I will be there. It is for the first time in many years that I even considered buying tickets for such a mega event. In the end, I decided to spend quite a lot of liras to see a band that I admired when they started out 30 years ago. I vividly remember their first LPs, “Boy,” “October” and especially “War.”
That album included the song “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” a strongly politicized memory of the dramatic events of Jan. 30, 1972, in Derry, Northern Ireland, in which 13 unarmed civil rights protesters were killed by the British Army. It was one of the absolute lows during the Troubles in Northern Ireland between Protestants, Catholics and the British authorities. This year, an official report found that the killings were both “unjustified and unjustifiable.” British Prime Minister David Cameron, finally, made a formal apology on behalf of the United Kingdom.
“Sunday Bloody Sunday” was the song that most clearly showed the social and political engagement of U2 that made the band so popular among activists in those early days. From the mid-1980s, I started losing track. The music of U2 changed and became, in my opinion, sterile and bombastic. It was only in 2000, with the release of “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” which features the classic song “Beautiful Day,” that I rediscovered the band. In the mean time, U2 and especially its lead singer Bono had become global celebrities, known for their compelling music, their memorable performances and, in the case of Bono, for his geopolitical activism.
Ten years ago, the singer with the eternal sunglasses got involved in campaigning for third-world debt relief and raising awareness of the plight of Africa. Bono can still be seen on stage of course, touring the world with U2, but most people probably know him better from his highly publicized meetings with U.S. president George W. Bush or Brazilian president Lula da Silva. He was dubbed “the face of fusion philanthropy” by the New York Times for his efforts to enlist powerful allies and set up new networks in the fight against hunger and AIDS in Africa.
Back to Turkey. Combining his art with activism, Tarkan could be called the Turkish Bono. His impact on trends and fashion in music in this country is huge, his personality in the media sometimes larger than life and Tarkan has gone activist as well, especially on environmental issues. Recently, he made it known that he thinks that Allianoi, one of the oldest known spa settlements, should be protected. Allianoi is at risk of being submerged underwater with the creation of a nearby dam. Tarkan’s stance on the highly controversial dam project earned him the wrath of the minister for the environment, Veysel Eroğlu. He harshly criticized Tarkan, saying, “The singer should deal with his art, and he shouldn’t poke his nose into issues he doesn’t understand. (…) His comments on the construction of a dam, or the protection of a historical artifact, are extremely wrong.”
I have some questions for the minister. Dear Minister Eroğlu, can you explain to me why the rest of the world is happy when singers and other artists get involved in social and political issues while you seem to be immensely upset when the world of culture is linked with the rest of society? Why can’t Tarkan do for Allianoi what Bono is doing for Africa?
On top of that, if Tarkan should be silent on the dam project, why is your party so happy to enlist singer Sezen Aksu in the campaign for a “yes” vote on Sept. 12? Is she more knowledgeable about the Constitution than Tarkan is about the dam? Or is your reaction to Tarkan an example of your party’s dangerous tendency to cherish people and organizations that agree with them and to make life difficult on those that are of a different opinion, whether they are called TÜSİAD or Tarkan?
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