The repression is intensifying. This is very normal. Because there is resistance against repression. There is a cultural and artistic tradition that cannot be destroyed by oppression. There is a revolutionary culture and art tradition. So, some things are no longer enough for them, so, they are being forced to increase the pressure.
A year ago, three years ago, five years ago—when we recount what we experienced then, we are now encountering things we’ve never experienced before. In the history of Grup Yorum, there has always been oppression. As you also said—albums were shot at, the production company was threatened, concerts were banned, members were arrested. But such a systematic attempt to erase the melodies, the compositions created by a music group, to wipe them entirely from the memory of the people and sever all ties with them—this has never happened before.
We are living under conditions of open fascism.
We are a music group from Turkey, from Anatolia. We are a revolutionary music group. And of course, we will be oppressed.
AS LONG AS WE DO NOT ROOT OUT FASCISM FROM OUR COUNTRY,
AS LONG AS WE DO NOT DRIVE OUT IMPERIALISM,
WE WILL FACE THIS OPPRESSION.
Today, the oppression increases with each passing day. The chain of concert bans that began in 2016 has extended to bans on events, bans on online concerts, bans on rehearsals—and eventually, even if you do nothing, being part of Grup Yorum can be enough to get you arrested. We’re not saying, “What more can we experience?”
We are up against fascism, and of course, it will attack to maintain its power. Today, the so-called platforms of freedom—social media, YouTube, Spotify—these alternative media are also places where we are banned.
Because neither arrests, nor torture, nor concert bans, nor the raids on the İdil Cultural Centre every five or six months, nor the plundering of our institution—none of this could end Grup Yorum. On the contrary, it made Grup Yorum stronger. It helped us become a bigger family. It led to even greater public support.
Because we stood tall. I want to share this: recently, when we met with a young director friend, he said to us:
“WE STAND TALL BECAUSE YOU STAND TALL.”
Of course, we felt proud of those words. Naturally, we will stand tall. But we also saw that, in reality, people we thought we had never reached or didn’t even know were watching us. And because we stood tall, because we didn’t bow down, because we upheld the tradition of revolutionary art—this has led to a new generation of young artists aligned with the people beginning to emerge.
Even though we might not be able to meet those people directly due to the attacks, the public is watching, artists are watching, and they are somehow influenced—they take inspiration.
And in order to stop this completely, they now want to erase even the name of Grup Yorum. As if such a group never existed, as if they hadn’t made over 500 compositions in the last 40 years—they want to erase our songs one by one from the public’s memory.
This is actually a deep-rooted and major attack. Perhaps we don’t fully realize the severity of the situation today because the public support is so strong—but this is a kind of assault we could call an attempt to erase Grup Yorum from history, distinct from the physical torture and pressure.
They are trying to act as if such a group never existed—but this is impossible.
It’s truly impossible. When Pir Sultan was alive, when Karacaoğlan was alive, there was no YouTube, no Google, no Spotify—but they live on today. So thinking that Grup Yorum can be ended by erasing it from these platforms is, from the perspective of those who want to destroy us, a pathetic notion. That’s the only way we can describe it.
And we will not allow this public support to fade. Let them know that.
There is now a Yorum reality beyond us as individuals. Grup Yorum today is not limited to certain people. Before we even had a chance to understand what was going on—what had been deleted, what was happening—the public had already realized the situation, had reacted, and had begun to play and share Grup Yorum’s music everywhere.
So now, the truth of Grup Yorum, the tradition of Grup Yorum, has moved beyond us—it has become the people’s tradition. And so, it’s impossible for them to end it.
There’s a famous story—I won’t go into detail now—but the priest’s story:
“First they came for the communists, and I didn’t speak out—because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Since 2016, Grup Yorum has been facing a wave of bans. And we lost Helin and İbrahim as martyrs just to be able to hold concerts. We defended our songs with our bodies. Two of our friends sacrificed themselves so that our songs and Grup Yorum could live on. Even when our friends were on a death fast, we were in a state of deep censorship and isolation. Only through Helin and İbrahim’s death fasts, only through their sacrifice, were we able to break this.
AND YORUM EXISTS.
YOU CANNOT DESTROY YORUM.
YOU CANNOT END YORUM.
We will hold concerts again. You cannot break our influence—not only on the people but also on artists. Yorum is truly a driving force. I don’t say this just because I am a member of Grup Yorum. I also learned from this collective. I was a student of it. I’m still a student and a teacher—we all are. So when we say something good about Yorum, when we express our pride, it’s not because of populism. On the contrary, we can say it with great peace of mind—because we’ve paid a price for every note. Yes, as we said, it all began with Yorum back then.
Everyone thought: “Yorum is already a revolutionary music group. They are brave, willing to take risks, but we can’t afford that. Their stance is clear. They’re a revolutionary group. Their line is defined. This won’t affect us.” But that’s not how it is.
Fascism grants no right to exist to any voice or anyone not in line with its interests. That’s what happened. It was the same in Nazi Germany. Only the Nazis had the right to live. Only they had the right to speak.
Here, too, the voice of revolutionary artists was first targeted. But now everyone who doesn’t support this government that is collaborating with imperialism is being silenced. Eventually, as you also mentioned, even pop musicians were targeted.
Today, it’s the same. 454 videos of Grup Yorum, clips and recordings from our “Independent Turkey” concerts during the AKP era, were removed. Videos from our 25th Anniversary Inönü Concert, held during the AKP’s rule, were also taken down—citing national security as the reason.
And yet, we held those concerts under their government. In fact, for our 30th Anniversary concerts, we had to apply for rally permits because our concert applications were denied. And once something is officially a rally, there must be a police presence. At our massive concerts—like the one we gave to 700,000 people in İzmir and to 200,000 in Ankara—police, governors, district officials, and the state itself were fully aware. These concerts were held with their knowledge—actually, even with the knowledge of the highest-ranking officials.
But they couldn’t tame Yorum. Now we are facing an all-out campaign of annihilation. They are even banning concerts we held during their own rule, in the name of “national security.”
Earlier, I mentioned a story—the priest’s story. I want to return to that. There’s a difference between knowing, and truly understanding something. If you understand, you act accordingly. Everyone knows the story. They think they know what it means. But they don’t really understand it—because they don’t understand fascism.
They assume we live in a flawed democracy, so what we experience doesn’t make sense. Neither can the soul endure this, nor can the mind comprehend such lawlessness. We say, “It’s madness, mass delusion—it’ll pass.” But no, it won’t pass—because the system itself exists to preserve fascism. We live under a government that collaborates with imperialism to keep fascism alive. That’s why we must go through all this.
Today, Yorum will live. But if artists and intellectuals don’t show the same effort and sensitivity as they did during the hunger strike period—if they don’t stand with us, shoulder to shoulder, under the same barricade against fascism—then the same thing will happen to them. And when it happens, they will be shocked, and they will be crushed—because they do not understand fascism. That, we believe, is the real issue here.
To not see what’s happening and what’s coming—you’d have to be blind. And to open our eyes, we must stop hiding behind excuses. We must stop comforting ourselves by saying we live in a democracy, even if flawed. We must acknowledge the reality: we are governed by fascism. And once we accept that truth, we must fight against it.
That’s the real point people are avoiding. As the slogan says:
“Shoulder to shoulder against fascism”—or it will continue.
Like I said, that young director friend told us,
“We stand tall because you stand tall.”
Even if we can’t physically be there with those people, with those youth—even if every attempt to hold a small concert ends in bans or arrests—we know the struggle we’ve waged is planting seeds in the younger generation. There is a growing potential. And that’s exactly what the AKP is trying to stop.
They love labelling generations—“Generation Z” and so on. But we don’t think that’s very accurate. Youth is always the future. By calling them “Gen Z,” they’re subtly belittling them—as if they’re just internet, phone, or computer kids. But we’ve seen that’s not the case.
In recent months, after what happened with the state-appointed trustees and the public’s reaction, the final straw has been reached. When the mayor of Istanbul is arrested, there is no public safety. Everyone saw that clearly—young people saw it, the whole public saw it.
And then we saw something else:
There’s a popular opposition that’s been growing silently since the Gezi protests—suppressed, but swelling underneath. It wants to erupt. But there’s too much pressure. Mainstream political parties, even those pretending to be on the left, are pacifying this movement.
The forces that could lead that movement—revolutionary artists, revolutionaries, democratic mass organizations—are under pressure. They are cut off from the people, constantly imprisoned. So, we couldn’t see that growing revolutionary potential, those dissident youth.
But now we see it.
We’ve seen it clearly after this latest ban. If YouTube and Spotify hadn’t banned us, we might never have known that in Mimar Sinan University campus, there are young people in their twenties singing Grup Yorum songs. Or that in Middle East Technical University (METU), even though we haven’t performed there in almost ten years, there’s still a generation of students who know and listen to Yorum.
Now we know—because we’re getting videos from everywhere. Young people singing Yorum songs in the metro, sending us the recordings. Videos filmed in cem houses in Didim, singing our songs and sending them to us.
In İzmir, the Musicians’ Association is sending videos. From Mimar Sinan, from Istanbul University, from METU, from universities, videos are pouring in. Young people are expressing their opinions. Of course, we knew this. Today, we are seeing it concretely. We could see the potential we created before, but we saw it on the other side. To destroy that, they tried to make us completely inaccessible to the people — to make Yorum inaccessible. They attempted to implement such a ban to keep the public from reaching us, like erasing us from social media and the internet.
But this backfired. On the contrary, now our songs are being played and sung everywhere as a reaction. And they can’t really stop this. Maybe they can shut down our official pages — they constantly do. We open a new one. The next day, the X account is shut down. Access to Instagram is blocked. Our official YouTube page is closed. The videos uploaded by Kalan Music are taken down. But Yorum videos and songs are in everyone’s hands.
We’re not saying our songs should be exclusively ours. Of course, there is a copyright aspect to it, but Yorum has never cared about that. Given the conditions we live under, we can’t even track those things. Somehow, Yorum songs are played and sung everywhere. Maybe someone is profiting from it — just like Neşet Ertaş. Neşet Ertaş composed hundreds of songs and never collected royalties, never pursued them. Because that wasn’t his concern. It was the same for us.
Today, what we see is a huge sense of ownership from the public — not for profit, but the opposite. People are sharing Yorum videos at the risk of being detained, having their homes raided. That’s why this can’t be prevented. Yorum songs, clips — they’re with thousands of people. Even if they erase or shut us down, others will upload our work — and they already are. Even now, when you go to YouTube, they think they’ve blocked it, but Yorum songs are still being listened to.
……
First of all, we should be cautious of anything that imperialism tries to market as “revolution.” So, let’s briefly explain what a revolution is. A revolution is an upheaval — overturning the base and superstructure institutions. You overturn a system and its institutions and build something new in its place. So, when we look at the concept of “digital revolution,” we see that this term is being used to describe platforms like YouTube, Spotify, and various social media.
The owners of these platforms — Google, Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), Spotify — these are the richest people in the world. They are imperialists. These platforms — YouTube, Spotify, Netflix, etc. — are built to dominate people culturally under the guise of freedom. That’s exactly the policy of imperialism. And it’s liberals who jump on board with this. These are concepts created by so-called intellectuals and writers who have no real connection to the left, socialism, or the people — in fact, they admire imperialism and try to benefit from it while calling themselves democratic, leftist, progressive. They want respectability, but they’re funded by imperialists.
Who most wants these concepts — like digital revolution — to be spread? Imperialists. Because they want to exploit us to the bone, and then have us believe we’re free. We think we’re free just because we can think “freely” — but we’re only thinking what they want us to think. And because we can think that, we believe it’s our own idea and that we’re free. But this isn’t the case.
The word “revolution” is thrown around carelessly — “digital revolution,” “carnation revolution,” “orange revolution,” and so on. Whenever imperialism wants to reshape the world, and sees an obstacle to its exploitation — a country, a government, an association, a music group, a mass organization — it doesn’t matter. To crush it, they use two main tactics. One is violence. The other is the idea that “if there’s going to be communism, we’ll bring it ourselves.” If people want freedom, then we will give them our version of freedom, and make them think that’s freedom.
We’re facing massive monopolies. But we have to be realistic. We shouldn’t overinflate their power. They want us to think we are powerless, that we can’t compete with them — that we’re insects. That we, the people, can’t do anything with our own power, can’t organize anything. They want us to feel that way.
Grup Yorum has existed for 40 years. When it was founded, there was no YouTube, no Spotify. Our songs weren’t there — but we were still drawing thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. And it’s only been a few years since our songs started playing on Spotify. Before that, we weren’t on there — it’s very recent. Even without Spotify and YouTube, we reached the people, and the people sang our songs.
Now this might sound abstract — no CDs, no cassettes, no concerts — how will you reach the people? Everyone is on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music. Without being on those platforms, people might say you can’t survive, that your name will be forgotten, erased. That’s not true. If that were true, the people wouldn’t exist either. Only imperialists would exist. But they need the people too — to continue their exploitation, they need millions. That’s us. We are part of the people. Maybe we’re digging a well with a needle, but we distribute our new songs, singles, on paper cards with QR codes, door to door. When people scan the QR code, the song downloads to their phone.
This isn’t a sale. It’s how Yorum meets the people. It’s artists of the people going to the people — not just to give or sell a song, but maybe to find future members of Yorum, future workers of the İdil Cultural Centre, to meet people and build relationships. That’s how we see it. That’s why Grup Yorum can’t be silenced. It’s not because we had big sponsors or companies financing us. No! We grew because of hard work — for 40 years — and strong bonds with millions of people.
We were the most listened-to music group on Spotify in 2023. Not because of marketing. It was built over 40 years of labour. Today, if we held a concert in Istanbul, we could gather a crowd that even the AKP or CHP couldn’t. We could draw five million people — we’re sure of that. No government or political party can do that. But Grup Yorum can — because it’s been making music with the goal of a fully independent, democratic socialist Turkey, telling people the truth, never bowing or bending, never holding back for profit.
That’s why Grup Yorum holds such a strong place in people’s hearts.
So when we ask, how do we defeat these media monopolies — the answer is: with the people.
By distributing our songs door to door, reaching people one by one. Is it hard? Yes. It’s not easy. But that’s the method. That’s how it has always been.
Not just for Grup Yorum, but throughout history — all great transformations, revolutions, have been the result of long processes, of the small and big efforts of many people. Grup Yorum’s journey will continue in the same way. Grup Yorum will be with the people, and the people will be with Grup Yorum.
So let them censor us as much as they want. This is Okmeydanı — we are at İdil Cultural Centre. There are hundreds of thousands of homes here. We’ll go knock on their doors. They can’t stop that. How can they censor that? How can they block it? They can’t. And it’s not just us — our listeners send songs to their neighbours, friends, relatives — through any means possible. To see Yorum as just a music group is already a mistake. Yorum is a big family.
Our slogan, “Grup Yorum is the people, and it cannot be silenced,” isn’t just a slogan. It’s real. It has flesh and blood. It has a place in life. We live among 85 million people. And we will reach those 85 million — make no mistake. No matter how many of us are imprisoned, even if only one or two remain outside — even if none — Yorum has gone beyond individuals. It has become a tradition. It will spread independently of us.
Right now, everyone is sharing Yorum. Because the attack is against the people, and what Yorum experiences — the layers of oppression — maybe weren’t fully understood before. But today, fascism has made it clear. Maybe we couldn’t show it this clearly — not to the media, not to the people. But thanks to them, they’ve made it very clear. And they’re reaping what they sowed. They’ve shown openly what they want to do: to destroy Yorum. And the people responded: “You can’t destroy Yorum. Because Yorum is us.”
We’ve always said: We make the music of those who resist. But we are already among the resisters.
We are on the side of the resisters. That is, we are—not as the bourgeois humanists say—creating art by empathizing with the people or the oppressed, understanding them, doing a type of art by empathy. We are already alongside them, with the people, with the oppressed, on the same front, living the same things. Therefore, it is of course important to be the voice of those resisting in ‘Well‑Type’ prisons, to write them poems, to turn their resistance into epic, to write lyrics, to compose music. But right now, as you also said, our friends are already in those Well‑Type prisons. It is not only being the voice of the revolutionaries resisting there—it is that our own friends are there, and they are resisting, they are on indefinite hunger strike. This is Grup Yorum’s practice. This is how our 40-year practice already is. Whatever we have said from the stage, whatever we have defended, we have put into life. We have not expressed on that stage anything we have not done ourselves. It is the same for the Well‑Type prison resistance.
On February 6, 2024, in the operation, all Grup Yorum workers were arrested, without exception. And after that operation, all of us, I was also arrested. We were all exiled. To prisons in different provinces of Turkey. And our friends were also taken to the Well‑Types. Both Cem, Vedat, and Rezzan, from the moment they were exiled, immediately began an indefinite hunger strike. Because when they arrived, they realized it was a Well‑Type. They realized it was one of the newly established S‑ or Y‑type prisons and said,
“We will not be a moss‑covered stone at the bottom of the well.”
BAKI CAN ISIK
They were able to do this with resisting powers, revolutionary forces in other countries. Because unfortunately, they surrendered. They accepted extremely dishonourable, inhumane conditions because they surrendered to imperialism’s isolation assault—destroying them with isolation in prisons, liquidating them with isolation. But we do not accept it. Yes, prisons are an unavoidable situation for our struggle and for Yorum; our being arrested, going to prison. But we are not acclimatizing to this. I mean, we know this reality—the reality that we can be arrested, that at any moment we could be taken to Well‑Types, F‑Types—that’s another matter.
But the Well‑Type prison model—with 13-meter ventilation walls, where air, sun, light, even raindrops cannot enter, and all human contact is fully attempted to be cut off; where we “talk by button” with guards; where our right to ventilation is stripped; where in a constantly tiny cell you wash your damp clothes, eat your meals there, use the bathroom there, dry your laundry in that tiny space, where the moisture constantly grows moss, and where you will become ill in a very short time—it destroys you physically, and also with inhumanity, with isolation, they attempt to slowly erode your identity, meaning your political identity. Because humans are social beings, a person can continue life in a healthy way, with a healthy soul, only by communicating. I mean, you know there are unicellular organisms that live alone, those are parasites anyway—but we are not parasites, we are not unicellular organisms, we are human. We are revolutionary artists, and we in those wells, will not, like a moss‑covered stone, remain alone. That is a very human thing—put the revolutionary thing aside—something that any human being should do. Those conditions are not acceptable conditions, not liveable conditions. Our friends did this. And even earlier, the previously arrested and taken to the Well‑Type—Cemil, Cem, Vedat, Rezzan and Bakican Işık—they won; they came out of the wells. Today, Ali Aracı is in Sincan’s No. 1 Well‑Type Prison and is resisting, like all revolutionary prisoners.
ALI ARACI
Grup Yorum is a music group that was established after 1980. Even at that time, in newspaper articles, you know, terms were produced by journalists like “prison instrumentalists”, “prison singers”. Because after September 12, the pulse of the people was beating in prisons. Because all revolutionaries were arrested, prisons were breaking open, the junta crushed the people, crushed them like a steamroller; wherever the resisters were, they were in prison. Especially in Istanbul prisons, Metris, Sağmalcılar… So life’s pulse was beating here, the heart of resistance was beating in prisons, and Grup Yorum naturally was born in reaction to the September 12 junta—and where life is, where resistance is, where hope grows is in the prisons—that is why the first direction turned to prisons, and in the prisons, they began making songs for those resisting. Therefore, since our founding, even if we weren’t born yet ourselves, one of the preconditions for Yorum’s existence and emergence was the prisons of fascism and the resistance of revolutionary prisoners in prisons. For 40 years, uninterruptedly, we have a bond both with those resistances and revolutionary prisoners, and with productive ties—in compositions, lyrics. Today as well, there is nothing surprising or deviant. Whatever we said, whatever solution we provided for the people, we also do its requirement—we implement it in practice—I can say it is resistance.
Now, when we first heard of these bans, our first step was organizing a hashtag campaign on X for two days in a row. Meanwhile, our X account was closed, an access block was imposed, and even though we were going to organize a hashtag, the account kept closing. We opened a new account, opened a backup account, and within 24 hours they closed that too. So in these conditions, social media is banned—but we are still trying to reach the people through social media, because it is one of the important tools we have. Despite such intense social media bans and constant account closures, for two consecutive days we trended in Turkey. On the first day, we were already at the top of the trends. Two hours after the hashtag started, they deleted 11,000 posts under “#GrupYorumHalktırSusturulamaz” (Grup Yorum is the people, cannot be silenced). That shows what kind of intolerance they have—even they cannot tolerate a hashtag. On the second day, we made a call with the “#GrupYorumBenim”(I am the Grup Yorum) tag. Again, we trended in Turkey.
And meanwhile, of course, we made various calls to the people:
- Upload all Grup Yorum videos and songs you have to the internet—to every social media platform, every account; upload them intensively
- Play Grup Yorum in cafés
- Play them on buses
- Play them at weddings
- Play them at circumcision celebrations
- Play them at your associations, in events you are a member of
And we received very fast responses. For example, a video came from an Ankara–Eskişehir train—Grup Yorum was playing on the train’s speakers. A video came from a campus. A video came from a cemevi. Videos came from homes. We will continue this call. It wasn’t just a short-term campaign. From that point on, our basic appeal to our listeners was: Play Grup Yorum, listen to Grup Yorum, spread Grup Yorum.
We received messages from programmers or from people who, even if not programmers, understood computer programming. For instance, one person opened a Telegram page and uploaded all the MP3s there, and sent the link. You can share that. “Your songs are here. Telegram users can listen from here.” Others designed different pages. So support and suggestions are coming from the people in this way. Of course, we want those to increase.
Let’s call again once more: Now, since imperialism is attacking us through technology—using technology not for the benefit of humanity but for its own profit, harming humanity—then the people’s children who understand these technologies must also use their intellect and labour for the people, for the artists of the people, and reach us. Let’s call them. What can we do to overcome these bans? Surely there is a way. They obey no law or order when doing this. There is no court decision regarding Grup Yorum songs being banned, yet in just a few hours they can delete 454 of our videos in one day. If that’s the case, then how will we overcome these bans? We can put our heads together, think. If suggestions come to us, we will evaluate them and decide together what we will do. As you know, we have new singles, and Spotify also removed them. We publish them from time to time. Again, anyone can print them themselves with QR codes and distribute them.
Graffiti is coming. Support—even though we did not call for it, on walls, metros, campuses “Grup Yorum Halktır Susturulamaz” graffiti is being painted. We receive photos. These can be done again. Let’s state these for now. Of course, we are also thinking about what else we can do. As ideas emerge, we will implement them. We’ll issue calls for those too. Going forward, our activities as Yorum continue.
And we’re also at İdil Cultural Centre—let me mention that too. This is Yorum’s home, as you know. In the midst of all these attacks, we not only maintain Yorum but also run our magazine “Tavır”. We also have an alternative cultural–art magazine in the field of literature. And despite having 21 of our prisoners, with all their work and responsibility on our shoulders, we continue to publish Tavır. And we again publish it on the internet via QR code—let’s call people to read it, to follow it. In every field of art, to break imperialist hegemony—against the decadent, corrupt art of imperialism—to grow the people’s art, the revolutionary art of the people, to reach the people in music, literature, cinema, and different fields, our efforts will continue. No matter how much they try to surround us, our horizon is very wide. Because we love our people, we love our homeland, and we won’t surrender them to this rotten order. We won’t allow our youth to be wasted, or our values to be destroyed. We will protect the position of revolutionary artistry. As Yorum, we have taken on this mission, let me say that. Maybe we haven’t yet created in other fields—like cinema—a continuity as big as Grup Yorum that has lasted 40 years and become an authority, but our efforts continue in all fields as we have said. And we will definitely win. We will defeat the decadent art of imperialism with the people’s art. Let me say it this way.
BAHAR KIZILALTUN (GRUP YORUM WORKER)
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