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Lund_Turkish independent labels in Germany
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The hidden history of Turkish independent labels in Germany from the 1960s
to the 1980s
Holger Lund
Conference Paper for the Colloquium | Independent Music Labels: Histories, Practices and
Values, Instituto de Etnomusicologia – Centro de Estudos em Música e Dança (INET-md)1
– 22.-25.06.2021.
Special thanks to the organizational team Pedro Nunes, Pedro Roxo, and Leonor Losa.
“We were never allowed to write the history books.”
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South. Justice against Epistemicide
Introduction
The first, largest and commercially most successful independent record company in whole
Germany until today has been Türküola. It was founded in Cologne by the Turkish migrant
Yılmaz Asöcal in 1964. In the history of independent record companies as well as in the
history of pop music in Germany Türküola and the many other Turkish independent labels in
Germany are not mentioned, the companies and their history remain hidden.
The aim of this paper is to put light on this fact and to ask for its conditions: Why remain
these labels hidden in music historiography until today? And what is so special about them?2
At first, we will have a look at different concepts of independent labels and at the state of re-
search on Turkish music and its industry. Combining perspectives from media and cultural
studies3 as well as from musicology4, I propose to analyze the discourse (or the lack of it)
about these labels and the music and people linked to them.
At second, the Turkish labels in Germany had no access to the German record industry’s
relevant official promotion and distribution channels (hit charts, media, stores). I would like
to examine why.
At third, having no access, the labels had to invent their own promotion and distribution
channels. What helped them to succeed was the Turkish attitude and practice of ‘doing inde-
pendent’. This attitude and where it derives from will be in the focus in the end.
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1 Cf. http://www.inetmd.pt/index.php/en/conferenciaseventos/14095-coloquio-a-edicao-independente-de-musica-historias-praticas-e-valores-en –
accessed: 06.08.2021.
2 For support in research and inspiration I would like to thank Özgür Çiçek, Ercan Demirel, Cem Kaya, and Can Sungu. A special thank goes for
Cornelia Lund, supporting continuously the research for and the production of the text.
3 For media and cultural studies, I would like to draw especially on Thomas Weber’s media milieu theory, which contextualizes media and their
connections within cultural production. Cf. Thomas Weber, “Documentary Film in Media Transformation’,” in: InterDisciplines – Journal of
History and Sociology. Vol 4, No 1: Documentary Film Styles. Historical and Sociological Perspectives, 2013, pp. 103–126, doi: 10.2390/indi-
v4-i1-79.
4 For musicology, Kyle Devine’s political ecology of music and his hidden material histories of music delivers a useful inspiration and frame for my
undertaking of analyzing the hidden history of Turkish independent labels in Germany as not only as a market related phenomenon but also as a
socio-political and media-based phenomenon. Cf. Kyle Devine, Decomposed. The political ecology of music, Cambridge/London: MIT Press,
2019.
Lund_Turkish independent labels in Germany
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Independent labels in general
In short, there exist three different concepts for independent labels: concepts that are related
to media and technology (shellack, vinyl, cassette; production facilities etc.), concepts that are
based on the access to the market (promotion and distribution channels) and concepts, which
relate to a specific mindset or attitude (DYI culture, punk ideology).
For my subject, that is “The hidden history of Turkish independent labels in Germany from
the 1960s to the 1980s,” I will focus on independent labels and the question of access to the
market but consider also the specific mindset.
In the beginning of the vinyl record period in the 1950s, a so-called major-label controlled
production, manufacturing and distribution. If a vinyl record label did not control this process
entirely, it was recognized as an independent label. In the 1960s the notion of highly success-
ful chart music started to be as well connected to the idea of major-labels. Labels selling less
popular non-mainstream music were more on the side of independent labels.
In general, major-labels and independent labels were not in opposition. Independent labels
used the access to the market, especially the established promotion and distribution channels
of the much larger multinational major-labels. However, the term ‘independent’ points to a
legal and, to a large extent, economic independence from the major media corporations.
According to Charlie Gillett, one key criterion for separating major- and independent labels is
the access to the market via promotion and distribution channels. Owning one or several such
channels could make you a major-label.5
Music-wise, the lower economic pressure for musicians associated with independent labels,
especially with artist-run ones, could encourage experimentation and creative autonomy in
music making. With major-labels, however, music making is much more commercially
driven, usually within a smaller, conservative range of aesthetic possibilities.6 To be clear: For
majors, the musical material is completely unimportant as long as profit can be made from it,
whereas independent labels care about their music and their – often minoritarian – audiences,
which they also represent.7
Yet, the separation between major and independent labels is still an artificial one, as an in-
between construction – so-called “major-independent labels” – also exists, depending on
access and ownership of promotion and distribution channels. This point will be relevant for
my argument.
Since the late 1970s, the idea of independent labels is generally closely connected to punk
music and its DIY-spirit, enabling music production, promotion and distribution alongside
the established major-owned channels. Here, my subject, the Turkish (major-)independent
labels in Germany, leads me to re-think this idea: There has been a great portion of DIY-
spirit and non-hegemonic underground practice within Turkish (major-)independent labels
more than ten years earlier than punk. To a certain extent, the Turkish (major-)independent
labels in Germany developed a prototype for punk music’s independent label thinking –
without punk music ever knowing and referring to this prototype. The Turkish (major-)in-
dependent labels kept their model of ‘doing independent’ underground, had to keep it
underground or were kept out of sight – we will come back to this issue.
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5 Cf. Charlie Gillett, The Sound of the City. The Rise of Rock and Roll, New York: Outerbrigde & Diesntfrey, 1970; cf. also Peer Göbel,
“Internet und ‘Independent Labels’,” master thesis, Freie Universität Berlin Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft, 2004, pp.
27f; Christian Elster, Pop-Musik sammeln. Zehn ethnografische Tracks zwischen Plattenladen und Streamingportal, Bielefeld: transcript, 2021, p.
83.
6 Cf. Göbel, 2004, p. 28.
7 Cf. N.N., art. “Independent-Label,” in: Indiepedia, https://indiepedia.de/index.php?title=Independent-Label – accessed: 06.08.2021.
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State of research
Starting with the so-called ‘guest workers’ in the early 1960s, the largest Turkish migrant
community outside Turkey built up in Germany, growing up to three million people today.
Yet, representation and acknowledgement of this community in the cultural life of the
German society has been and still is weak. German music history for example is mainly
written by non-Turkish people. This may be already a reason why it is written without
considering Turkish music in and from Germany. And when it comes to Turkish record
labels in Germany, they are almost totally neglected.8
In 2020, Christopher Ramm summed up the state of research on Turkish pop music in
general: “It is striking how little attention academic research gave to Turkish pop and rock
music of the 1960s and 1970s until very recently,” and he detected a general “lack of interest.”9
This has changed significantly since about 2018 not least with a new wave of English writing
Turkish scholars.10 Yet the current research did not went far enough to bring up a deeper
understanding of the Turkish music market in general and especially of the Turkish music
market in Germany.
The history of migrant music culture that had emerged in Germany since the mid of the
1960s is in general almost completely absent from public perception. The literature published
to date is very limited and archives are lacking. The music and culture of migrants has ap-
parently not yet been considered relevant enough to be documented, archived and protected.11
After about 60 years of Turkish music made and produced in Germany there still exists no
comprehensive history of Turkish music in and from Germany12, let alone a history of its
music labels. A fact, that has to be researched, questioned and discussed.
To do so, I propose to analyze the discourse (or the lack of it) about these labels and the
music and people linked to them, in order to understand why these independent labels have
been blocked from the official distribution channels and why they are written out of cultural
and music history until today.
Journalist Adama Juldeh Munu states about hidden histories: “It suffices to say ‘hidden
histories’ are either due to willful design to keep them hidden or the lack of reliable sources
that makes proper enquiry possible.”13 In our case both takes place. Since Martin Stokes’
observations in 2010 things have not really changed: “The topic [of the Turkish music
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8 Things change for the good, finally, for example with Oliver Seibt, Martin Ringsmut, David-Emil Wickström (eds.), Made in Germany. Studies
in Popular Music, Routlegde Global Popular Music Series, New York/London: Routlegde, 2021. This book contains at least a chapter on Turkish
hip-hop and an interview conducted with a Turkish rap artist. Still any Turkish music made in Germany previous and alongside to hip-hop is not
considered at all.
9 Christopher Ramm, “Turkey’s “Light” Rock Revolution – Anadolu Pop, Political Music and the Quest for the Authentic,” in: Berna Pekesen
(ed.), Turkey in Turmoil. Social Change and Political Radicalization During the 1960s, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2020, p. 273.
10 Cf. Holger Lund, “Decolonizing Turkish Pop Music Historiography. Anatolian Rock Studies as an Example,” conference paper for “Sound /
Music / Decoloniality: A Research Colloquium,” March 24-25, 2020, Maynooth University Arts and Humanities Institute in cooperation with
the Department of Music and the Society for Musicology in Ireland, April 2020, online in:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340607051_Decolonizing_Turkish_Pop_Music_Historiography_Anatolian_Rock_Studies_as_an_Exa
mple – accessed: 06.08.2021.
11 The same goes for migrant film and video culture, cf. Can Sungu, “Zurückgespult. Türkische Kino- und Videoabende in Westberlin,” in:
Bi’bak (Hrsg.), Bitte Zurückspulen: Deutsch-türkische Film- und Videokultur in Berlin, Berlin 2019, p. 6. For a rare and very important
documenting archive of migrant culture in Germany cf. DOMiD. Dokumentationszentrum und Museum über die Migration in Deutschland,
https://domid.org/ – accessed: 06.08.2021.
12 Cf. our forthcoming text “A history of flops and a new turn: The Turkish-German music interplay. From rendering Turkish pop music
inaudible in Germany to “play it loud’” (tba).
13 Adama Juldeh Munu, “Siyah: Deciphering the Ottoman Involvement in the African Slave Trade,” in: Afropean. Adventures in Black Europe,
Dec 14, 2020, https://afropean.com/siyah-deciphering-the-ottoman-involvement-in-the-african-slave-trade/ – accessed: 06.08.2021.
Lund_Turkish independent labels in Germany
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market] has been neglected, and facts and figures are hard to come by.”14 A reason for figures
being hard to come by are various interest groups manipulating them upwards or down-
wards.15 Therefore, non-transparency starts already within the Turkish music market itself.
Yet, larger structures are at stake in Germany. Researcher Vanessa E. Thompson observes:
“In Germany, there is a systematic failure to recognize racism as a structural and institutional
problem.”16 One element of racism as a structural and institutional problem is to push out or
ignore the history of Turkish music made in Germany from the historiography of music in
Germany. And things go deeper: the “willful design” to keep a certain history hidden has to
do with a basic structure of ‘access denied’, as I would like to call it, when we ask for the
reasons for the hidden life of Turkish music in Germany. The independent Turkish labels in
Germany and their special distribution system were made up specifically because of an ex-
perienced ‘access denied’ to the existing structures for musical life. And this attitude of ‘access
denied’ just turns up again when it comes to historiography of German music. This is what
Thompson means: there is “a systematic failure to recognize racism as a structural and in-
stitutional problem”. What are the reasons for this ‘access denied’ and which larger “willful
design” shapes it?
‘Access denied’ – Racism and Turkish independent labels in Germany
Let us sum up the situation for our case: The first German independent label to be acknow-
ledged in the history of the German record industry is usually David Volksmund Produktion
(founded in 1971 by the music group Ton Steine Scherben)17 or Trikont (founded in 1972)18
– although this is not true. In fact, the first, largest and commercially most successful inde-
pendent record company ever in Germany has been Türküola. Türküola, founded in 1964,
released more than a thousand singles, albums and compilations by Turkish artists.19 The re-
cordings were made in Turkey and Germany primarily for the Turkish community in Ger-
many as well as in Europe but also for the export to Turkey. The company sold millions of
records, CDs and cassettes, in Germany, Europe and Turkey, winning golden and platinum
records. And Türküola was only one of a much greater number of (major-)independent
Turkish record companies in Germany with e.g. Minareci founded in 1969 in Munich and
Uzelli founded in 1971 in Frankfurt on the Main.20
Though the first record released by a Turkish-German record label is not easy to track down.
Probably it was Metin Türköz with “Almanya’da Neler Var/Altmışlık Oma” released on Areg
Ses21 in 1965 or one of the other early Metin Türköz records released on Türküola’s sub-label
Türkofon.22
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14 Martin Stokes, The Republic of Love. Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music, The University of Chicago Press: Chicago/London, 2010,
p. 16. Similar already Martin Greve, Musik der imaginären Türkei: Musik und Musikleben im Kontext der Migration aus der Türkei in
Deutschland, Stuttgart, J.B. Metzler, 2003, p. 82.
15 Cf. Ibd. p. 112 and p. 158.
16 Vanessa E. Thompson, “Reformen reichen nicht,” in: Missy Magazine, No. 59, April/Mai 2021, p. 52.
17 Cf. Andreas Bock, “Das schwarze Band,” in: Mint: Magazin für Vinylkultur, No. 5, 2021, p. 90.
18 Cf. Helmut Philipps, “Dahoam hört sich’s am schönsten,” in: Mint: Magazin für Vinylkultur, No. 8, 2020, p. 34. Interestingly both labels were
publishing companies, like Pläne, another early independent label in Germany. It seems independent labels in Germany were developed more
from the side of literature than from the side of music, respectively with the aim to turn leftist activist literature into music, which all of them did.
One could call them, at least at their beginning, independent literature-music labels, releasing mainly texts and releasing records only seldom, from
time to time. That is maybe also a reason why Pläne, perhaps the most literature-related of these labels, although releasing records at a very low
rate since 1963, is usually not taken into account as an independent music label.
19 For the catalogue see www.diskotek.info/RecordLabel/Details/269 – accessed: 06.08.2021. See also Greve, 2003, Appendix, pp. 515-534.
20 As with Türküola, these two other labels started not with releasing records but trying to sell (Turkish) goods to their Turkish communities in
Germany. It seems Türküola entered the record market with releases in 1967, Minareci in 1974 and Uzelli in 1976. Thanks to Ercan Demirel for
pointing this out to me.
21 Cf. https://www.discogs.com/Kayserili-Metin-T%C3%BCrk%C3%B6z-Almanyada-Neler-Var-Altm%C4%B1%C5%9Fl%C4%B1k-
Oma/release/12890503
22 Cf. https://www.discogs.com/artist/4310048-Metin-T%C3%BCrk%C3%B6z
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There were a lot of independent record labels founded, smaller and larger ones, with infra-
structural backing by “Turkish studios which existed in many European cities.”23 Greve lists
about two dozen independent Turkish record labels in Germany, about seven of them being
major-independents, one of them representing also up to 180 Turkish companies for the
German respectively the European market.24 Of course, over time, these labels did not sell
only vinyl records. Vinyl faded out in the 1980s, instead cassettes, starting around the mid
1970s, and CDs, starting from the 1980s, came into the shelfs. We still have no clear picture
of the Turkish music market and its volume in Germany, but outlines of an extraordinary and
powerful release and distribution system can already be detected. And if we consider the
Turkish labels from Germany selling also to Europe and Turkey, like Türküola did, one can
start to believe the circulating anecdote of sacks of cash being dropped each evening in the
central Türküola store in Cologne.
As these labels had no access to the German record industry’s relevant official promotion and
distribution channels (hit charts, media, stores) they had to invent their own promotion and
distribution channels, primarily with grocery stores and general stores as main selling points
and Turkish newspapers as media displays.
With his sub-label Teledisc, founded in 1968, Asöcal even tried several times to enter the
German record industry’s system. However, this sub-label has been a failure with only half a
dozen releases including German schlager and English versions of Anadolu rock songs. Asöcal
gave it up in 1980.25
Why did Turkish labels experience an ‘access denied’ when it comes to the German record
industry’s relevant official promotion and distribution channels? We have to come back to our
observation concerning structural racism. Which structure profits, one may ask? A structure
that is built on cheap labor forces and which needs a justification for the ultra-low and un-
equal payment. Is there a better one than people being of little value, their cultural identity,
including their music, being of little or no value? The logic of racism is a logic of devaluation
– and profit.26
In her documentary film Yeryüzü Göçerleri (1979), Gülseven Güven openly compares and
parallels migrant Turkish people with black people as slaves. The film even presents Turkish
migrants as slaves within a slave trade organized by the Turkish state, who sells the folk as
labor force to work abroad for sending in valuable foreign currency, which the state needs
desperately to compensate the immense trade deficit. The status of Turkish migrants in the
social hierarchy in German society was made clear in the film: “They are at the end of the
list,” as the narrator puts it toward the end of the film. And in fact, Turkish people have been
named colloquially often “the N* of Europe,” to maximize their othering and devaluation.
Thomas Solomon sums up the status of Turkish people by describing them as “second-class
non-citizens in Germany.”27 Here a “willful design” comes in again, a “willful design” which
one may relate to Boaventura de Sousa Santos theory of “abyssal thinking,”28 turned into an
abyssal practice of exclusion and denial.
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23 Martin Greve, Makamsız. Individualization of Traditional Music on the Eve of Kemalis Turkey, Orient Institut Istanbul, Istanbuler Texte und
Studien 39, Würzburg: Ergon, 2017, p. 44.
24 Cf. Greve, 2003, pp. 78f and p. 81f.
25 Cf. the small label discography: https://www.discogs.com/label/225384-Teledisc-2?sort=year&sort_order=asc – accessed: 06.08.2021.
26 Cf. Achille Mbembe, Critique de la raison nègre, Paris: Édition La Découverte, 2015.
27 Thomas Solomon, “Made in Almanya. The Birth of Turkish Rap,” in: Oliver Seibt, Martin Ringsmut, David-Emil Wockström (eds.), Made in
Germany. Studies in Popular Music, Routlegde Global Popular Music Series, New York/London: Routlegde, 2021, p. 112. The problem
continues as Turkey is still not part of the EU, cf. Kathrin Prümm, “Die Rechte türkischer Migranten Deutschland,” Bremen: COMCAD,
Working Papers – Center on Migration, Citizenship and Development, 2003.
28 Cf. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South. Justice against Epistemicide, London/New York: Routlegde, 2014, especially
chapter 4 “Beyond Abyssal Thinking”.
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Being structurally and socially marginalized, it is maybe no wonder that ‘access denied’ is one
of the basic experiences for Turkish people in many regards. They could not enter many cul-
tural, educational and recreational facilities,29 their life was reigned by a more or less unspoken
separationist racism and classism. Although Germany being a capitalist society, the potential
money Turkish people could bring in to cultural, educational and recreational facilities was
not welcome. Doors were closed to them, even as consumers or clients, because they were
regarded as a disturbance and devaluation for the consumption process for and by many other
people in Germany.30 Racist and classist thinking overshadowed even commercial interests.
This might also explain the almost complete absence of Turkish products, music, film and
culture in public life, be it in German media (television, radio, newspaper), in stores (also
music stores) or in any cultural venue (like cinema as well as art and design museums etc.).
Going against this situation and to survive culturally, Turkish people had to establish inde-
pendent structures for their everyday life, including their musical life. They had to think and
use ‘doing independent’. Starting at first with halal butcher shops, other food like bread,
pastries, and cheese as well as objects of everyday Turkish life were made available for Turkish
people by the many independent Turkish grocery and general stores all over Germany. They
did – and still do – not belong to any of the big German food chains which took over the
market over time. So, out of a basic need for musical life Turkish people did the same for
music as for food and everyday objects, namely building up an independent structure for the
promotion and distribution of their music, most often connected to the already existing inde-
pendent grocery and general stores. Because of this independency, non-Turkish people living
their lives in Germany without ever using Turkish shops could not notice much of the
Turkish music life. This led to a structure of co-existence without many points of contact.
Musical activist Sebastian Reier observed:
Millions of Turkish sound media are sold in the Federal Republic of Germany from
the late sixties on. There are no reviews in [German] music magazines, nor are there
any pop-cultural considerations in the feature pages. The star cuts in Bravo [the
popular German music magazine] are reserved for Western pop stars, and supra-
regional television appearances by Turkish musicians can be counted on two hands.
Companies like Türküola are also not taken into account when determining the
charts. Turkish music remains in its parallel universe; very few Germans come into
contact with it.31
The earliest notion in German press concerning the hiddenness of Turkish music in Germany
was probably made in 1995 by Daniel Bax. The fact that Turkish music has not been success-
ful concerning non-Turkish people in Germany had due to him less to do with aesthetic rea-
sons than with structural ones:
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29 Cf. Sungu, 2019, p. 7 and p. 64f.
30 Several factors may have contributed to this perception: Many Turkish migrants had only a rural education and formation and came from the
Anatolian hinterlands. They brought with them the smell of poverty (about the smell of poverty cf. Tanja Abou, “Klassismus stinkt!”, in: Missy
Magazine, No. 57, Dec. 2020/Jan. 2021, pp. 52-54, here: p. 53), the look of rurality combined with unbridled manners of Anatolian peasants,
who had only briefly been ‘washed’ urban and this anyway only in ‘rurban’ Gecekondular, peripherical informal settlements where whole rural
villages moved to.
31 “Millionen türkischer Tonträger werden von den späten Sechzigerjahren an in der Bundesrepublik verkauft. Besprechungen in Musikmagazinen
gibt es keine, auch keine popkulturellen Betrachtungen in den Feuilletons. Die Starschnitte in der Bravo sind westlichen Popgrößen vorbehalten,
überregionale Fernsehauftritte türkischer Musikerinnen und Musiker lassen sich an zwei Händen abzählen. Auch bei der Ermittlung der Charts
werden Firmen wie Türküola nicht berücksichtigt. Die türkische Musik bleibt in ihrem Paralleluniversum; die wenigsten Deutschen kommen mit
ihr in Berührung.” Sebastian Reier, “Türkei: Die Musik von Nebenan,” in: Zeit, No. 6, 29-30 January 2020,
https://www.zeit.de/2020/06/tuerkei-popmusik-baris-manco-metin-tuerkoez-derdiyoklar – accessed 06.08.2021. Transl. Lund.
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Turkish music appears almost exclusively on domestic labels, and production is
nationally limited. Although large quantities of Turkish CDs are pressed for the
European market in southern Germany, at the Destan Müzik company in Esslingen,
for example, they are sold exclusively in local Turkish stores. There a CD costs for it as
a rule only 10 Marks. Neither large music department stores like WOM nor special
stores subscribing to world music like Canzone at Berlin's Savignyplatz carry them.32
The hiddenness of Turkish music in the public mind in Germany could indicate, coming back
to Adama Juldeh Munu, either the lack of a relevant body of music, the lack of knowledge
about an existing body of music, or the lack of a will to deal with an existing and known body
of music. The situation is undoubtedly complex, as indicated by the fact alone, that Türküola
was only one of a greater number of Turkish record companies in Germany. More than 20
newly founded record companies in the 1970s and 1980s followed Türküola.33 So, a relevant
body of music in terms of quantity and success could not have been the problem. Yet, could
this body exist without non-Turkish people in Germany knowing anything about it? Yes, it
could, because Turkish music in Germany had been rendered invisible and inaudible: due to
German media structures, due to Turkish and non-Turkish people living in a more or less
distant co-existence and due to a combination of ignorance and lack of interest in any kind of
Turkish music on the side of non-Turkish people.34
The history of ‘doing independent’ as attitude
‘Doing independent’ as a Turkish tradition and attitude in dealing with media and markets
has been developed in three main systems, which are partly interconnected: the ‘bond system’
of Yeşilçam cinema35 in Turkey, starting at the end of the 1950s,36 the ‘İMÇ system’ of inde-
pendent Turkish vinyl record labels, starting in the early 1960s,37 and the ‘co-shop system’ in
Germany and throughout Europe for independent video cassette and music distribution of
independent labels, expanding in the early 1980s38.
1. The ‘bond system’ of Yeşilçam cinema
In short, this unique system worked between 1960 to 1980 as follows: “Theatre owners in
Turkey in the 1960s pre-sold the tickets and then financed the making of the films.”39 Due to
a lack of capital on side of the producers, the Turkish film industry invented an independent
system of film financing and film producing. Akser and Durak-Akser explain it:
The financial investment originated from an advance on receipts system, which
depended on Anatolian theatre owners. Indeed, the so-called ‘Bond System’ was
named after the bonds signed by the producers, who borrowed money from the theatre
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
32 Daniel Bax, “Istanbul Calling,” in: taz, 09.06.1995, p. 15f, https://taz.de/!1505673/ – accessed 06.08.2021. Transl. Lund.
33 Cf. Greve, 2003, p. 78f.
34 On the question of invisibility of Turkish people in Germany as well as Turkish migrant identity cf. Serhat Güney, Cem Pekman, Bülent
Kabaş, “Diasporic Music in Transition: Turkish Immigrant Performers on the Stage of ‘Multikulti’ Berlin,” in: Popular Music and Society, vol. 37
no. 2, 2014, pp. 132f, DOI: 10.1080/03007766.2012.736288.
35 Named after the Yeşilçam street in Istanbul, where the film companies were located. Yeşilçam cinema can be characterized in short as a kind of
Turkish Bollywood cinema, which it followed indeed through relations with Egyptian cinema.
36 Cf. Halit Refiğ, “National Cinema” (1970), in: Murat Akser, Didem Durak-Akser, “Fight for a National Cinema: An Introductory Text and
Translation (Halit Refiğ, 1971),” in: Film Studies, Manchester University Press, Volume 16, Spring 2017, p. 68,
http://dx.doi.org/10.7227/FS.16.0005
37 Denomination related to the İstanbul Manifaturacılar Çarşısı building at Unkapanı (1960), Istanbul.
38 Cf. Sungu, 2019, p. 11.
39 Akser, Durak-Akser, 2017, p. 76. Cf. also Nezih Erdoğan, Deniz Göztürk, “Turkish Cinema,” in: Oliver Leaman (ed.), Companion
Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film, London/New York: Routlegde, 2001, pp. 535 and 538.
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owners by pre-selling the screening rights of the films. In return, the theatre owners
could dictate what kind of films were made and which star should be assigned to a
particular project.40
The roots of this system date back to the 1940s, when the Turkish government prohibited the
import of popular Egyptian films (to prevent the Turkish people from becoming ‘Arabic’) and
set up a decree on taxation, that reduced the tax on Turkish films significantly compared to
the tax on foreign films. This led to the establishment of a profitable domestic film industry at
the end of the 1940s.41
Filmmaker Halit Refiğ reflects on this system, its special economic mode of production and
its independency already in 1968:
Since Turkish cinema was not founded by foreign capital, it is not the cinema of
imperialism. It is neither the cinema of the bourgeoisie, since it was not founded by
national capitalism, nor the cinema of the state, since it was not founded by the
government. Turkish cinema is a ‘people’s cinema’ since it is based on labour rather
than capital and was born out of Turkish people’s need to watching [sic!] films.42
He concludes two years later, pointing to the fact that Turkish cinema depends solely on the
audience:
This bond system […] was based on the agreement that a film’s expenses would be
reimbursed only after the film was made and the tickets sold. As the real bond owners
were the audiences, these films were supposed to be made according to the taste of the
Turkish audience.43
And in another text, he notes:
Today [in 1967], what makes the production of more than 250 movies a year in
Turkey possible is not the presence of a certain capital but the bonds calculated
according to the number of people who will pay to watch the film. From this
perspective, Turkish cinema is a cinema of the people.44
The ‘bond system’ of the Yeşilçam cinema allowed for a worldwide unique independent eco-
nomic, production and distribution mode. Looking back from today, one could name it a sort
of crowd funding avant la lettre. It served as a model and pathed the way for building up in
parallel an independent music market in Turkey and Germany with many independent music
labels.
2. The ‘İMÇ system’ of independent Turkish vinyl record labels
As early as around 1900, 78rpm shellac records entered the Ottoman empire. The field was
dominated almost exclusively by multinational, European-based record companies like
Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, Lindström, Odeon, Beka, Lyrofon, Favorite,
Grammophone Co/His Master’s Voice, Columbia, Pathé and many more.45 They produced
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
40 Akser, Durak-Akser, 2017. p. 59.
41 Ibd. p. 59f.
42 Halit Refiğ, “Conceptual Debates” (1968), in: Akser, Durak-Akser, 2017, p. 66.
43 Halit Refiğ, “National Cinema” (1970), in: Akser, Durak-Akser, 2017, p. 68.
44 Halit Refiğ, “Westernisation and Turkish Cinema” (1967), in: Akser, Durak-Akser, 2017, p. 66.
45 Cf. Greve, 2003, p. 25; Greve, 2017, p. 36; Levent Ergun, “The Golden Microphone as a Moment of Hegemony,” in: Ali C. Gedik (ed.),
Made in Turkey, Routledge Popular Music Series, London, New York: Routlegde, 2018, p. 84. An exception from the dominance of Western
Lund_Turkish independent labels in Germany
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records of Ottoman music but also of Eastern and Western music and hybrid entertainment
music styles for the Turkish music market. Turkish record labels did not show up until the
end of the 1950s when 45rpm technology became available. It seems, the Turkish label
Grafson, founded in 1958, started in 1959 with releasing vinyl 45rpm records by the singer
Zeki Müren.46
Following its opening in 1960, the huge modern architecture block of the İstanbul Mani-
faturacılar Çarşısı at Unkapanı was becoming the center of the Turkish vinyl record industry
and its record labels. With the record releases of the famous Altın Mikrofon [Golden
Microphone] song contest from 1965 on, numerous local, often musician-owned47 Turkish
record labels began to flourish and “were providing an avenue of creative expression,”48 some-
thing which the global major corporations probably could not have provided the same way.
There is something special about the Turkish music market compared to other countries
taking part in the worldwide first wave of hybrid pop music, which combines global with local
pop music elements. The Turkish music market was an almost completely independent one
with some more important major-independent companies, but also a substantial number of
smaller independent players releasing music to a highly dynamic market.49 The main reason
for multinational major-labels to be cautious, back out or stay away from the Turkish music
market have been problems with a constantly unclear legal copyright situation,50 which put
licensing and local pressing in Turkey into question, as well as high import taxes on foreign
goods which made imported foreign records expensive.51
The infrastructural backbones for Turkish pop music have been domestic recording studios as
well as domestic pressing plants, of which two had been working in 1963 and already eleven
in 1969.52 Ali C. Gedik sums it up: “[…] the introduction of 45rpm manufacturing techno-
logy in the 1960s […] enabled a domestic music industry and massive local consumption of
music for the first time.”53
The effects on the development of Turkish pop music were tremendous. Being independent
from the multinational major-labels provided the above mentioned “avenue of creative ex-
pression,” with music made according to the imagination, taste and need of the musicians and
the audiences. The magnitude, diversity and variety of hybrid pop music styles and sub-styles
in Turkey, which grew dynamically from the 1960s until the military coup in 1980, is pro-
bably unique compared to other non-Western countries of the same period. Perhaps no other
non-Western country – except Brazil – can offer such a creative pop music development based
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
labels seems to be Baidaphon, the Lebanese label based in Berlin and Beirut.
46 Cf. Greve, 2017, p. 37 and https://www.discogs.com/label/166461-Grafson?sort=year&sort_order=asc – accessed 06.08.2021.
47 Stars but also lesser known musicians had their own labels, including for example Orhan Gencebay, the co-owner of Istanbul Plak and later the
owner of Kervan Plak, Zeki Müren, the owner of Müren Plak, İbrahim Tatlıses, the owner of Tatlıses, Mihrican Bahar, the owner of Bahar. In
Germany, also very small artist-run labels emerged, like Coşkun Ada with Ada Fon, Basri Tankaya with Tankaya Müzik, or İbrahim Işıl with
Bambi. And with Yüksel Özkasap, the most prominent diasporic singer and wife of Asöcal, a singer’s hand and mind was involved in Türküola as
well for sure.
48 Meral Özbek, “Arabesk Culture: A Case of Modernization and Popular Identity,” in: Sibel Bozdoğan and Reşat Kasaba (eds.), Rethinking
Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, Washington, D.C.: University of Washington Press, 1997, p. 174.
49 Cf. Andy Votel, “Ten Electronic Extroverts from the Middle East and South Asia. Part 2,” March 29, 2013,
https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2013/03/ten-electronic-extroverts-from-the-middle-east-and-south-asia-02 – accessed 06.08.2021.
50 It seems, ignoring legal issues and pirating have been part of the Turkish music business as well as part of the film and video business. Here the
characteristics of the business drift into mafia like structures including the use of violence and crime, cf. the interview with Ali Yıldırım in: Bi’bak
(ed.), Bitte Zurückspulen: Deutsch-türkische Film- und Videokultur in Berlin, Berlin 2019, p. 51-53. Cf. also Greve, 2003, p. 435f.
51 Still the Turkish music market, as regular adds from foreign major-labels during the 1970s and 1980s in the music magazine Hey show, was not
isolated from Anglo-American and French pop music – the current foreign pop music was present all the time, yet not dominating the market. It
was more a sort of balanced co-existence of foreign and Turkish pop music, with a tendency in favor of Turkish pop music, as the charts in the
Hey magazine demonstrate over the years.
52 Cf. Ergun, 2018, p. 84.
53 Ali C. Gedik, “Class Struggle in Popluar Musics of Turkey: Changing Sounds from the Left,” in: Ali C. Gedik (ed.), Made in Turkey,
Routledge Popular Music Series, London, New York: Routlegde, 2018, p. 94.
