MASARYKOVA UNIVERZITA Fakulta Sociálních Studií Katedra Sociologie

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MASARYKOVA UNIVERZITA Fakulta sociálních studií Katedra sociologie

Mgr. Ali Türünz

Music as a Resource in the Migratory Context: Turkish Choirs in Hamburg

Disertační práce

Školitel: doc. PhDr. Csaba Szaló, Ph.D.

Brno 2015

I declare that I have worked independently and that I have used only those sources in the included literature

Brno, 20/11/2015

Table of Content

Acknowledgments ………………………………………………………………………..1

Chapter 1: Why Does Music Matter in Turkish migration Context? 1.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………….2 1.2. The motivation behind the research: Self-reflexive account……………...2 1.3. Thesis structure…………………………………………………..……….7

Chapter 2: The Perspective of Cultural Sociology and Critical Engagement with Literature on Turkish Migration 2.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………….11 2.2. Theoretical framework: The perspective of cultural sociology…………..11 2.3. The literature on Turkish migration………………………………………19

Chapter 3: How to Study Choirs: The research methodology 3.1. Introduction………………………………………………………..………28 3.2. Research method…………………………………………………………..28 3.3. Accessing the field and establishing rapport…………………………….. 32 3.4. Analysis and the writing process …………………………………………38

Chapter 4: The Role of Music in Turkish Nation-Building and Turkish Music in Germany 4.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………….41 4.2. Music and Turkish nation-building…………………………………….....42 4.3. Turkish music in Germany………………………………………………..47

Chapter 5: The Turkish Musical Field in Hamburg 5.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………51 5.2. Turkish music clubs……………………………………………………...51 5.3. Turkish choirs……………………………………………………………57

Chapter 6: Music as a Resource for Drawing Boundaries: Sacred, Profane, and Differently Sacred 6.1. Introduction …………………………………………………………….…70 6.2. Sacred and profane in the Turkish Diaspora………………………………71 6.3. The German domain: Differently sacred……………………………….....81

Chapter 7: Music as a Resource for Destigmatization 7.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………..89 7.2. Integration, discrimination and non-acceptance………………………...…89 7.3. Destigmatization strategies………………………………………………..96 7.4. An eagerness to belong…………………..………………………………104

Chapter 8: Music as a Resource for Belonging 8.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………….108 8.2. Choirs as places of belonging and safety…………………………………108 8.3. Dealing with nostalgia: Symbolic reconnecting with Turkey…………….115

Chapter 9: Conclusion ………………………………………………………………….122

Annotation……………………………………………………………………………...126 Anotace……………………………………………………………………………...….128 List of participants………………………………………………………..…………….130 List of tables……………………………………………………………………………132 References……………………………………………………………………….……..133 Index………………………………………………………………………………...…146

Acknowledgments

Researching and writing a PhD thesis has been a long, but pleasant journey. I could have never completed it without the precious advice and support I received from various people. Thus, I am using this opportunity to express my gratitude to everyone who made it possible. First of all, I am indebted to my supervisor Csaba Szaló for his enthusiasm and support since the early days of contemplating my research topic. Nadya Jaworsky has helped me at the various stages of my writing with her comments and suggestions and at the end, did an amazing job in proofreading it. Ivana Spasic has given me valuable feedback in the last months of the writing process. Also, I am grateful to Elaheh Mohammadi for intellectually stimulating debates about the so-called East and West. Special thanks belong to all research participants who willingly shared their opinions and experiences with me. Without their stories, this dissertation would never have been written. Also, I express gratitude to my parents and my brother for their enormous support. Finally, I am endlessly grateful to my wife Nevena who has always been willing to discuss it with me. I dedicate this dissertation to Nevena and to our son Teodor Deniz.

CHAPTER 1:

Why Does Music Matter in the Turkish Migration Context?

1.1. Introduction

This thesis is about the three Turkish folk (The ATU, The Serdar Kalan Choir, and From Soul to Soul) and two classical Turkish music choirs (The Osman Sadık Choir and The Lale Hoşses Choir) in Hamburg. The aim of my ethnographic research was to discover what the roles of music are for the choir members in their lives as immigrants in Germany in this particular milieu. The topic of Turkish immigration in Germany has been extensively researched. Hence, one may ask what the importance of music is in the migration context and why this topic is important. Soon after my arrival to Hamburg, it became apparent to me that immigrants of Turkish origin cherish Turkish music in different ways, be it whistling the tones while working or gathering in the Turkish music clubs and bars. Following Grazian who argues that self-reflection is a crucial part of ethnographic method (Grazian 2015:112), in this chapter I will first describe through self-reflexive account how I have decided to pursue the topic of Turkish music in Germany. It stems from my childhood and early adolescent years spent in musical circles in Turkey and the gradual process of coming to understanding the omnipresence of music in the lives of Turkish immigrants in Germany, the boundary work revolving around it, and the ways people use music. Also, in this chapter I will outline the thesis structure and introduce the findings that will be elaborated in detail in chapters 6, 7, and 8.

1.2. The motivation behind the research: Self-reflexive account

While I was researching and writing my thesis, many people asked me why music is my subject. For me, music has always had a mysterious, intangible, and yet a strong impact in the daily life, and I assume it had a similar impact on the Turkish immigrants living in Germany. The connection between music and migration came to my mind while

I was an Erasmus student in Hamburg. Wherever I went and whomever I met, in music was present in some way. While I was strolling the streets, I frequently passed next to a Turkish person whistling some Turkish tunes. A significant and memorable example was a Turkish waiter serving coffees to the German-speaking customers in a shopping mall close to Friedrichstrasse in Berlin, while whistling a Turkish folk song. I have observed that music is a portable tool for the Turkish migrants who sing tunes from the homeland when walking or working. All popular places where Turks meet have music either in the forefront or the background. Turkish communal life in Germany to a great extent revolves around music in specific Turkish clubs, restaurants, cafes, and bars. However, strikingly, I soon became aware that for those people of Turkish origin who have ethnically mixed groups of friends and go to rock and jazz bars, Turkishness is not important. In particular, for people who are into such Western genres, the cherishing of a distinctive Turkish cultural identity is not an aim. Furthermore, through the study visits in Berlin, Mannheim, and Vienna, I also noticed that music is everywhere, and even in unexpected places. For instance, one of the most striking findings was that the Turkish music products in Vienna are that they are actually lumped together with food. The supermarket whose names are Turkish toponyms like Akdeniz and Pamukkale exhibit Turkish popular CDs next to the shelves full of bread and have their shop windows covered with posters of musicians. Thus, I have come to understand a particular importance of music for individuals in a migratory context, in addition to what I already knew about the crucial role music had in a shaping of collective cultural identity in the modern Turkish republic. Besides, soon after I arrived in Hamburg, it became apparent to me that there is a mutual dislike between listeners of different genres. It reminded me of a vague tension I had already sensed during the early childhood between the listeners and producers of Turkish Classical and Western classical music. Born into a musical family, where my father is a luthier, an oud maker, I have frequently witnessed the grumbling remarks of oud players about the artistic insufficiencies of the professional players of Western Classical Music in Turkey. This criticism is based on the fact that these Western Classical Music players are artistically “behind” musicians in the West and at times, implies that

this situation is inevitable in a country where Western Classical Music has no organic roots. What is more, I have also noices early that people raised in secular families, such as the families of my cousins, have scornful attitudes towards Turkish Classical music and the Ottoman cultural heritage, whereas they consider Turkish folk music rural and “for peasents”. Thus, since my adolescent years, I have observed that musical taste is not simply arbitrary; rather, many people do not only like the music they listen to but ascribe values and meanings to genres. Besides, some of them actively dislike certain genres. I have repeatedly witnessed among the Turkish intelligentsia and many others, the revolutionists almost detest jazz, whereas the liberals tend to be fond of it. During adolescence, my interest in Turkish Classical music did not go beyond playing the ouds that my father produced and learning to play a piece on the oud called “Mahur Saz Semaisi” by Refik Talat Alpman (1894-1947), which sounds very European (Pentatonic) within the Classical Turkish music repertoire. Attending a middle school where the majority of students were listening to Turkish and Western Pop, I was socialized into a peer group in my neighborhood where kids listened to and played Heavy Metal and Rock. At the age of thirteen, I started having classical guitar courses and a year later, attended drumming school and eventually started recording songs from Nirvana and Guns’ N’ Roses with a band. In the meantime, I realized that Western Classical music was a genre I should not miss in my personal development, and therefore, I started to learn the canons, at times bearing the remarks of my Heavy-Metal-listening friends that it was boring. Although my father appreciated my musical development in the Western Classical music genre (during the first years of middle school, the first recordings I listened to were his, including Carl Orf’s Carmina Burana, Dvorak’s From the New World, and Julian Bream’s Romantic Guitar), he recommended in a gentle tone that I should also listen to Classical Turkish music. Thanks to my father, I met a number of professional Classical Turkish music musicians. These musicians, at first sight, seemed to me more conservative or faintly Islamic-oriented, especially from their frequent use of old (Ottoman) words.

Nevertheless, I realized that I could be wrong, especially when they gathered in our flat, consuming lots of alcohol and making obscene jokes among each other. At the same time, I met many scholars of Eastern Mediterranean music from Greece, who were visiting Turkey, purchasing musical instruments, and taking private lessons in Ottoman- Classical Turkish music and attending workshops. I then understood the cosmopolitan nature of this genre, in terms of not only the sounds but also the exchange revolving around this music among people from different regions and countries. I began contemplating the paradigm of being progressive vs. traditional (backward) and how this paradigm was falsely constructed by the Turkish state’s rejectionist policies of Ottoman heritage and as well as falsely received by the Kemalist elite in Turkish society. My background in cultural sociology, and particularly the familiarity with works of Alexander and Lamont, enabled me to realize a variety of meanings behind musical genres and the enormousness of the subtle boundary work revolved around music among the Turkish immigrants in Germany. Boundaries are being drawn, shifted, and blurred on the basis of musical genres. As John Shephard and Kyle Devine suggest, Alfred Schütz elaborated on the social on the social dimension of music even before the cultural turn in the 1960s (Shepherd and Devine 2015: 23-24). For Schütz, there is the meaning-making process that involves the communication among musicians and the communication between the “composer” and the “beholder”. The latter stands for the “player, listener, and reader of music”. The “mutual tuning-in relationship” between the parties enables a feeling of togetherness as ‘We’ and meaningful action, by performing and listening to music. This occurs in a “true face- to-face relationship”. (Schütz 2015: 60-64). Hence, gradually over my first long stay in Germany, I started to look more and more into music and its significance from the perspective of cultural sociology. It came to me that music much more than fun and finding joy in singing. Accordingly, I started to wonder what are the Turkish musical fields in Germany and what can music serve for? I began to search for meanings that different people assign to music, what music means for them and how they use it. Eventually, I found out that Turks gathered in amateur choirs in Hamburg more than 20 years already. Some people who are in their fifties now have been attending the choirs since their youth. The question that arose from it was what kind of social glue is

Turkish music if it can keep people together for so long, whereas also newcomers hail to the choirs from different milieus. Also, by observing people of different generations, origins, and occupations singing and playing Turkish music together, it became apparent to me that choirs are not only important spaces of cultural transmission, but a peculiar non-formal social settings where people who are not related through family and work gather to do something voluntarily together. At that moment, it came to my mind that it is very difficult to observe an assembly of that kind apart from a religious and political organization. In that sense, choirs are different spaces than clubs and bars where one cannot observe structured and regular gatherings. I was very intrigued to find out what is in the music that can achieve a unity like this kind and decided to conduct my PhD research in three Turkish folk (The ATU, The Serdar Kalan Choir, and From Soul to Soul) and two classical Turkish music choirs (The Osman Sadık Choir and The Lale Hoşses Choir) in Hamburg. Furthermore, according to James Clifford, “insiders studying their own cultures offer new angles of vision and depth of understanding” (Clifford 1986: 9). Hence, I want to explain my liminal position as a Turkish researcher from the Czech Republic studying the musical fields of Turks in Germany. As such, I have experienced situation of being othered in Europe, and thus I was able to deeply understand what kind of prejudices and discrimination influenced a need of the research participants to search for cultural intimacy in the Turkish choirs. As it will be shown in the subsequent chapters, the feelings of non-acceptance and discrimination participants face in their everyday life are behind the establishment and joining the choirs. What is more, the specific usages of music as a resource in the migration context that will be in detail elaborated in the thesis also derive from these feelings and experiences. When I was doing my fieldwork in Hamburg and even attending conferences, I was many times marked by a ready label, as a “Muslim,” partly due to my name. Two examples were quite upsetting. One took place in Hamburg in the winter of 2010 during the birthday party of my German flat mate. Upon being introduced to the guests, I spoke in English, assuming that these guests doing their PhDs in the social sciences would be more willing to communicate in English. When I told them that I felt more comfortable speaking in English, one of the doctoral candidates whose PhD topic was about

