Today’s Zaman, Turkey
March 31 2007
Turkish punk song evokes popular frustration, but angers the state
Last year, a Turkish teenager made a home video of himself
lip-synching a punk rock song that blasted Turkey’s tough system of
university enrollment, and slapped the recording on YouTube.
To some, it was a harmless act of adolescent rebellion. For the
state, it was a threat in a country with strict limits on expression.
Now the band that released the song faces charges of insulting state
employees and will go on trial May 2 in the Turkish capital, Ankara.
If convicted, the five musicians, along with their manager and a
former band member, face up to 18 months in jail, although they could
get off with a fine or a warning.
The quandary of the band "Deli," or "Crazy" in Turkish, reveals
Turkey’s contradiction in seeking European standards — and EU
membership — while tolerating little criticism of state institutions
and national identity. The conflict has been a part of Turkish
society since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the revered founder of the
modern nation, took power after the Ottoman Empire fell in the early
20th century.
Several intellectuals, notably Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk
and slain ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, were prosecuted on
charges of "insulting Turkishness" for comments on mass killings of
Armenians a century ago. In early March, YouTube was banned for two
days in Turkey because of videos that allegedly insulted Atatürk.
Deli might have eluded state scrutiny if not for the posting on
YouTube. The clip shows a teenager bopping around and making obscene
gestures against a blank backdrop while lip-synching the song. The
minor, identified in media reports only by his first name, Hakan,
will take the exam this year.
Hakan’s video logged hundreds of thousands of hits and elevated the
song to prominence among young Turks who dread the university exam,
and many older Turks who viewed the experience as a trauma.
"It seems we have put our finger on the right point," Cengiz Sarý,
the wiry, bearded vocalist of the band, said in a cramped recording
studio in Ýstanbul. "This is clear in the reaction we got."
The song is called "ÖSYM," the Turkish acronym for The Student
Selection and Placement Center, the state institution that decides
which students go to university, based on a three-hour exam every
June on subjects including language, biology and mathematics. The
process is highly competitive, reflecting a relative dearth of
opportunities in higher education; a complex scoring system
contributes to frustrations. In 2006, there were university spots for
less than one-third of the 1.5 million students who took the test.
Some students pay for private tuition to boost chances of passing,
and those who fail try again the following year, or seek jobs in a
nation of more than 70 million with 10 percent unemployment.
The pressure is so intense that a newspaper columnist once described
students who took the exam as "war veterans."
"In Turkey, as in most other countries, the demand for higher
education far exceeds the places available,» the university placement
center said in a 2006 booklet. It said it aimed to select students
«in a fair and economical manner while meeting the necessary
deadlines," and noted efforts to impose objective, centralized
testing over the decades.
The lyrics of "ÖSYM," a maelstrom of manic drumming and grinding
guitar riffs, are a classic ode against the establishment:
"It has always been like this but it needs to be stopped,
Life should not be a prison because of an exam,
Three hours, a hundred and eighty questions,
May God protect my mind."
It goes on:
"I have got lost,
You have ruined my future,
I am going to tell you one thing,
Shove that exam…"
Mild stuff, by the standards of Western popular culture. Turkey,
although democratic, has a history of violent conflict and military
involvement in politics, and the state retains robust powers to ward
off perceived threats. A popular attack on a pillar of the state, the
education system, was too much to bear. Turkish media reported Prof.
Ünal Yarýmaðan, chairman of the university placement system, as
saying he enjoyed the YouTube video, but asked lawyers to investigate
anyway.
"We opened the case and now it is in the hands of justice," state
prosecutor Kürþat Kayral said.
The Deli musicians, in their early 20s, don’t look like stereotypical
punks. No spiked hair, lip or nose studs, drug addictions or taste
for vandalism. Instead, they are polite, mild-mannered and
irreverent. All passed the university exam, and some are still in
school. Vocalist Sarý, who is studying to become an art teacher, says
they come from a tradition of satirical songcraft, citing Cem Karaca,
a Turkish rocker whose anthems in the 1970s earned him an arrest
warrant. He was in West Germany at the time, and only returned home
after charges were dropped. Karaca died in 2004.
Deli will release its first album in April, and didn’t include the
song "ÖSYM" to avoid controversy.
"We are not EMI or Sony, with big lawyers to defend us," said Bahadýr
Dikeçligil, a director of the alternative label, Kadýkoy Müzik Yapým,
that is releasing the album online and as a compact disc.
Base guitarist Enis Çoban, who studied textile manufacturing, said
there was more censorship in Turkey than in Europe or the United
States, but less than in China or Iran.
"Compared to dictatorships, Turkey is like heaven," Çoban said.
"Turkey still has a lot missing, but we believe that it is on the
right track to improve itself."
31.03.2007
CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, The Associated Press ÝSTANBUL
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress