A member of the Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK), known for his opposition to council’s oppressive decisions, said on Twitter that the majority in the council were now waiting for a signal from the Turkish presidency to censor a recently released pop song of singer Tarkan.
Tarkan, a living legend of Turkish pop culture, has released his latest song ‘Geççek’ (‘It’ll pass’) on Thursday night, and the song has been viewed almost 6 million times in less than 24 hours on Tarkan’s official Youtube channel alone.
RTÜK member İlhan Taşçı said on Twitter:
“RTÜK has been listening to dear Tarkan’s incredible song in silence, and to the palace in utmost contemplation to hear whether or not there will come an instruction to censor the song! Let’s recall how RTÜK had instructed TV channels not to broadcast Sezen Aksu before, and how it lost its ground when Erdoğan said, ‘It wasn’t Sezen Aksu that I targeted’.”
A 2017 song by Sezen Aksu was targeted first on social media by some users, then by the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan because of the reference to Adam and Eve as ‘ignorant’ in the lyrics that read:
“We’re riding on an omen / We’re travelling to doomsday / Greet the ignorant / Adam and Eve”
Tarkan’s ‘Geççek’ lyrics read:
Hasn’t it had us cornered before? *
Hasn’t it ever shot us
in the back before?
This is not the first blow for sure
Yes we did fall before, but haven’t we risen?
Haven’t we always challenged life?
You just keep cool
So many things we’ve survived before
It’ll certainly pass, this will pass too
Watch and see how your hope will enjoy itself
Oh yeah, we’ll dance to the tune of rings then
Those days of flowers are, believe me, so close.
Geççek has quickly became TT with hundreds of thousands of users retweeting it in less than a day, while the officials of the opposition parties in Turkey embraced the song as well.
* The reader should note that personal pronouns are not used to indicate the subject for a verb in Turkish, and it is open to interpretation in the Turkish lyrics of ‘Geççek’ whether the subject that ‘has cornered’ is an it, a he or a she, thus effecting the whole spirit of the song.