“Denazification” told me: “Do you think that we will excuse you for that?” He was not joking. Upon hearing my name, he told me that they had a cleaner in their flat called Ali and started to make fun of him. Then, his girlfriend laughingly asked me how it felt to be in a “cool German metropolis” after “a place like Istanbul.” A less serious and rather teasing dialogue took place at a conference with a German colleague who told me while sitting by a lake in a small German city: “You have your sunglasses and a camera. You are sitting on a beach next to people with swimming suits. A cop can come and arrest you because you don’t look German.” However, on the other hand, as I am not a Turkish immigrant in Germany, but a Turk coming from the Czech Republic, I was not always immediately fully accepted by the participants as an insider. My own position is thus liminal, situated between being a Turk in Europe and not being a Turkish immigrant in Germany, but a researcher from the Czech Republic. Naci, an Alevite student in the Asia-AfricaInstitute at Hamburg University who plays the baglama and is not a participant in any of the choirs, prompted me to think of a certain communication barrier I could not easily break. He claimed that I would have a much less problematic experience as a researcher if I were ethnic Czech, coming from the Czech Republic, an ethnic German from Hamburg or a researcher from any other European country. He stressed that various problems might have arisen not because of my own failure as an ethnographer, but because I was born and raised in Turkey, and I had not emigrated to Germany. I was thus neither a foreigner nor a native to them, but rather someone who was intruding into their space. I experienced this problem from time to time. Some participants initially were not eager to trust me as a researcher. However, I had to cope with my liminal situation, my unchangeable standing as a Turkish researcher from the Czech Republic. However, my comprehensive knowledge of Turkish music, the connotations related to different genres and the tensions between listeners of the genres greatly helped me to conceive and conduct the research. Also, as a consequence of the years I have spent abroad as a Turk in Europe, where I have experienced similar situations as the participants, I was able to come up with relevant issues for discussion about the complexity of belonging, and also to properly understand their experiences and opinions.

1.3. Thesis structure

The aim of my PhD research is to investigate the role that music has in lives of five Turkish music choirs in Hamburg. I approached the topic from the meaning-making oriented cultural sociology, while regarding music as a resource, following Tia DeNora and Andy Bennett. However, this thesis goes beyond Bennett’s understanding that “music serves as a cultural resource in the formulation and articulation of individual and collective identities” (Bennett 2015: 150) and proposes new usages. The chapter 2 “The Perspective of Cultural Sociology and Critical Engagement with the Literature on Turkish Migration” outlines the works relevant to my research. First, I will my general theoretical framework of cultural sociology and the works of authors that theoretically guided my research, primarily Alexander and Lamont’s theory on symbolic boundaries. Subsequently, I will present the main works related to music, and with a particular focus on Tia DeNora and Andy Bennett, who perceive music as a resource. Afterward, I will summarize and critically engage with the previous and currently fashioned literature on Turkish migration literature focused on culture and identity. Also, I will provide analysis of two ethnographic works that follow Alexander’s “Strong” (Maria Wurm) and “Weak” program (Ayhan Kaya) in cultural studies The chapter 3 “How to Study Choirs? Research Methodology” elaborates on the reasons for choosing ethnography as an adequate method of studying Turkish choirs in Hamburg from the perspective of cultural sociology and how my research process was formed. I will introduce the way I formulated and conducted in-depth interviews, narrate the establishment of the rapport with the research participants, and explain the writing and analysis process. The chapter 4 “The Role of Music in Turkish Nation-Building and Turkish Music in Germany” represents the background of my study. Its aim is to familiarize a reader with the crucial role that music had for the formation of identity of the Turkish nation. In addition, I will provide an overview of Turkish musical life and its transformation in Germany since the first migration wave in the 1960s.

In the chapter 5 “Turkish Musical Field in Hamburg” I will provide a description of 5 Turkish music clubs and introduce the 5 studied choirs. I will present the choirs in terms of their repertoire, leader, membership, articulated goal, reasons for joining the choir, and political position. In the chapter 6 “Music as a Resource for Drawing Boundaries: Sacred, Profane, and Differently Sacred” I will explain how choir members use music as a resource to draw internal symbolic boundaries within the Turkish community. Participants draw symbolic boundaries against the majority of the Turkish population living in Germany, primarily the listeners of the Arabesk music genre. On the basis of the distinction they make between refined music (Classical, Art, Folk, and Western Classical music) and the uncultured music exemplified by the Arabesk genre, choir members deliberately create a number of sacred and profane binaries in the Durkheimian sense. In contrast, the research reveals that participants do not draw antagonistic symbolic boundaries against Germans. Rather, the participants’ narratives disclose the division of Turkish and German domains into sacred and “differently sacred.” In the chapter 7 “Music as a Resource for Destigmatization” I will first introduce the findings that choir members, despite the univocal claims that they are fully integrated into the German society, still feel discriminated and non-accepted. Furthermore, they are aware of the low status of Turkish nation and culture in Germany. Consequently, the research reveals that choir members regard music as the most appropriate (and perhaps only) cultural resource for improving the general status of Turks in Germany Their long- term destigmatization strategy involves the deliberate use of music as a resource to destigmatize the Turkish community collectively, which they hope will eventually lead to the acceptance of Turks as an integral part of German society. This strategy encompasses both “improving the Turks” through musical education and educating Germans on Turkish culture In the chapter 8 “Music as a Resource for Belonging, I will show how for the participants in this study, music is a resource for the establishment of a “third sphere,” or a symbolic place of belonging. The third sphere is a space between the public sphere, where participants feel othered and discriminated, and the private sphere of family and close friends. Choirs represent shelters, places of belonging, where negative emotional

states are altered and desired emotional states are achieved through rituals. Boundary work is apparent in the ways choir members contrast a profane public sphere with the sacred third sphere of the choirs. The sacred sphere is characterized by positive emotions (i.e. intimacy, pride, joy, safety), whereas the public sphere is characterized by their negative counterparts (i.e. alienation, shame, monotony, anxiety, insecurity) Chapter 9 “Conclusion” will summarize the findings and discuss the contribution of this study and implications for further research. The thesis provides new insights into the Turkish migration context in Germany, because it applies the perspective of cultural sociology and studies the meaning-making processes related to music. It contributes to migration studies, as the findings may apply to other, particularly stigmatized, diasporas (e.g. Serbs in Germany, Moroccans in the Netherlands). Additionally, the field of migration studies is enriched by the insights this thesis provides about well-integrated, secular German-Turks’ perceptions of the public sphere in German society, the integration debate, and their preferred mode of interaction with it. Regarding the sociology of music, this thesis goes beyond the typical focus on studying youth subcultures related to lifestyles; the age range of my research participants varies from 19 to 60. Finally, the thesis contributes to the field of cultural sociology, as it introduces the concept of “differently sacred.”

CHAPTER 2

The Perspective of Cultural Sociology and the Literature on Turkish Migration

2.1 Introduction

The first part of this chapter presents the theoretical framework of the thesis. I approach the study of Turkish choirs in Berlin from the perspective of cultural sociology. Hence, I introduce the general framework guiding my research, primarily inspired by the work of Jeffrey C. Alexander and Philip Smith (2003) and theory on symbolic boundaries as formulated by Michele Lamont (1992). The perspective of cultural sociology is accompanied by works from music sociology that regard music as a resource (Bennett 2015, DeNora 2003, 2015). In the second part, I present and analyse the most influential works on music and identity among Turkish immigrants in Germany. Drawing from Alexander and Smith’s (2003) distinction between “strong” and “weak” programs, I compare Kaya’s works (2001a, 2001b) on Turkish hip-hop youth, which I regard as a weak program, and Maria Wurm’s (2008) work on Turkish popular music, which can be classified as a strong program. I also examine how the arguments of scholars in the field of Turkish migration (Kaya 2001a, Kaya 2001b, Kaya 2005, Wurm 2008, Çağlar 1997, Mandel 2008, and Kürsat-Ahlers 1996) apply to my research participants.

2.2. Theoretical Framework: The perspective of cultural sociology

I approach the study of Turkish choirs in Hamburg from the perspective of cultural sociology. My work is based on the premises of the Strong Program in cultural sociology, initially developed by Alexander and Smith (2003). To begin, Alexander and Smith draw the lines of demarcation between “cultural sociology” and “sociology of culture.” In the former, culture is an “independent variable” that possesses relative analytical autonomy, whereas in the latter, it is a “dependent

variable” (Alexander and Smith 2003:12). The authors criticize the Marxist understanding of culture, because it reduces culture to the superstructure and, consequently, to something determined by the “base” (Alexander 1990: 2-3). By proposing that the sociology of culture seeks to assign culture space out of “the domain of meaning,” they implicitly suggest that meaning is important to cultural sociologists (Alexander 1990: 2-3). Lyn Spillman also confirms the centrality of “meaning-making” to cultural sociology (Spillman 2002: 1). The discourse of some ethnographic works that follow a constructivist approach and cultural sociology intersects in that both methodologies seek to avoid a reductionist view of culture; “meaning and interpretation are active and fluid processes” (Spillman 2002: 4). Spillman’s main dissatisfaction with ethnographic writing lies in the fact that it only focuses on the “deviant and powerless” and somehow ignores “mainstream culture” (Spillman 2002: 6). What seems plausible for ethnography studies is to accept the “autonomy of culture” and to seek to “discover the nature of internal and subjective structures,” as discussed by Alexander in his account of “hermeneutics” (Alexander 1990: 3). This thesis primarily studies what can be regarded as the mainstream: the dynamics of Turkish Classical and Folk music choirs and spaces in Hamburg, Berlin, and Mannheim, except for a brief inclusion of Berlin’s subaltern immigrant musical spaces in the Kreuzberg neighborhood. It does not, by any means, regard the participants as “powerless”; on the contrary, it sees them as creative actors. A cultural sociological perspective allows scholars to read ethnographies according to the scope of the weak and strong programs as outlined by Alexander and Smith (2003:17). The fundamental differences between strong and weak program lie in their approach to culture, methodology, and analysis. According to the authors, strong program puts emphasis on the autonomy of culture and it is committed to “hermeneutically reconstructing social texts in a rich and persuasive way” (Ibid: 13). Accordingly, the “thick description” of strong program is opposed to the “thin description” of weak program. In the “thin description”, “meaning is either simply read off from social structure or reduced to abstracted descriptions of reified values, norms, ideology, or fetishism” (Ibid:13). Finally, whereas theorists of a weak program develop

abstract terminology to explain mechanisms, “a strong program tries to anchor causality in proximate actors and agencies, specifying in detail just how culture interferes with and directs what really happens” (Ibid:13).Although making a clear-cut distinction and claim about whether ethnographies on the Turkish musical scene in Europe follow a strong or a weak program, it is possible to interpret the literature according to these designations and discuss their tendencies. Furthermore, drawing on Ron Eyerman, Marco Martiniello and Jean-Michel Lafleur suggest that music can have “political significance” that is enacted in “public performance” (Martiniello and Lafleur 2008: 1198). However, in my research, the political articulation of music, or the political aspect of the music communities, is in the background; singing and listening to music together in the diaspora is usually more important than politics. Eyerman highlights the role of this type of collective experience in the formation of collective identity:

…live performance and collective listening to recordings and viewing videos are important in promoting collective experience and grounding collective identity. Music is central to getting the message out, to recruiting, but collective experience is the core of collective identification/identity formation. (Eyerman 2002: 449 as cited in Martiniello and Lafleur 2008: 1198).