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on an independent music market.54 Martin Greve writes about “an avalanche-like opening of
the market: in 1966 there were 20-30 record companies in Turkey, in 1987 there were 120,
and in 1995 there were almost 500.”55 Many of them were – and some still are – located in the
İMÇ building, a symbol of the density and richness of the Turkish record industry. The ‘İMÇ
system’ stands for a highly dense, interconnected and powerful independent music market in
Turkey.
So, with Turkish people migrating to Germany from 1961 on, it was no wonder that they
brought with them their attitude of ‘doing independent’ based on their experiences of the
Yeşilçam cinema ‘bond system’ and the ‘İMÇ system’ of independent Turkish vinyl record
labels. One of these people was Yılmaz Asöcal, the founder of Türküola.
3. The ‘co-shop system’ for independent distribution of Turkish independent labels in Germany
As the Turkish-German record labels had no access to the German record industry’s relevant
official promotion and distribution channels they teamed up with grocery stores and general
stores as main selling points in a sort of co-shop system and with Turkish newspapers as
media displays56. Only few stand-alone Turkish record shops existed in some larger German
cities like Cologne, Munich or Berlin, yet over time about several hundred co-shops existed
all over Germany, one can estimate up to 400 at the end of the 1980s.57
The development of independent Turkish record labels based in Germany needs to be seen in
connection to another medium: film. At first film on celluloid then film on video cassettes. Of
course, Turkish films received the usual ‘access denied’ for regular programming and scree-
ning in all German cinemas.58 But as early as the 1960s, the idea of taking over German cine-
mas temporarily evolved from the Turkish attitude of ‘doing independent’ combined with
mercantile agility. Some enterprising film people had the idea of renting the existing train
station cinemas for a certain time frame in order to show Turkish films to a Turkish audience.
The cinemas and the cinema halls were mostly rented completely on weekends for early
screenings, and their own Turkish people were also placed at the box office.59 So, without
owning a cinema infrastructure, Turkish films could be shown to a Turkish audience in
Germany.
The whole game changed significantly with film on video cassettes. Video became a mass
medium in Germany by the end of the 1970s. After a research conducted in 1982, there have
been already twelve big Turkish manufacturing companies and another twenty smaller video
labels in business at the time, and the trend was upward, like mushrooming.60 Towards the
end of the 1980s, around a hundred branches in Berlin alone sold video cassettes.61 A lot of
these branches were not stand-alone video rental stores, but co-shops, registered under other
branches like travel agency, hairdresser, bank, and rag shop. These shops had marked sections
for video rental and sale as well as point of sales for music, both often as a complement to the
particular assortment.62 In general, all kind of Turkish shops in Germany very often had a
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
54 Cf. Lund, 2020, especially pp. 5f. Brazil offers a comparable range of styles and sub-styles, yet based on another structure dominated by foreign
as well as strong domestic major labels, but also including independent and artist-run labels.
55 Greve, 2003, p. 77.
56 Cf. Greve, 2003, p. 81.
57 Cf. ibd., p. 83.
58 This changed only with the 2000s, when Cineplex cinemas in Germany started to program and screen Turkish films.
59 Cf. Sungu 2019, p. 7.
60 Cf. ibd., p.12.
61 Cf. ibd. and p. 55.
62 Cf. ibd., p. 11f.
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video and a music section. Some of the labels even released both video and music, like the
major-independent Destan Müzik from Esslingen, who produced and distributed video
cassettes as well as music cassettes and CDs. In the co-shops, several things came together:
food, objects for everyday life, Turkish press, Turkish film and music media, and Turkish
musical life like concert promotion and ticketing. This kind of independent distribution for
Turkish film and music media was unique to Germany, no other group of migrants had
established something comparable – and they did not have to do so: Italian, Greek, Portu-
guese, Spanish etc. films and music had no ‘access denied’ on the doors of the official pro-
motion and distribution channels.
So, born out of exclusion and necessity, under racism as a structural and institutional problem,
Turkish and German-Turkish musicians, which would never be signed by a German or inter-
national record company for the German market, called for Turkish independent record labels
and independent promotion and distribution channels. They evolved together with the first
wave of Turkish labor migrants in the 1960s – about a decade earlier than German music
history tells us when it comes to the establishment of independent record labels in Germany.
Yet, here we have not only to correct German music historiography but also the mindset
which goes along with it. A mindset, which should finally face racism as a structural and in-
stitutional problem.
And last not least: maybe one should not forget that essential parts of Turkish popular music
were produced and distributed exclusively and entirely through Turkish-German labels –
music which had a hard life in Turkey itself. Greve notes: “before the beginning of the rise of
religious Islamic music in Turkey in the 1990s, recordings of ilahi and Mevlevi music were
produced almost exclusively in Europe.”63 He continues: “In the 1980s most Kurdish and
Zaza music cassettes [additionally also vinyls and CDs] were produced in Europe and secretly
distributed in Turkey.”64
A history of Turkish pop music in and from Germany, which needs to be written, therefore
should not only face racism in Germany but as well in Turkey.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
63 Greve, 2017, p. 44.
64 Ibd., p. 46.
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