Remembering the ‘Sun of Art’

On the 16th anniversary of his death, Zeki Müren continues to stand tall as a legendary figure in pop culture. A career of over 200 records, films, concerts, spanning over 45 years, is only the tip of the phenomenon

It’s been 16 years today since Zeki Müren, Turkey’s “Sun of Art” and the “Paşa of pop culture,” died in İzmir at the TRT studios, the very institution that had kick-started his musical career half a century earlier.

Müren might just be the most interesting figure modern Turkey has seen in its short history. He was a singer, a songwriter, a composer, a published poet, a performer, an actor, a designer and an illustrator. He was also a visionary, an innovator and a revolutionary. Whatever Müren was, he sure was always larger than the sum of his parts.

Müren’s career in music began in 1951, when he recorded his first album and began performing on the state radio station Istanbul Radyosu. In 1955, he became the first Turkish singer to win a Gold Disc for a record that included the famous song Manolya. Having been chosen as Artist of the Year for many years, Müren made over 200 records and composed over 100 songs in the 45 years of his artistic career. His acting career began around the same time, with his debut feature of 1953, Beklenen Şarkı (Anticipated Song), starring opposite the legendary actress Cahide Sonku, becoming an instant success, and opening the way for a movie career of 18 films, Müren writing the score for some of them as well.

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Islamist salvation makes way to prime time with TV series

The popularity of the new TV series, ‘Huzur Sokağı (Serenity Street), adapted from a ‘salvation novel,’ is reviving a four-decade old Islamist narrative in Turkey’s pop culture: salvation stories

Tune in to Turkish TV channel ATV’s popular new series, Huzur Sokağı (Serenity Street), to get a taste of how the never-ending debate over the public presence of Islam is reflected in pop culture. Read some of the comments made about the series by prominent columnists and writers, and you’ll get a feel of how the debate has evolved (and continues to evolve) in the last four decades.

Huzur Sokağı is an adaptation from Şule Yüksel Şenler’s bestselling novel of the same name, published first in 1970 and has been reprinted more than 100 times since then. The novel is one of the most popular examples of the “hidayet romanları,” or the salvation novels, that brought a new impact onto the literary scene in the 1980s.

The common theme of the salvation novel was a journey from the debauched ways of a secular/Western life style to salvation through the acceptance of Islam. As in many of the salvation novels, Huzur Sokağı features a young man idealized by his display of Islamic values, a perfect specimen of the hard-working, honest and loving family member.

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1980 coup, in the eyes of filmmakers

It is over three decades since the military overthrow of the Turkish government on Sept 12, 1980, but the repercussions have been inspiring filmmakers ever since

This week marks the 32nd anniversary of the 1980 coup, which kick started a military regime that would put 7,000 people in prison, execute 50, and have all opposition silenced for a long time to come.

The Sept. 12, 1980 coup also inaugurated a period when Turkish cinema was silenced almost into non-existence, even going as far as to the burning of rolls of films. Arrests and imprisonments were common, with movie stars such as Tarık Akan and filmmakers such as Şerif Gören and Ömer Uğur serving their fair share of prison time.

Featuring the coup and its aftermath as the subject of a movie was unthinkable in the early 1980s. However, with filmmakers living through the direct consequences of the oppressive regime, the coup eventually became a regular subject. Now, a new movie exploring the coup and its aftermath hits the theaters every couple of years.

The first feature film to deal directly with the haunting effects of the coup was Zeki Ökten’s Ses (The Voice) of 1986. The film starred Tarık Akan as a young man who moves to a coastal town to start a new life after spending years in prison. Akan himself became familiar with prison life in the years following the coup.

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Orhan Kemal’s works still in demand decades later

Orhan Kemal was a modernist pioneer of the Turkish novel whose works continue to be relevant more than half a century on. Producers cannot seem to get enough of his works, with two new adaptations

The frustrations of the working class, the changing face of feudal Turkey, the crippling effects of patriarchy over women and men, the ever-fascinating appeal of untamed chemistry between the sexes. All of these themes are the go-to material for TV producers trying to create the next best TV series in a period where dozens of new shows replace dozens of others.

All of these themes are at the core of Orhan Kemal’s novels and stories. Kemal is one of the greatest of Turkish writers and a modernist pioneer of the Turkish novel. His realist novels on class differences and the poor in Turkey left their mark on a period spanning two decades after the early 1950s, now called the Golden period in Turkish literature.

Meeting another great literary name, the “romantic revolutionary” Nazım Hikmet, in prison in the early 1940s had a profound effect on Kemal’s literary direction and social politics. He began writing poetry and stories, eventually trying his craft in novels and plays.

Kemal was one of the first authors to write about the working class, the alienation of immigrants in big cities, mass urbanization and the changing social structure of Turkey after World War II. He shed a realist light and took a brutal look at poor people living in dignity. Kemal’s stories, novels and plays also lent a voice to working-class women for perhaps the first time in modern Turkish literature.

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