In my ethnographic research, I witnessed numerous times that Turkish audience at Turkish clubs were captivated by karaoke videos where one could see both the lyrics and some touristic sights from Turkey. Viewing, listening karaoke the song and joining the singing activity was achieved collectively, with the participation of five to ten people in a passionate and loud manner. While focusing on meaning, cultural sociologists should pay attention to the meaning that arises primarily in the minds of the participants. This does not mean that they will use the same language or construct the same ultimate meaning as the participant. As Holloway and Wheeler remind us:

The meaning of the participants differs from scientific interpretations. Researchers move back and forth, from the reality of informants to scientific interpretations,

but they must find a balance between involvement in the culture they study and scientific reflections and ideas about the beliefs and practices within that culture (Holloway and Wheeler 1996: 143).

While doing ethnography, at times, I felt obliged to use words such as “our nation’, ‘our land’, ‘our culture’”, especially with nationalist participants to tell them that “I am on your side and I am not your enemy”. At the same time, I did not intend to speak with an academic vocabulary and appear arrogant. In the research, I do not use the concepts like ‘Turkish’ or ‘German’ in an essentialist way. In addition, for the analysis of the choirs, I use the concept of symbolic boundaries, proposed by Lamont in Money, Moral, and Manners: The Culture of the French and the American Upper-Middle Class. In short, symbolic boundaries are “the types of lines that individuals draw when they categorize people – and high-status” (Lamont 1992: 1). Lamont suggests that there are three types of symbolic boundaries: moral, cultural, and socioeconomic. Although Lamont’s work partly draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s, she criticizes his insistence on the significance of cultural and socioeconomic boundaries. Unlike Bourdieu, Lamont considers moral boundaries, “drawn on the basis of moral character, they are centered around such qualities as honesty, work ethic, personal integrity, and consideration for others” (Lamont: 1992: 5), crucial to making distinctions. In some cases, moral boundaries between Alevis and Sunni Muslims are apparent in the discourse in the interviews of the research participants. More significant are the cultural boundaries and moral boundaries (Lamont 1992) drawn against many Turks and Kurds living in Germany. Lamont writes: “Cultural boundaries are drawn on the basis of education, intelligence, manners, tastes, and command of high culture. Someone who describes all of his friends as refined is drawing cultural boundaries” (Lamont 1992: 4). What is evident is that when the participants in the research create distinctions from other Turks in their narratives about taste, they employ cultural boundaries. Music is a cultural resource that allows the participants to deliberately position themselves as culturally superior. However, it is noticeable from the accounts that in the case of ethnic Germans, cultural boundaries play a much less prominent role even though they are sometimes

evident. Music is not a cultural resource that sets strict boundaries between the participants and ethnic Germans. What is more prominent in drawing boundaries against ethnic Germans is that participants construct moral boundaries in relation to what they perceive as the differences between Turkish and German qualities. It is not a distinction between sacred and profane, but a distinction between sacred and differently sacred, as I will elaborate in chapter 7. In the choirs, German music is not othered. German classical music is respected, and German pop is not a symbol of otherness. Socioeconomic boundaries, for Lamont, “are drawn on the basis of judgments concerning people’s social position as indicated by their wealth, power, or professional success” (Lamont 1992: 4). I have certain reservations about using Lamont’s definition literally, because in the Turkish migratory case, wealth only is despised. However, “professional success” or having a circle full of “very influential among the local elite” is highly respected and desired. Lamont’s critique of Bourdieu’s approach that “worldviews are primarily defined by habitus1 (via proximate environmental factors)” (Lamont 1992: 181) is very appropriate while evaluating the Turkish case. Lamont states that her study demonstrates “the importance of considering the roles of macrostructural determinants and cultural repertoires in shaping tastes and preferences” (Lamont 1992: 181). Similarly, one cannot make sense of artistic taste and classifications in Turkey and among Turkish immigrants in Germany without taking into account the impact of the Turkish Republican modernization project, launched by the Kemalist cadres. For example, secularists in the choirs in Hamburg have a specific attitude towards the classification of music, who should represent the ideal citizen of Turkey, and the way an individual should be dressed. Furthermore, for my research it is relevant that boundary work is not limited to the individual level. As Lamont argues, “Boundary work is also a way of developing a sense of group membership; it creates bonds based on shared emotions, similar conceptions of the sacred and the profane, and similar reactions toward symbolic violators” (Lamont: 1992: 12). My research shows that the choir participants draw boundaries toward both Turkish immigrants and German natives, and they partly arise

1 “The habitus is a necessity internalized and converted into a disposition that generates meaningful practices and meaning-giving perceptions” (Bourdieu 2010:166).

from their common “musical habitus.” Through the process of boundary work, listeners of Arabesk, a “hybrid music style with sentimental and fatalistic lyrics that combined Anatolian folk music with Western, Turkish and Libanese pop” (Greve 2009:118), are constituted as symbolic violators. Thus, the choirs create a “third sphere,” a “third group who are able to shape a space beyond the inner and outer spheres” (Bohnsack and Nohl: 2003: 380). Performing Turkish Folk and Turkish Classical music provides them a space of their own and the freedom to express themselves. The works of Alexander and Lamont present a general framework through which I approach the study of the Turkish choirs in Hamburg. Additionally, I use several other theories and concepts, including: “stigma management” from Erving Goffman (1963) and “destigmatization strategies” from Lamont (2009); the cognitive sociology of Eviatar Zerubavel (1991, 1997); and “interaction ritual chains” from Randall Collins (2004). I present these authors’ formulations in the text, because their theoretical concepts do not apply to the entire thesis, but rather to particular topics. A thread that runs throughout the thesis is the idea of music as a resource, following Andy Bennett. Bennett suggests that the most important gift of music sociology following the cultural turn has been its perception of “music as a resource” (Bennett 2015: 143). The author concludes, “Music serves as a cultural resource in the formulation and articulation of individual and collective identities” (Ibid: 150). Bennett summarizes what music can indicate: “national identity”; “a symbol of taste”; “an alternative lifestyle.” He adds that music is also researched in the frame of “locality,” “memory,” “body,” and “technology” (Bennett 2015: 143). Bennett argues that music “plays a key part in the formation and articulation of identity,” and it “can become a strong marker of national identity, for example, in the form of national anthems and similar pieces of music or songs with a strong patriotic flavor” (Ibid: 143). He is of the opinion that “music and national identity become interwoven in highly complex ways” (Ibid: 144). Drawing from Stokes (1994:3), he affirms that music “plays a critical function in informing ‘our sense of place’” (Bennett 2014: 133). This thesis also does not dismiss Mark Rimmer’s concept of “musical habitus,” which extends Bourdieu’s original idea of habitus with “people’s relationship to and taste for music” (Rimmer: 2012: 300). As an analytical tool, “musical habitus functions as an

invitation to explore the nexus of social and personal factors that conjoin music’s affordances (and associated practices) with the contexts and conditions implicated in people’s lived musical experiences and, indeed, their whole lives” (Rimmer 2010: 259). Furthermore, the author suggests that the notion of musical habitus helps our “understanding of why music’s particular forms enduringly connect with particular groups of listeners and not others and why (or whether) listeners employ certain music in some ways rather than others” (Ibid: 259). Before the field research was conducted, I did not have strong theoretical assumptions about the choirs. However, as several months passed in the field, I became aware of connections between the music choices of the participants and their socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. The participants in the choirs usually reproduce the tastes of urban middle-class citizens in Turkey, and this is reflected in their choice of music and their rejection of the Arabesk genre. This thesis is also inspired by Lisa McCormick’s critique of what she names “the production/consumption paradigm.” According to McCormick, “social theorists since Adorno, including Bourdieu and Peterson, who is known for his “American ‘production of culture’ perspective” create arguments on music based on an ‘economic framework’” (McCormick 2012: 722). McCormick’s argument is similar to the autonomy of culture argument of Alexander, and she draws upon his Strong Program. She puts forward an “alternative to the production/consumption dichotomy” by introducing classifications of music “as a text, as the product of a social world or industry, as a resource for social action and as performance” (McCormick 2012: 723; italics in original). This thesis takes music as a resource in the context of Turkish immigrants. Furthermore, McCormick calls attention to the “ritual settings” that attract the sociologists because they take “musical performance as embodied social action”. McCormick reminds us that Simon Frith accepts the term “rites” as she concludes that “identity is constructed through rites; it makes little difference whether ritual participation is in the form of “music making” or “music listening” because both are “bodily matters” or social movements” “ (McCormick 2015: 119). McCormick affirms that “sociologists have not gone far enough in suggesting that music is a resource in social action; music is itself a social process through which social “actors, individually or in concert, display for others the meaning of their social situation” (Alexander 2004:

429). (McCormick 2015: 123). Tia DeNora is the author who perhaps puts the most emphasis to the power of music in social life. She stresses that music creates a great impact on “consciousness, the body and the emotions” (DeNora 2003:1). She convincingly argues that music can bring about “consensus and/or subversion, referring to “Shostakovich’s “censure for writing ‘decadent’ music” in the Soviet Union, “the banishment of atonal music in Nazi Germany”, or the heated debate over “The Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen or Jimi Hendrix’s version of the Star Spangled Banner” (Ibid). DeNora accentuates that music sociology cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that music is a “dynamic medium within social life” (DeNora 2015: 344). She adds that “music is not simply ‘shaped’ by ‘social forces’”, and on the contrary, she argues that one should pay a great attention to “music’s active properties”, and its “discursive and material powers” (Ibid). For her, in order to comprehend music as a component of social order, scholars must distance themselves from conventional musicology and social studies. More precisely, “what is required is a focus on actual musical practice, on how specific agents use and interact with music”(Ibid: 345). In my research on the Turkish musical fields in Hamburg and other German cities, and Vienna, I have observed that participants use music to articulate their immigrant identities. This is visible in particular in the Turkish Folk and Turkish Classical Music choirs. The participants employ Turkish Classical and Folk music as an indicator of taste, in Bennett’s words, “to mark themselves off as ‘cultured’ in a highbrow sense of the term” (Bennett 2015: 143). The responses in my interviews suggest that choir members draw symbolic boundaries against Arabesk. Even in my limited research on the hip-hop scene in Berlin, I was able to find traces of how hip-hop works as a tool for self- expression by immigrants, particularly in Kreuzberg, observing how this genre is related with locality. The participants in my research use music to remember and appropriate their “shared generational memories” (Bennett 2013: 60 as cited in Bennett 2015: 147). Some younger participants, on the other hand, use music to imagine the places (for example Istanbul, Anatolia, Turkish villages) that they are connected to through their family ties. Influenced by ideas from McCormick (2012) and DeNora (2003, 2015), the thesis will highlight Turkish music’s power in positively changing participants’

emotional states and its role in blurring boundaries between different groups of Turkish immigrants through rituals. I propose that music’s use goes beyond an articulation of national or ethnic identity. This assertion will be elaborated in the three chapters that introduce my analytical findings, in which I discuss music as a resource for drawing symbolic boundaries, a resource for destigmatization, and a resource for creating a place of belonging. Authors such as McCormick (2012, 2015) and DeNora (2003) suggest that we should consider music seriously, not something as defined by the social but as an important part of the social. McCormick underlines the weaknesses in Bourdieusian theory by referring to Hennion’s “sociology of musical mediations,” which regards music as “a contingent and possibly transformative event rather than a static object, while taste can be understood as performance rather than an indicator of the cultural capital associated with a socio-professional category” (Hennion 2001: 3 as cited in McCormick 2015: 119).

2.2. The literature on Turkish migration

In light of new perspectives in cultural sociology, in particular, the Strong Program, could ethnographic writing be enriched? Although every ethnographic work might be evaluated in terms of the degree to which it embodies a weak or a strong program, I will illustrate two works that strikingly represent the weak categories: Ayhan Kaya (2001a), (2001b). I will also illustrate a work that can represent the strong program, Maria Wurm (2008). In works that correspond to a weak program, theoreticians sometimes make claims from an ideological point of view rather than focusing on meaning-making. Thus, they are not compatible with the goals of cultural sociology. This is clearly visible in Kaya’s ethnography. In many ways, he follows a weak program. Texts that follow cultural sociology and the Strong Program should not at least, disregard the mainstream and meaning. In plain words, cultural sociologists can investigate subaltern groups, such as hip-hop youths; however, they should perhaps also examine the relationship between the subaltern and the mainstream. At the same time, cultural sociologists should be able to point out social class differences when it is

necessary. Nonetheless, their chief interest in meaning should not be hidden in the background. Kaya states:

The diasporic identity constructed by ethnic minority youths has been a ‘valuable component of the critique of absolutist political sensibilities’ within the nation- state (Gilroy, 1994: 210). As I will explain below, the construction of such a diasporic identity has connections with the production and articulation of culture on a transnational level. This is evident in the production and reproduction of forms which are sometimes called ‘syncretic,’ ‘bricolage,’ ‘creolized,’ ‘translated,’ ‘crossover,’ ‘cut’n’ mix,’ ‘hybrid,’ ‘alternate,’ or ‘mélange’ (Kaya 2001b: 80).

What distinguishes weak and strong approaches to culture is that the former seems to create rhetoric that glorifies the challenges of youth subcultures in the transnational field. In other words, these works, at times and in a non-analytical way, undertake the role of the advocate of the underdog as if ethnography’s role were to contribute to a resistance movement. In the example of Kaya´s work, Sicher in Kreuzberg: Constructing Diasporas: Turkish Hip-Hop Youth in Berlin, this rather optimistic, but not necessarily questioning approach emphasizes that the transnational musical space of Kreuzberg in Berlin means for “the working-class youth a ‘fortress’” (Kaya 2001b:151). While Alexander and Smith acknowledge this kind of ethnographic writing (in the example of the works of the Birmingham school) as having the potential for being “brilliantly illuminating,” they find it flawed due to the lack of “cultural autonomy” (Alexander and Smith 2003: 17). This kind of ethnographic writing is what they refer to as “sociology of culture,” which relates “cultural forms to social structure” with the overtones of “hegemony.” They provide the example of “Paul Willis’s ethnographic study of working-class school kids” (Alexander and Smith 2003: 17). To be sure, Kaya’s work makes certain contributions to the field. He introduces a vibrant milieu of hip-hop performers in Kreuzberg and attempts to challenge the clichés about German-Turks, particularly the youth. In doing so, he exaggerates the role of the hip-hop youth. He puts forward a very contestable argument that renders the role of Gramsci’s “organic intellectuals” and Benjamin’s “storytellers” to the Berlin-Turkish hip-hop youth (Kaya 2001b: 180). What Alexander and Smith point out is valid for Kaya’s unsupported argument: “Neo-Gramscian theorizing exhibits the telltale weak

program ambiguities over the role of culture” (Alexander and Smith 2003: 17). The overtones of a weak program are highly visible when Kaya reduces Berlin-Turkish hip- hop youth to a subculture, which, according to him “establishes solidarity networks against the major clusters of modernity such as capitalism, industrialism, surveillance and militarism” (Kaya 2001a: 29-30). In contrast, Maria Wurm’s article, “The Entertainment of a Parallel Society? Turkish Popular Music in Germany” (2008) in many aspects embodies the characteristics of cultural sociology and the Strong Program. In the study, Wurm describes music as an instrumental “leitmotif,” through which Turkish youth in Germany feel “affiliated” with certain groups and develop a sense of “safety.” At the same time, she draws from Johannes Moser, who dismisses the idea that today people still belong to the classical “class” formations. Instead, she affirms Moser’s proposition that “contexts, necessities, and needs” determine the “network” that people should join in parallel with the “individualization of life situations” (Wurm 2008: 388-389). At this point, it should be noted that this argument shares mutual ground with the above-mentioned “autonomy of culture” because it advocates the existence of fluidity in group memberships. Thereby, it also implies that artistic taste steadily becomes a matter of individual choice and thereby freed from the confined class position. Wurm stresses that the collective meaning of being mainstream among Turkish youth in Germany is to seem “non-resistant and unobtrusive.” She maintains that mainstream Turkish youth thus distances itself from subcultures and Turkish hip-hop youth. Their association with the mainstream, according to Wurm, provides them “distinction” and “expression of self-image” (Wurm 2008: 389- 390). Emotions and their relationship to music as regards the meaning-making process is perhaps one of the conspicuous domains to which the sociology of culture cannot contribute much. However, Wurm’s text, seemingly from a cultural sociology perspective, pays attention to concepts such as “home,” and “family life” that are reminiscent of “emotional warmth” for the young Turkish music audience, who considers them constituents of the “Turkish context.” It highlights the fact that “the German or English context” are reminiscent of “school” and “job,” therefore with the feelings of refusal and estrangement (Wurm 2008: 383).

Apart from a framework that categorizes work as “strong” or “weak” in terms of culture, it is possible to review the vast body of existing literature on Turkish migration based on another categorization: 1) identity, belonging, and cultural forms (which I discuss below); or 2) religious or ethnic organizations, religious rights and integration in Germany and Europe (Allievi and Nielsen 2003, Fetzer and Soper 2005, Köşer Akçapar 2012, Rosenow-Williams 2012, Yükleyen 2012). I focus on the first category and a specific group of authors who write on identity and belonging, and I give priority to those who also merge these topics with music or other cultural forms. I review the authors who write about identity and belonging because this thesis is not only about music as a cultural form but also about identity formation and belonging. I do not focus on the literature about Muslim religious rights, ethnic or religious associations, or the integration of practicing Turkish Muslims because they are not directly relevant to my research. Social theorists have described the Turkish migrants of the 1960s, 1970s, and even the 1980s, with concepts such as “identity crisis,” “in-betweenness,” “lost generation,” “split identities,” and “disoriented children” (Kağıtçıbaşı 1987, Abadan- Unat 1985). The well-known Turkish migration scholar, Kağıtçıbaşı, claims that both the first and the second generation have undergone “alienation” and “exclusion,” albeit in different ways. According to this distinction, the first generation is deemed confined to “traditional culture and identity,” mostly as a response to the denial by the native culture in Germany. Such a response is reinforced by having strong relations with relatives and with the motherland. Thus, this view assumes that the first generation possesses a so- called “original national cultural identity.” In contrast, the second generation is portrayed as “foreigners” with no “distinct identity” to cling to. According to Kağıtçıbaşı, members of the second generation often lag in communication with those in the homeland, due to the obstacle of language. Thus, the alienated second generation is claimed to be void of connections to home due to being “decultured or culturally impoverished.” (Kağıtçıbaşı 1987: 199 as cited in Kaya 2001b: 161-162). The diminishing of “contact” with the motherland causes the deprivation of “home,” according to Kağıtçıbaşı (1987) and Abadan-Unat (1985). Furthermore, according to Kaya, studies conducted in the 1980s had focused on “the reorganization of family, parent-child-relationships, integration, assimilation and ‘acculturation’ of migrants to German culture (cf. inter alia Abadan-

Unat 1985; Nauck 1988; Kağıtçıbaşı, 1987). The key words in these studies were ‘cultural conflict,’ ‘culture shock,’ ‘acculturation,’ ‘in-betweenness’ and ‘identity crisis’” (Kaya 2001b: 14). However, it is important to note that ambivalence and in-betweenness are not intrinsically negative. On the contrary, as Giesen (2012) explains, they represent an extraordinary space that can contribute to the further development of cultural sociology.

When constructing social order, we tend to ignore and disregard these third possibilities that, from an everyday perspective, seem to jeopardize order but, in fact, are driving the process of social communication and cultural interpretation. By debunking this essential thirdness, cultural sociology provides a new avenue for analyzing the pragmatics of culture (Giesen 2012: 802).

The choirs can be taken as space between public and private sphere, deriving from the perception of the choir members of being not accepted in German society. Hence, studying choirs provides insight into the meanings participants attach to German public sphere, regarded as profane. From the 1990s onwards, the literature on migration in Germany has started to define German-Turks as creative and successful actors. I have chosen an article written in 1996 to illustrate the stark contrast between the new literature on Turkish migration in Germany and prior work. In the 1990s, it was still possible to read works such as that by E. Kürsat-Ahlers, in which the author defined the Turkish minority in Germany in an unfavorable, but clear-cut manner and polemical tone: “The weakness of middle-class results in the near-absence of a Turkish intellectual elite” (Kürsat-Ahlers 1996: 118). Authors such as Caglar (1997), Kaya (2001b), Adelson (2005), and Mandel (2008) argue against this type of a claim, which is a fundamental idea that the choir members and the musicians in my study would also object to. Kürsat-Ahlers also states: “The cultural identity of Turks in Germany is built around their religious identity as Muslims” (Kürsat- Ahlers 1996: 117). This claim is also contested in the above-referenced works of Caglar, Kaya, Adelson, and Mandel. Kürsat-Ahlers generalizes the “cultural identity” of the whole population of Turks as if they are homogeneously Muslim without recognizing the existence of non-practicing Muslims, let alone Alevis, agnostics or atheists. Again, most of the choir members and other research participants do not primarily define themselves

according to their Muslim identities, but with secular Turkish or German-Turkish identities. Today, the research participants have taken such characterizations as clichés; however, in order to deal with these labels, they employ certain strategies that will be later discussed in the thesis. Kaya (2005), in his article “Citizenship and the Hyphenated Germans: German- Turks” examines the legal dimension of German citizenship with regard to the new law enacted in January 2000, which enables Turkish immigrants to have dual citizenship. Kaya notes that this law allows them to be recognized with hyphenated terms, such as German-Turk. However, he argues that the stress is on being “German,” and, therefore, he reasons that German-Turks are required to undergo “integration into a German way of life” (Ibid 227-228). What he misses in his account is an elaboration of what constitutes the so-called “German way of life” or the so-called “Turkish way of life.” From his critique of “holistic” definitions of culture (Ibid: 228-230), one would expect to find a more precise negation of the existence of a separate German way of life. Kaya, in this sense, falls into the trap of essentializing in an attempt to theorize “a third culture: cultural bricolage” that the German-Turks might create (Ibid: 230-234).” As Caglar asserts,

The notion of a ‘hyphenated’ identity, instead of resolving cultural essentialism, tends thus to highlight the problematic nature of collective attachments…It is assumed, for example, that German-Turks share common predicaments and aspirations regarding their status in German society (Caglar 1997: 175).

My research is about a particular milieu. I do not study the “culture” or “identity” of German Turks, but the way they use music as a cultural form. On the other hand, I will illustrate in Chapter 6 that there is a significant internal differentiation within the Turks or German-Turks in Germany. Ruth Mandel questions issues of belonging and “the tired bridge metaphor” (Mandel 2008:1). By doing so, she focuses on the meaning world, experiences, and statements of German-Turks without underestimating or overestimating their agency. In her ethnography, Mandel emphasizes that German-Turks still struggle for recognition in everyday life in Germany, yet labels such as “cultureless” or “caught between two

cultures and part of neither” make it difficult for this struggle to be heard (Mandel 2008: 180). Mandel claims that the word “Deutschtürken” or “German Turks” is seen as a category of “Turk” and not “German”; consequently, she affirms that the majority society regards them with “an unchangeable essence: once a Turk, always a Turk” (Mandel: 181). She concludes that in German cosmopolitanism, non-Western ethnicities are seen as foreign and other and thus, she claims that Germany is still in the “first age of modernity,” drawing from Ulrich Beck (2000: 87)(Mandel 2008: 322). Besides the work on Turkish migration in Germany overall, since the mid-1990s, numerous authors have focused specifically on Turkish hip-hop in Germany, especially in Berlin (Kaya 1997; Caglar 1998; Elflein 1998; Bennett 1999; Soysal 2001, 2004; Diessel 2001; Solomon 2009). What can be seen as common to these works is the focus on locality and attachment to place. Turkish hip-hop is very appealing to researchers because it is a mixed genre and because the hip-hoppers are the products of the generation that was born in Germany. This third generation has created new cultural forms, such as Turkish hip-hop. It can also be argued that this third generation of Turks is largely unfamiliar with the old and established forms of Turkish music such as the Classical and Folk music that created the canons. Many scholars express dissatisfaction with existing terms used in the migration literature on Turks in Germany. Hyphenated citizenship, being German-Turk, seems plausible. However, when this term is taken at an abstract level and when it involves identity, certain questions arise. This thesis does not take these terms “German” and “Turk” as coherent and distinctive. Hence, it regards Kaya’s (2001b: 80) definitions of diasporic identities (“‘syncretic,’ ‘bricolage,’ ‘creolized,’ ‘translated,’ ‘crossover,’ ‘cut’n’ mix,’ ‘hybrid,’ ‘alternate,’ or ‘mélange’”) too general. From an analytical perspective, it is not possible to distinguish Turkish elements and German elements of an identity. These new definitions of identities, despite being well-intended, are not analtyhically useful At first sight, they seem to be analytical tools, but they do not necessarily correspond to reality, for example, to the identities found in my research. Research dealing with a specific milieu might have valid arguments, as in the example of German-Turkish hip- hop youth, who can be represented with these “hybrid” identities through their cultural products. However, it is not the case in a substantial part of my research.

Accordingly, rather than accepting the “blunt, flat, undifferentiated” terms of “clichéd” constructivists (Brubaker 2004: 29), Brubaker, drawing on Bourdieu, proposes that there exist “categories of practice” and “categories of analysis” regarding identity. By the former Brubaker means “folk categories,” belonging to the “everyday social experience” of common people that are markedly different from the latter, the “experience-distant categories” of the “social analyst” (Brubaker 2004: 31). Brubaker criticizes the use of “identity,” “race,” and “nation” in a “reifying” way in practice; he asserts that “they exist as substantial entities.” He seems to agree with the avid critique of the “essentialist” attitude in academia, but he concludes that sharp constructivism, which comes up with an unchanging packet of adjectives, such as “multiple, fragmented, and fluid,” should not be without question swallowed as “identity” (Brubaker 2004: 32-33). The research participants have diverse identifications, such as Turkish, Turkish citizen, German citizen Turkish, German-Turkish, and European Turkish. The main issue for the research participants is not whether they are recognized as hyphenated or not in the German public sphere. The choir participants chiefly yearn for acceptance. That is to say, they would like to sing and to be heard speaking in Turkish in the German public sphere without any fear, without being exposed to stares or negating glances. In other words, they would like to feel equal to and as free as ethnic Germans. The cultural products of the choir participants are unquestionably Turkish. They cherish a specific aspect of the Turkish cultural tradition, folk and classical music. In this sense, there is no “mixing.” What the choir participants produce is not similar to the hip- hop with mixed elements (German and Turkish words; Oriental and Western rhythms) produced by German-Turkish youth. The songs that are rehearsed and performed in the choirs in Hamburg are cultural products imported from Turkey. The choirs have not undergone structural changes in terms of sound and orchestra formation. They are not new forms and they are unlike genres such as hip-hop, with Turkish and German lyrics. The choirs and their forms of classical and folk music are not subversive. What choir members would like to do is to preserve and transmit these cultural forms without alteration to the new generations of Turks in Germany. Thus, “hybridity” and similar arguments are not applicable to the choirs. On the other hand, the “bridge” that Mandel (2008) criticized can only be valid in this definition: choir members present the preserved

Turkish culture to Germans. However, ultimately, the Turkish cultural product is unchanged. The subsequent chapter will introduce my ethnographic approach to the study of the choirs in Hamburg, after which I proceed to the role of music in Turkish nation- building in Chapter 4 and a description of the Turkish musical field in Hamburg in Chapter 5. I elaborate the findings on music as a resource in Turkish migration contexts in Chapters 6, 7, and 8. This thesis contributes to cultural sociology and migration studies in several ways. I will introduce a concept of “differently sacred” in the chapter 6, as In the migration context, the division into sacred and profane does not encompass the entire complexity of social relations. The chapter 7 contributed to the field of migration studies, as it elaborates on the distinction between integration and belonging; introduces 3 destigmatization strategies of German-Turks; and elaborates on the way of integration in the German society, preferred by research participants. Finally, as it will be shown in chapter 8, whereas German music, culture, and way of life are regarded as “differently sacred”, German public sphere as “profane” is contrasted to the “third sphere” of the choirs.

CHAPTER 3

How to Study Choirs? Research Methodology

3.1 Introduction

In this chapter, I outline the ethnographic method, which I consider the most appropriate for approaching music and migration from the perspective of cultural sociology. My research follows the argument of James Clifford that “Ethnographic truths are thus inherently partial - committed and incomplete” (Clifford 1986:7). This is a research conducted in a specific time and space. It is partial and incomplete, as it focuses on only five Turkish choirs in Hamburg, whereas new once are emerging, and the interpretation of the reality of research participants, with which many other Turks in Germany probably may not agree. As Clifford reminds us:

Ethnography is actively situated between powerful systems of meaning. It poses its questions at the boundaries of civilizations, cultures, races, and genders. Ethnography decodes and decodes, telling the grounds of collective order and diversity, inclusion and exclusion. It describes processes of innovations and structuration, and is itself part of these processes (ibid: 2-3).

This research is based on the interpretation of the meanings internalized, appropriated, and articulated by the research participants. Further, I elaborate the establishment of rapport with the research participants and provide a comprehensive account of the difficulties I encountered along the way. I then introduce the analysis and writing process. Finally, I provide a self-reflexive field work account to familiarize the reader with my liminal position within the research, as someone who comes from a family with a significant music background and who is, at the same time, not a Turkish immigrant in Germany, but in another European country.

3.1. Research method:

My general research aim is to understand the role of Turkish music in the lives of the choir members that participated in this study. To achieve this aim, I needed to establish trusting relationships with the participants and to make them feel comfortable about providing lengthy accounts in response to personal and sometimes delicate questions. My assumption is that music is not the sole reason for people to gather in the choirs; music is more than a mechanism for forming groups of people. It is a cultural form, which carries a certain meaning. Moreover, the way in which people choose musical genres they enjoy and perhaps create is not arbitrary. When people like the same musical genre, the music transcends the differences among them. However, when they dislike each other’s choices and even have contempt for them, then music plays a role in enhancing differences. Thus, my research aims at discovering less obvious, but not less important, reasons for joining the choirs and the effects music has in dealing with the migration experience. For those reasons, I undertook an in-depth ethnography, which included lengthy participant observation and in-depth interviews. I initiated the field research as a part of my Ph.D. project in October 200 during my 5-months stay as Erasmus student at the University of Hamburg. Later on, I spent an additional 4 weeks in Hamburg in 2012 to deepen my knowledge of the field. Besides, I spent one month in Berlin in 2010 and visited Vienna several times from 2009 to 2012. In addition, during my 2 weeks library research in Frankfurt, I also conducted a short research in nearby Mannheim.

Over the course of the visits, I conducted more than 50 individual and group interviews. At first, the interviews were informal, unstructured talks at Cafe Canela at the Asien-Afrika-Institute of the university, with an aim to gather information about the Turkish musical field in Hamburg in general. At first sight, the idea of observing Hamburg's Turkish diasporic musical field appealed to me as an ethnographer since I had not come across a comprehensive study on the topic. The initial access to the field was through interviews with Turkish students that I randomly met at the University of Hamburg. In the beginning, these interviews did not follow a detailed structure, but they were rather intended to acquire essential knowledge to map the Turkish diasporic musical

scene in Hamburg. Upon deciding to do research on the choirs, during one semester at the University of Hamburg, I attended rehearsals every week, sang with the choirs, and joined in the mundane conversations about football, celebrities, and “memleket halleri” (the ways of the homeland) during the breaks. This type of a study enabled me to observe the participants fully and create rapport. In most of the choirs, I started conducting in- depth, semi-structured, topical interviews only 2-3 months after my initial entry into the field. As a cultural sociologist focused on the “meaning-making” (Spillman 2002: 1) process, I found participant observation and in-depth interviews relevant to my research. The reason is that the data gathered in this way allows for “the analysis of data involves interpretation of the meanings, functions, and consequences of human actions and institutional practices, and how these are implicated in local, and perhaps also wider, contexts” (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007: 3). I began the interviews by using the following prompts: “Tell me, how did you join the choir” or “Tell me a little bit about your family background.” The reason to start with a life story was to open up the participant, to understand the person, and to feel the “habitus.” Additionally, my aim was to guide the participants in such a way that they forgot that they were being interviewed. I noticed that if they felt as if they were being interviewed, they replied in line with Charmaz’s (2006) argument that “during interviews, professionals may recite public relations rhetoric rather than reveal personal views, much less a full account of their experiences” (Charmaz 2006: 27). After the opening questions, I proceeded to discuss the topics of my research. I asked open-ended questions to allow the participants to lead the conversation. The questions focused on feelings, emotions (i.e. “How does it make you feel to sing?” or “How do you feel about being an immigrant in Hamburg?”), experiences, and personal views. The topics included music genres and the role of music at the personal level and in society, the Turkish community in Germany, the integration debate, ethnic identification and belonging, living as a Turk in Hamburg, the experience of being a choir member, Turkishness/Germanness, among others. My goal was to detect and interpret how music is correlated with these issues, for instance, how music serves as a resource for internal differentiation and drawing symbolic boundaries within the Turkish diaspora.

My questions started with “how” rather than with “what,” inspired by the documentary method. The documentary method is related to “Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge” (Bohnsack and Nohl 2003: 371). To grasp the “documentary meaning,” the researcher should inquire “how: how is practice produced or accomplished” (Ibid). That is to say, the researcher should seek “the modus operandi of practical action” (Ibid). The documentary method is able to succeed in dealing with the “aporie between subjectivism and objectivism” (Bohnsack et al: 2010: 101), by “the change from the question what reality is in the perspective of the actors, to the question how this reality is produced or accomplished in these actors’ everyday practice” (Ibid: 102). In other words, the researcher is not looking for “subjective intentions and common sense theories”; rather, “she or he is able to find access to the structure of action and orientation, which exceeds the perspective of those under research” (Ibid.). In addition to the research in Hamburg, I spent the summer of 2010 in Berlin and conducted library research in Frankfurt and field research in Mannheim in 2011. The interviews I conducted in Berlin and Mannheim contributed to my better understanding of the musical fields of Turkish immigrants in Germany. According to Marcus, moving out from single sites to multi-sited ethnography enables examination of “the circulation of cultural meanings, objects, and identities in diffuse time-space” (Marcus: 1995: 96). Furthermore, “this mode of constructing the multi-sited space of research involves tracing the circulation through different contexts of a manifestly material object of study (at least as initially conceived) such as commodities, gifts, money, works of art, and intellectual property” (Ibid: 106-107). The aim was to compare Hamburg to Berlin, as a center where the majority of the Turkish immigrants lives and to the smaller city Mannheim, as a periphery. Regarding Turkish immigrants’ musical activities, Hamburg stands as a semi- periphery between Berlin and Mannheim. I conducted 2 semi-structured and 6 non- structured interviews in Berlin, 5 non-structured interviews in Mannheim, and 3 non- structured interviews in Vienna. The interviews covered the same topics as in Hamburg. During my stay in Hamburg I concluded that choir members use music as a resource in several different ways in migratory context. Hence, the goal of interviews in Berlin, Mannheim, and Vienna with professional musicians and music instructors was to investigate if the same processes occur in other settings. As it will be shown in

subsequent chapters, Turkish immigrants in cities other than Hamburg also draw symbolic boundaries against the listeners of “polluted” genres, consider music to be an excellent resource for destigmatization of Turks in Germany, and also agree that music choirs are a special place of safety for the immigrants. The interviews lasted from 30 to 90 minutes. I recorded all the interviews and subsequently transcribed them.

