed. For Turkish youth who didn't identify with Germany as a homeland, localized German hip-hop still did not appeal to them nor function as a medium of self-expression. Looking for representation of their own heritage, Turkish artists and producers used German hip-hop as a springboard to create Turkish inspired rap lyrics and beats. In an interview with Andy Bennet one Turkish-German label owner put it: “Well, from a musical point of view we’re trying to combine traditional Turkish melodies and rhythms with rap. The kids have been doing it for a while… you can buy tapes of Turkish music from Turkish stores around the city and they’ve been experimenting with that music, sampling it, mixing it with other stuff and rapping to it… We’re just trying to build on the Turkish rap thing and build an outlet for it… If I’m going to tell you why we’re doing it, well, it’s pride really. The point about a lot of this German rap it’s all about coloured guys saying look at us, we’re like you, we’re German. But I don’t feel like that I never have. I’m not German, I’m a Turk and I’m passionately proud of it”.Bennet, Andy. "Hip Hop Am Main: the Localization of Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture." Media, Culture, and Society 21 (1999).
Language The most obvious demarcation of Turkish hip-hop in Germany is language. As Bennet writes, “the fact of language itself can also play a crucial role in informing the way in which song lyrics are heard and the forms of significance which are read into them”.Bennet, Andy. "Hip Hop Am Main: the Localization of Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture." Media, Culture, and Society 21 (1999) First and foremost, Turkish rap distinguishes itself from German and American hip-hop by the utilizing the Turkish language rather than German or English. Feridun Zaimoglu, one of Germany’s leading literary figures, describes the Turkish most hip-hop artists employ as ‘Kanak Sprak.’ ‘Kanak Sprak’ makes a direct reference to local racism in Germany Brown, Timothy S. “‘Keeping it Real’ in a Different ‘Hood: (African-) Americanization and Hip-hop in Germany.” In The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 137-50. London; A This creolized Turkish-German spoken by the disenfranchised youth of the hip-hop generation is characterized as sentences without commas, full stops, capital letters, and any kind of punctuation as well as frequent switches between Turkish and German Kanak Sprak alone, without even delving into the lyrics, sets Turkish hip-hop apart from pure imitation of American music and makes it more meaningful for its Turkish listeners. For example, when Cartel—the original Turkish-language rap project to get off the ground—released their debut album to address the first generation of Turkish immigrants in Berlin, it sparked an international controversy. Although some refrains were rapped in German, most of the lyrics as well as promotional materials and paraphernalia were in Turkish. Cartel even reclaimed the word ‘Kanak’ from its derogative roots by using it liberally in their album, “Don’t be ashamed, be proud to be a Kanak!” and branding it all over their T-shirts and stickers.Diessel, Caroline. "Bridging East and West on the "Orient Express": Oriental Hip Hop in the Turkish Diaspora of Berlin." Journal of Popular Music Studies 12 (2001): 165-187. This not only marked hip-hop culture as distinctly Turkish, but simultaneously created a separate public sphere for fans of Turkish hip-hop because most Germans did not speak Turkish. The very fact that the language of the album was in Turkish shifted the balance of power from privileged Germans to oppressed Turks. In the liner notes of the cd, “the English words ‘What are they sayin?!’ appear in big bubble letters. Underneath, the caption teasingly reads in German: ‘Didn’t pay attention in Turkish class? Then ask for the translations fast with this card’”.
Aesthetics and Local Significance In addition to rapping in the language of their ancestral homeland, Turkish hip-hop is aesthetically different from German hip-hop. Primarily, Turkish hip-hop artists choose to sample Arabesk music in their songs drawing upon a mythic Turkish past. Arabesk is folk music style that originally appeared in Turkey during the 1960s as a reflection of migrant workers first experience of immigration inside the homeland As Brown writes, “With its bittersweet longing for a homeland left behind—a homeland most Turkish-German youngsters could never have seen expect perhaps on vacation—Arabesk expresses a nostalgia and cultural pessimism that dovetails perfectly with hip hop’s invention of community through stories of displacement” (Brown, 144). In describing Turkish music, Mc Boe-B from Islamic Force tells the narrative, “boy comes home and listens to hip hop, then his father comes along and says ‘come on boy, we’re going shopping.’ They get in the car and the boy listens to Turkish music on the cassette player. Later, he gets our record and listens to both styles in one”