3.3. Accessing the field and establishing rapport

The reason I chose choirs instead of clubs is that Turkish diaspora club culture in Hamburg is difficult to be ethnographically observed; the ethnographer/sociologist is occasionally confused with a member of the secret police and taken as an intruder, making open interviews with an explicit sociologist identity almost impossible. To illustrate, my initial contact with the owner of the Ihlara Club was via telephone to ask for permission to conduct field research with an open "sociologist" identity. After having received the permission, I visited the club on a Saturday night, before its program started. There was no preparation underway for the night’s entertainment in front of the club at 10:00 pm when I rang the bell. Assuming that the no staff member was available inside the club, I was about to leave. However, a Turkish- speaking bodyguard appeared and asked the purpose of my visit. Upon hearing the purpose "research," in Turkish, the bodyguard asked with a puzzled expression: "Are you here for inquiry?” supposing that I was a secret police officer. He told me to wait, locked the door, and went upstairs to inform the manager about my presence. The boss invited me into his office and checked if my intention was appropriate. He asked me what kind of questions I would direct to the customers at the club. I assured him that I would not ask them any questions and instead, I would observe the body language and the interaction among pairs and people in general. Convinced that my visit would serve for an academic study, the boss decided to allow me in. However, I decided not to pursue the research in the clubs, due to the impossibility to conduct an in-depth interviews in such setting. On several other occasions over the course of the research, people I talked to were

not convinced that I was merely a researcher. I was confused with a member of the Turkish or German secret police, a member of a mysterious organization paid to examine “the state of Turks in Germany,” and even a psychiatrist. While I was attending a Turkish wedding, the musicians thought that I was checking their mental health. Having comprehended the difficulties in these fields, I sought out other possible musical fields. In addition to people being suspicious of my “real intentions” concerning the research, some participants attempted to direct my research and suggest to me what the findings were and how to write about them. Upon meeting me, the prominent choir members tended to discover my political position and to take a stance accordingly. For instance, at first, the conductor of the The ATU choir welcomed me warmly and offered to introduce me to musicians and researchers in my field in Hamburg. However, being a former military officer, his welcoming attitude toward me changed after a few weeks when he started to discover that I did not embrace nationalist ideology. Moreover, he was disturbed by my research methodology, ethnography, in other words, that I used my own methodology and apparently was going to write from my own perspective without his influence. In short, as a researcher, I was not expected to be neutral, but to agree with them, especially about Turkish politics. The ATU’s leader pressured me in many ways, but still allowed me to complete the research. Nevertheless, our strained relationship continued until the end. I will provide two examples. When we had just met, I was discussing migration literature with him. When I mentioned the name of a well-known scholar, who wrote about the Turkish diasporic hip- hop youth in Germany, the conductor of the chorus reacted firmly and told me in a scornful manner, “Oh, I met that guy at a seminar in Bremen. He enjoyed our music, but now he works at the university supported by the Islamist Fethullah Gülen community.” 2

2 “Called ‘Hocaefendi’ (esteemed teacher) by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Turks who devote themselves to his teachings, Fethullah Gülen is the most widely known, and most controversial, religious personality in contemporary Turkey. Known by many names, what is hereafter referred to as the “Gülen Movement” refers to a “transnationally active, Turkish and Muslim-identified education, media, business network whose actors and institutions span well over one hundred countries” (Hendrick 2013: p.2- 3).

The nationalist frequently dismiss the views of the intellectuals they do not agree with by accusing them to belong to this community. Moreover, he commented that some Turkish intellectuals, including Orhan Pamuk, come to Germany to “denigrate Turkishness”, which is a crime in the Turkish Penal Code. 3At that very moment, I thought that the leader of the choir was alluding to me as someone who is conducting anti-Turkish research. He paid extra attention to my facial expression to try to ascertain whether I agreed with what he had said. He attempted to understand my political position before he let me in. Despite the fact that I heartily support freedom of expression in Turkey and think that the pressure on Turkish intellectuals should end, I did not respond to his comment maligning Orhan Pamuk. I tried to remain as neutral as possible to avoid a conflict with the leader of the choir from the beginning. I observed in the following weeks that the very early welcoming attitude of the chorus leader had changed drastically. I had been allowed to attend the chorus meetings every week and asked to sing in the choir by the leader. However, the leader attempted to discuss the political agenda of Turkey, rather than the role of his institution, diasporic music, and migration with me. The topics the chorus leader brought up included the headscarf ban in Turkish universities, the Armenian Genocide, and his attitude toward an Istanbulite-Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, who was assassinated in 2007. During the discussions, the leader of the choir told me: "I did not like that guy, at all. However, I was sad when I heard about him being murdered. They commission minor kids to kill them. Anyways, I kept on playing my instrument in the choir on the day he was murdered. Some people protested against me and left here." It was a day of sorrow for many people. In fact, the death of Hrant Dink brought together people who otherwise conflicted in political matters. Nonetheless, the choir leader stated his position clearly and demonstrated himself as an avid supporter of official state policies.

3 According to Daily Zaman newspaper, “Article 301 made it a crime to “insult Turkishness” and was punishable by up to three years in jail, while Article 299 of the TCK states that any person who publicly defames the government of the Turkish Republic or the judicial institutions of the state or its military or security organizations shall be sentenced to six months to two years' imprisonment.” (Üzüm 2015).

During my time in the field, I strived to not reflect my point of view and remain silent. However, later on, I suspected that the leader had been Googling me regularly on the Internet. For instance, he deliberately named the dissident Turkish authors I quoted in my Master’s thesis to check my reaction. I had written a master's thesis titled, "The Positions of Turkish Intellectuals on the Borders of the Public Zone through the Headscarf Discussions in Turkey since the 1980s," whose online version is available on the Internet. The thesis aimed at offering a distant and critical sociological perspective on the topic, citing liberal Turkish authors, some of whom are public intellectuals. Moreover, I signed an apology petition addressed to Ottoman Armenians for the Armenian Genocide, and my signature was visible online. The tension between the leader of the choir and me continued during the rest of the research semester. From time to time, he reminded me that my doctoral thesis would be immensely important, reasoning that “your thesis is highly political.” He also recommended I utilize surveys so that my project would be a “scientific” one. Besides, he warned me that other works in the past had provided misleading information about Kurdism and Alevism in Germany. One evening, after the folk music choir rehearsal was over for The ATU, I was invited to stay for further discussion about migration and music with some "prominent guests," some so-called “businessmen” and students of the conductor from higher education. I accepted this invitation without any hesitation. In the beginning, it appeared to be a typical non-academic discussion on migration. There were two groups present at the meeting: those who blamed German state policies for the failure of integration, exclusion, and othering, and those who accused the so-called “problematic” working- class, "peasant" Turks who did not want to integrate. Unlike the rather proportionate distribution of the sexes at the chorus rehearsals, there was only one female member present at the discussion. The leader of the group served a few bottles of red wine to the participants in the discussion. From time to time, the arguments of two sides were presented very fiercely. The choir leader recorded the discussion but did not give a copy of the recording to me although I had asked for it. During the discussion, he engaged in an effort to distort my statements and present me to the "prominent guests" as if I were a traitor who attacks his own country. At that moment,

I considered a distinct possibility. Thanks to the social capital of the leader of the choir, he might have asked officials from the consulate or the Turkish intelligence service to attend this gathering, informing them about my presence in Hamburg and my research. It is not unusual that many nationalist Turks believe in conspiracy theories. I thought it was possible for the choir leader to see me as a person spying on his group for a hostile "traitor" organization. Since I felt threatened that night, I attempted to give a solid impression of my family history and casually told the "prominent guests" that I had high-profile bureaucrats in my family. I aimed to send the message that "they should not bother or threaten me." Just a few seconds after I talked about my family background, one of these "prominent guests" grabbed the choir leader's voice recorder on the table in front of me, threw it to the ground violently, and in a frustrated tone, told the leader to go out in the corridor with him. Later, the group kept on discussing Turks in Germany. The participants started to discuss physical typologies of Turks. The “prominent guests” were making a lay claim about some types, such as that the Turk does not thick hair and he is not too tall. Also, when one person said that Turks are dark, the others refuted and argued that only Kurds are dark. In an attempt to make a joke, I asked him what my type suggested ethnically. He told me to stand up. He looked at me for a few seconds and said: "You are so mixed!” What he implied was that due to my light eyes, I may be of Greek or Armenian origin, and thus not reliable.I felt horrible after this Kafkaesque event and even wanted to discontinue my research. After the problematic encounters with the leader of The ATU (despite having smooth communication with most of the other members), I decided to place more emphasis on successful communication and trusting relationships with all the participants I would talk to and interview during the research. The remedy was to convey the message to the participants even more strongly than before that I was empathetic to them and understanding of what they said. Moreover, I told my participants that I was not different from them regarding similar immigrant experiences in Europe. When an older male member, Hikmet, who writes political blogs, told me in the group discussions among the Osman Sadık choir that he perceived me as a person who had been exposed to Euro- racism, my answer was, “Perhaps, you are right.” I was open with Hikmet; as Campbell

and Lassiter suggest, the ethnographer should refrain from acting as the “authoritative expert” and instead follow frank and modest conduct (Campbell and Lassiter 2015: 45- 46). I learned about the existence of another Turkish folk music choir while I was waiting in The ATU’s rehearsal room for the beginning of its rehearsal. On Fridays, before the rehearsals, bağlama courses were given. Thus, I met the course teacher, Serdar Kalan, by coincidence in the rehearsal room and, after I introduced my research and myself, he informed me about his own choir and invited me to Sunday rehearsals. Adnan, who is a percussion player in The ATU, is a vocalist in The Serdar Kalan Choir. His talkative nature facilitated a lengthy interview in Café Canela, during which he informed me about a wide range of Turkish musical activities in Hamburg. He told me that he was also fond of Turkish classical music and he had attended The Lale Hoşses Choir, but not as a regular member. He proposed I visit The Lale Hoşses Choir’s rehearsal. When I went to the rehearsal, I introduced myself to Lale Hoşses and briefly talked about my research. She accepted that I would observe the rehearsal without any hesitation. Also, she asked me to sing with the choir and I did so. As I spent much of the afternoon at the campus of the University of Hamburg in Dammtor, I had the opportunity to talk to Turkish students at Café Canela, and one of them, a Ph.D. student in Turkish Studies informed me that his oud teacher worked as an instructor in The Osman Sadık Choir. Thus, I visited that choir’s rehearsal with his reference. I briefly informed Ercüment, the oud player and the instructor in the choir, about my research and then met Osman Sadık. They were both very pleased about my visit. In 2012, the access to a folk choir, From Soul to Soul was unproblematic, as I randomly met the maestro of the choir in Kulturpalast. She responded openly to my questions and establishing rapport with her was spontaneous. The participants in the choir, except for two members, were also very welcoming when I introduced myself as a sociologist and researcher on Turkish music choirs in Hamburg. The only members who initially acted as gatekeepers by asking indirect questions to understand my political views were a married couple, who nonetheless did not object to my presence in the choir during rehearsals and a concert visit. The only male member

of the vocalists and the only female member of the instrumentalists in the choir are married to each other. During the group interview, both responded more often and at length compared to the others. The male member seemed to find it suitable to speak on behalf of the choir. His partner seemed to undertake a vanguard role and she implied in many instances that the masses should be educated and explicitly stated that the folk songs should make the masses think. Although the choirs were generally easy to access, establishing rapport between the participants and me could sometimes be, in the beginning, not so effortless, because the interviewees often expected that I would share their political opinions. Thus, most interviews were accomplished a few weeks, or even months, after the initial contact. I joined the choirs and sang with participants during the weekly rehearsals. I put a great deal of effort into establishing good relationships with participants, following the assertion by Campbell and Lassiter that ethnography requires “meaningful participation” and “genuine connections” (Campbell and Lassiter 2015:33).

3.4. Analysis and the writing process:

The analysis and writing process utilized “thick description.” The interviews were semi-structured and conducted in a form of friendly conversation (i.e. “Tell me, how did you start playing music), so to encourage the participants to talk freely and at length. It allowed detailed and rich elaboration. For Geertz, the aim of thick description is “to draw large conclusions from small, but very densely textured facts; to support broad assertions about the role of culture in the construction of collective life by engaging them exactly with complex specifics” (Geertz 1973: 28). As Alexander points out, Geertz’s “thick description of the codes, narratives and symbols that create the textured webs of social meaning” (Alexander and Smith 2003:13) should guide the researcher. Furthermore, according to Alexander “a first step in the construction of a strong program in the hermeneutic project of “thick description” itself” (Alexander and Smith 2003:22). Following Joseph G. Ponterotto (2006: 542-543), usage of thick description as a method requires two steps. First, it is necessary to define the context of the scrutinized phenomena. Hence, I describe the Turkish music scene and choirs in Hamburg in detail,

followed by the background and appearances of choir members. My first goal is to provide the reader with a sense of place and to introduce the participants. Second, thick description engages with thoughts, emotions and motives connected to social actions. In short, “thick description captures the thoughts and feelings of participants as well as the often complex web of relationships among them” (Ponterotto: 2006: 543). In my case, what are crucial are the opinions, attitudes, and emotions of the choir participants. Additionally, for analysis of the interviews, I used the qualitative analysis software Atlas. ti. First, I conducted line-by-line coding, which was followed by focused and theoretical coding. Focused coding “means using the most significant and/or frequent earlier codes to sift through large amounts of data” (Charmaz 2006: 57), whereas theoretical codes “specify possible relationships between categories you have developed in your focused coding” (Charmaz 2006: 63). The codes emerged from the similar answers I received during the interviews. The most common codes were “Arabesk and disgust”, “Criticizing other Turks”,“Diversity of Turks in Germany”, “Discrimination and racism in Germany”, “Prejudices against Turks”, “Stigmatization” “Feeling equal to Germans”, “Turkish-German binary”, “Advantages of Germany”, “Having or not German friends”, “Singing and happiness”, “Singing and stress relief”, “Unifying effect of music” . The codes were subsequently grouped and the findings of chapter 6 “Music as a Resource for Drawing Boundaries: Sacred, Profane, and Differently Sacred”, chapter 7 “Music as a Resource for Destigmatization”, and chapter 8 “Music as a Resource for Belonging” derived from the grouped codes. Finally, the philosophical approach underpinning the research is interpretivism. According to Fay:

Interpretivism may be defined as the view that that comprehending human behavior, products, and relationships consist in reconstructing the self- understanding of those engaged in creating or performing them. Put colloquially, interpretivists think that to comprehend others is to understand the meaning of what they do, and that to understand this meaning is to understand them simply in their own terms (Fay 1996:113).

I have chosen interpretative approach, following argument of Jennifer Mason that “what is distinctive about interpretative approaches, however, is that they see people, and their interpretations, perceptions, meanings, and understandings, as the primary data sources” (Mason 2002:56). The reason is that when I began my research in Germany, I did not have strict theories and hypothesis to follow. This thesis is a result of a long learning process and the basis of it what I have found out from the research participants. To summarize, the research is based on participant observation and in-depth interviews, allowing detailed “thick description,” based on the assumption that the views of actors are crucial for the understanding of the phenomena. Finally, it is important to underline that this study does not represent a study on German-Turks in general. It is a qualitative study of a particular milieu. In order to inform a reader with the background in which the Turkish music choirs in Hamburg have emerged, chapter 4 “The Development of Turkish Music in Turkey and Germany” is about a crucial role music had in Turkish nation-building process and the gradual diversification of music genres among Turks in Germany. Afterward, chapter 5 “The Turkish Musical Field in Hamburg,” acquaints the reader with the specific milieu of the choirs. The subsequent chapters elaborate music as a resource for drawing symbolic boundaries, a resource for the development of destigmatization strategies, and a resource for the establishment of communities of belonging and the altering of emotions. The chapters that regard music as a resource are primarily written on the basis of the participants’ meanings.

CHAPTER 4

The Role of Music in Turkish Nation-Building and Turkish Music in Germany

4.1. Introduction

In order to understand contemporary Turkish choirs in Germany, one must go back to the particular case of Turkish modernization. On the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, which had disintegrated throughout the First World War and was finally abolished along with the Caliphate, the modern Turkish Republic was established in 1923. However, at that moment, who “Turks” actually were was rather vague. The crucial question for the elites of this newly formed state was how to define the elements constituting the nation. The Turkish mode of modernization moved from top to bottom, and concurrently, the Republican elites embarked on the top-down formation of a Turkish nation and in Ayşe Kadıoğlu’s words, Turkey was “a state seeking its nation” (Kadıoğlu 2005: 109). As some authors argue, nationhood was missing and had to be “invented” (See: Hobsbawm 1983; Gellner 1983; Anderson 1983). In this chapter, I will first elaborate the role of music in the Turkish nation- building process. Subsequently, I will briefly outline the development of Turkish music in Germany. The Turkish musical field in Germany has become significantly diversified, as each migration wave (guest workers in 1960s; family reunification after 1973; political refugees after the military coup in 1980) was accompanied by a particular music genre. Furthermore, the second- and third-generation youth born in Germany has created authentic German-Turkish genres, such as Oriental Hip-Hop, “a combination of hip hop beats enriched by reminiscences of ragamuffin, samples of Turkish Folk or Pop Muzik and mostly Turkish raps” (Elflein 1998:263) and Aranbesk (R’n’Besk), a combination of western R&B music and Arabesk.

4.2. Music and Turkish nation building

The following account of Meltem Ahıska (2010) summarizes the main actions of the Republican elites, which resulted in the creation of a seemingly homogenous Turkish nation:

The Turkish national identity propagated as the official identity of the new Turkish State after 1923 had to assume many dimensions that were, in fact, absent: the homogeneity of the national population, the existence of common origins, and a common will to the future development of the national state. As a consequence, national identity was erected on the basis of displacement, denial, and projection/introjection — namely, the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey, the denial of the Ottoman past and significant events such as the-the Armenian catastrophe, the violent crushing of Kurdish uprisings, the Turkification of religious and ethnic minorities on the basis of privileging Sunni Islam together with the repression of the Islamic religion as an organising element of culture in many localities, and consequently a complex dynamic of identification with the abstract notion of the people and the West (p. 55).

During the search for Turkishness, according to Ahıska, the Republican modernizers, on one hand, attempted to civilize people in a Western way: “The main axis of the Occidentalist fantasy in Turkey has been to diagnose the ‘lack’ in the people, as defined by nationalist and modern discourses, and to produce the desire to full this lack with the civilized content” (p.55). However, on the other hand, the modernizers “introjected ‘authentic’ elements assumed to be embodied in the people (such as the uncontaminated traditions of Anatolian peasantry, especially the women) as the essence of nation” (Ibid: 55). In the search for a nation’s self-definition, the ideologues among the Turkish elites were also engaged in the process of searching for appropriate “national” music. The process of modernizing and westernizing the nation also included the project of the Westernization of Turkish music. Music genres had to be purified from the non-national influences of the Ottoman Empire. It was based on The Principles of Turkism by Ziya

Gökalp.

The Principles of Turkism (1968 [originally published in Turkish in 1923]) was a manifesto about the new nation and its cultural repertoire. The state-directed cultural policies were based on this book. The account of Gökalp confirms the claims of Maria Wurm (2008) that music had an instrumental role in building the new “nation-state identity” (p. 371) and that music was the central element of Turkish cultural and modernization policies. Gökalp states:

Today, we are confronted with three kinds of music: Eastern, Western, and folk. I wonder which of them is our real national music? We have already noted that Eastern music is both sick and non-national, whereas neither folk nor Western music is foreign to us since the first music is the music of our culture and the second that of our new civilization. I submit, therefore, that our national music will be born of a marriage between folk and Western music. Our folk music has given us many melodies. If we collect these and harmonize them in the Western manner, we shall have both a national and European music (Gökalp 1968 as cited in Al-Hamarneh and Thielmann 2008: 372).

The Eastern music in Gökalp’s account refers to what is now known as Classical Turkish music, which was the official music of the Ottoman court. (It was also practiced among the Mevlevi Sufi order.) The musicians performing this genre were not only ethnic Turks, but also Armenian, Jewish, and Greek composers and musicians, who had an important role in the development of the genre. According to Eliot Bates, “One center of Ottoman art music was the Endurun, an elite Christian boarding school that trained bureaucrats and dignitaries and offered courses in music, as well as in Persian and Arabic literature” (Bates 2011:31). The fact that this genre was favored and supported by Ottoman sultans and that its origins could not have been traced to any particular ethnicity – thus its multiethnic, multi-religious nature – explain the aversion of the elite, who was hasty to establish a cohesive national identity in opposition to it. As Ayhan Erol reminds us: “According to the political elite, traditional Turkish art music symbolized the backwardness of the old Ottoman Empire and was not a suitable national symbol, since it was ‘alien’ to the ‘innate character’ of the Turks” (Erol A. 2012:44). Besides, ordinary people in rural areas could not appreciate this music (Greve 2006: 336).

Consequently, Turkish Classical music (commonly used as Turkish art music) was vetoed in the early Republic, famously known as the radio ban on “alaturka” music between 1934 and 1936. Ahıska argues that Ataturk’s passion for Turkish music in his private life - she refers to the concept of intimacy as she translates it as “the internal register of truth” - was important to lift the radio ban on “alaturka” music (Ahıska 2010: 81). During the late Ottoman period, this genre was known under the name of “alaturka,” whereas Western music was called “alafranga.”4 John Morgan O’Connell states: In particular, musical reformers, who wished to distance themselves from alaturka by adopting alafranga techniques, advocated a new version of an ‘alafrangized’ alaturka that they called ‘Turkish classical music’ (Türk klasik musikisi)” (O’Connell: 2013: 30). O’Connell reformulates Bourdieu’s idea and suggests, “…style may subvert a group identity, exponents of alaturka co-opting the cultural capital associated with alafranga to advance musically and progress socially” (O’Connell 2013: 18). According to O’Connell, “…alaturka was ‘alafrangized’ and “alaturka was also classicized...to position it on an equal footing with another ‘classical’ music, ‘western classical music’ (batı klasik musikisi)” (O’Connell 2013: 18). This shift is especially significant for one of the arguments of this thesis related to the self-perception of Turkish choir participants in Germany: by performing classicized Turkish music (Turkish folk music as well, because Turkish folk music was modernized in the early republic and formulated in choirs based on European models), the Turkish choir participants perceive themselves as equal to ethnic Germans.

4 O’Connell explains the terms as follows: “Alaturka is the Turkish spelling of an Italian term alla turca. 1. Meaning literally ‘in a Turkish style,’ alaturka was employed in Turkey during the nineteenth century to distinguish between an ‘eastern’ style of Turkish music (alaturka) and a ‘western’ style of Turkish music (alafranga). 2. Meaning literally ‘in a Frankish manner’, alafranga began to replace alaturka as the musical style of choice (see O’Connell – 2005b). Following the capitulation of the Janissaries (1826), alafranga was employed to mark sonically the graduation from an ‘eastern’ military ensemble (mehter) to a ‘western’ brass band (mızıka) (see O’Connell 2010). In this respect, alafranga rather than alaturka heralded the cultural reforms that were instituted by Abdülmecit I (r. 1839–1861) during the Tanzimat period. Where alafranga was considered modern, alaturka was deemed pre-modern. Where alafranga musically a contemporary aspiration towards imperial regeneration, alaturka seemed to maintain both in sound and in sense the debilitating legacy of imperial decline” (O’Connell 2013: 21).

Only in the 1950s did the government start to support this kind of music (Bates 2011:34). However, today it remains an urban phenomenon that the wider population does not appreciate. As Bates notes, “Ensemble performances happen today in Turkey’s larger cities, particularly in Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir, and a number of universities in Turkey offer undergraduate and doctorate degrees in sanat (art) music” (Bates 2011:35). Underlining the urban character of Turkish Classical music is significant, as there is a notable tendency among the choir members in Hamburg to associate themselves with the culture of urban centers, primarily Istanbul. Today, Turkish Classical (Art) music is regarded as equivalent to Western Classical Music in Turkey (Stokes 2006: 337-339). As is apparent in Gökalp’s account, the Turkish national music was to be created through a synthesis of Western and Turkish “authentic” folk music. Hence, the early period of the Republic until the 1950s was preoccupied with inventing what should be within the frame of the national. While both Turkish Folk music and Turkish Classical music are monophonic, Ahmed Adnan Saygun, who was among the composers of The Turkish Five, insisted that pentatonic music was indeed present in the Central Asian Turkish music. Thus, he invited Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly (who believed that the pentatonic basis prevailed in Finno-Ugric, Hungarian, and Turkish music) to explore the songs of the Turkoman people living in the south of Turkey to prove his theory. As a composer in the alafranga camp, Saygun’s aim was to disassociate Anatolian Turkish music from Middle Eastern music and link it with European (Finno-Ugric) music (O’Connell 2013: 74).5 Not only were new composers educated in Western Classical Music, but the teaching of “Western music” was also made compulsory at all schools. Carl Ebert from the Berlin State Opera was appointed as the conductor of the State Theatre Opera from 1936 to 1947. The policies called for the “translation of German folk songs” and their

5 An even more radical assertation was present in the field of language. Following the abolishment of the Arabic alphabet and the adoption of the Latin alphabet in Turkey (1928), the “Sun Language Theory” was created and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk passionately supported it. According to this theory, “Turkish was the first language on earth and all other languages developed from it” (Shaw 1977, II: 376, cited in O’Connell 2013: 74). According to O’Connell, the theory appeared to prove the “Central Asian origins of the Turkish language, and, by extension, Turkish folk music” (O’Connell 2013: 74).

introduction into the textbooks in Turkish schools. The parliament in 1925 and 1948 passed legislation to send talented young Turkish musicians to European countries on scholarship (Greve 2006: 307-311). Furthermore, in the newly founded Turkish Republic (1923), the modernizers of the country, chiefly Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, commissioned composers and folklorists such as Bela Bartok and Ahmed Adnan Saygun to compile folk songs in the country. The Village Institutes (1940-1954) were established with the aim to raise primary school teachers in the villages where the villagers also learned to play western instruments and Anatolian instruments such as the violoncello and the bağlama. The villagers were expected to acquire new skills and tastes and to produce modernized forms of Turkish music. The Village Institutes arranged folk music contests and collected transcriptions of songs. According to Eliot Bates, an ethnomusicologist, the Turkish folk songs in the form of türkü were state controlled, and they were required to be sung in Turkish without religious connotations. Bates asserts that many songs originally sung in Kurdish, Armenian, Lazuri, Zazaki, and other languages were either not documented or were transcribed in Turkish (pp. 2-3). Rural life was idealized during the early years of the Turkish Republic. The state supported a “peasantist ideology” and it was characterized by “anti-urbanist and anti-industrialist bias, the exaltation of villages and peasants, its attitude toward Westernization, and its belief in education as the motor of rural transformation” (Erol M. 2014: 285). The Turkish immigrants in Hamburg perform Turkish music in ensembles called choirs, which were initally formed in the 1940s in Turkey. The first Turkish Classical (Art) music choir was formed at the Istanbul Conservatory within the Turkish music department established in 1943. Prior to this date, this genre was performed by a solo vocalist. Martin Greve has noted that both the Turkish Cassical music and Turkish Folk music choirs and orchestras were based on the European model (Greve 2006: 338). Martin Stokes (2000) has suggested that Turkish Folk music was similarly appropriated (formerly performed by individual performers such as asiks [minstrels] singing and playing the bağlama [see: Bates 2011]), with the formation of Turkish Folk music choirs for the first time in 1948, with the Yurttan Sesler Korosu (Voices from the Homeland

Chorus6). In his terms, this genre was “‘reinvented’ on the basis of what had been collected” (Stokes 2000: 221).

4.3. Turkish Music in Germany

Today, there is a consensus among scholars working on Turkish immigration to Germany about the high level of diversity within the Turkish Diaspora, resulting from the different migratory waves. Each wave of Turkish immigration into Germany was accompanied by a specific music genre. The proliferation of musical genres came along with the gradual professionalization of the Turkish music field. The large-scale migration of Turkish citizens to Germany started in 1961 with the signing of a recruitment agreement between the two countries. These first immigrants were primarily young, single males, suitable for low-skilled jobs in the German industrial sector. Greve (2009) precisely summarizes the life conditions of the Turkish immigrants in Germany in the 1960s by saying, “For many migrant workers of this era, the experience of poverty, devastating housing and working conditions and the feeling of alienation were a fixture of everyday life” (Greve 2009:117). According to Greve (2006: 23-37), the music most appropriately identifying the first migration phase (1961-1973) is Anatolian folk music and gurbetçi (guest workers’) songs. The author notes that guest workers of this period lacked the intellectual capacity necessary for being accustomed to European Classical Music or Ottoman Classical (Palace) Music. The production of Anatolian folk music was limited to the coffee houses that male guest workers visited. The themes of the songs that were characteristic of this period were homesickness, the migratory experience, and depiction of Germans. The lines mentioned below highlight the first generation immigrants’ perception of the “foreignness of Germany” and the “moral decay of Germans” in melodramatic terms. Some of the striking lines of the songs about the first generation workers were:

They gave me a contract in Sirkeci7/ They told me I would work in Germany / They told me to go with a box and a ticket and said let’s roll/ They made me eat boiled pork in Munich /…You cannot find a worker like a Turk/… /You cannot

6 Translation by Martin Stokes. 7 The main train station in Istanbul.

find more fool than Turks…/Here is their menu /They eat potatoes on Monday/ Pork, horse meat, snake meat, dog meat/Turtle,frog, snail, tortoise/ The family of animals, you see/ The infamy of the carnival/ The Viziership of Europe/ Naked chicks in the streets hugging men/…They are all seduced./They all do the twist dance…They don’t like foreigners /They don’t rent their flats/ They don’t beat their daughters / They don’t praise the nations/ They don’t like the Bulgarian, Greek, Yugoslav, Italian, Russian/ They like the Turks so much/chorus. (Ibid: 38- 39).

Following the economic crisis, the recruitment of workers was banned in 1973, but the influx of immigrants from Turkey continued through family reunification. The most popular genre of this period was the so-called Arabesk, a commercialized and often profaned type of Turkish music. The Arabesk genre will be discussed in detail in Chapter 6, as the research participants tend to draw symbolic boundaries against the listeners of Arabesk and thus distinguish between the sacred and profane within “the Turkish domain.” In addition, the period of family reunification, when male workers were joined by their wives and children, brought about the rapid development of Turkish musical scene and a need for a Turkish music market in Germany. According to Greve, from the 1970s onward, the professionalization of the field occurred, as a result of the increasing number of Turkish weddings celebrated in the diaspora and the opening of Turkish restaurants and gazinos (night clubs) (Greve 2009: 117). He further notes, “Since the 1980s, the nostalgic longing for a lost home has become more and more obsolete” (Greve, 2009: 121). The military coup that occurred in Turkey in 1980 marked a watershed moment in the development of the Turkish musical field in Germany. This event changed significantly the social structure of the Turkish diaspora, as numerous political activists, artists, and intellectuals sought asylum in Germany. The refugees from Turkey also included people of Kurdish and Alevi origin, with their distinctive music traditions. This led to the further diversification of the music field. Thus, in the 1980s, genres such as Classical Turkish music gained popularity. Besides, as Klebe argues, “In the diaspora some genres became expressions of life abroad, such as özgün müziği (the music of political singers and songwriters)” (Klebe 2009:305).

Third-generation immigrants, born and raised in Germany, came onto the scene in the 1990s with pop and hip-hop. As Greve describes, “Many young Europeans with Turkish parents or grandparents refuse to be called Turks or migrants and consider themselves as Europeans” (Greve 2009:128). Moreover, Greve claims, “the adaptation of hip-hop shows in exemplary for the change of identity discourse among youngsters with a migration background who have turned away (and still are) from any form of national identity in favor of a European or global identity” (Ibid:127). The choice of some non- Turkish, but widely accepted as authentic Western, music genre, removes the label of Turk/immigrant from the performer. Furthermore, the 1990s brought new developments in Turkish music.As Klebe argues, “From the mid-1990s onwards, a new epoch started with rapid increase: private music conservatories and academies were founded, teaching traditional Turkish music in a professional manner more and more, to mainly adolescent German-Turks” (Klebe 2009:32). It is striking that the choirs in this study tend to reflect the official state positions of Turkey on music. In that sense, the choirs are the guardians of the “proper” national music. The Classical Turkish music that had been the music of the Ottoman court had been appropriated by the new regime, the Republican elites. This genre was later included in the curriculum of Turkish music conservatories in Turkey. The choirs react against the genres that have emerged from below, especially against Arabesk, which is a hybrid genre. As will be seen in the next chapter, participants react against music associated with the masses, the labor migrants in the big cities in Turkey. This can be interpreted as an effort to deny the fact that they had actually been themselves (or their parents) labor migrants in the big cities in Turkey before they immigrated to Germany. By adopting the officially recognized musical tastes, the members of the choirs can cope both with their disadvantaged “immigrant” status in Germany and their looked down upon “gastarbeiter” status in Turkey because this recognized taste gives them confidence both in the German sphere and the Turkish sphere. This is to say, the members of the choirs feel equal to ethnic Germans because they have choirs that resemble European choirs and their orchestration also resembles the European type. On the other hand, they reproduce or imitate the choirs in Turkey that are funded by the TRT (Turkish Radio and Television) and municipalities, or private ones. They have internalized the state

discourses that underlined policies on music education and development and reproduce them further in the diaspora. Choirs are thus conservative spaces, not spaces for cultural synthesis or spaces to create subversive cultural products. Today, Turkish music in Germany encompasses all the above-referenced genres. The next chapter, “The Turkish Musical Field in Hamburg,” will introduce the Turkish music clubs and the five Turkish Art and Folk choirs in the city.

CHAPTER V

The Turkish Musical Field in Hamburg

5.1. Introduction

The Turkish diasporic musical fields in Hamburg are divided into two categories: 1) music clubs owned by German-Turks; and 2) amateur choirs performing either Turkish Folk or Turkish Classical music. Before discovering the five different Turkish choirs in Hamburg, I began conducting research in the clubs and pubs where Turkish music is played or performed. In this chapter, I will provide a description of four clubs (Yeşilköy, Ihlara, Mekan, and Vinyl) and briefly discuss the differences between Hamburg and Berlin. I do not include Mannheim, since specific or exclusive Turkish music clubs do not exist in the city, arguably due to its small immigrant population. In addition, I will present the five choirs that are the focus of my research, presenting their repertoire, leadership, membership, articulated goal, reasons for joining the choir, and political position. I exclude cafés, pubs, and nargile cafés from the research, as people do not visit these places to listen to music. More precisely, people are randomly there and they are not a musical audience.

5.2. Turkish Music Clubs in Hamburg

Before I discovered the choirs in Hamburg, I was looking for any groups, including university students, amateur or professional musicians that were related to music. Spending time in Cafe Canela at the Asia-Africa Institute at the University of Hamburg, talking to the students from the Turkish studies about listening, singing and playing in particular the Turkish genres was not sufficient to understand the importance of music at a collective level. Their tastes varied, and most of the students were only listeners of music. Their replies suggested that they listen to music at home, sometimes with friends during gatherings and parties. As it was not feasible to conduct an ethnographic research in Turkish students’ home parties, I had to find places like clubs

where one could observe people with similar musical tastes who gather in a public venue. As Sarah Thornton argues,

Club cultures are taste cultures. Club crowds generally congregate on the basis of their shared taste in music, their consumption of common media and, most importantly, their preference for people with similar taste to themselves. Taking part in club cultures builds, in turn, further affinities, socializing participants into a knowledge of (and frequently a belief in) the likes and dislikes, meanings and values of the culture. Clubs and raves, therefore, house ad hoc communities with fluid boundaries which may come together and dissolve in a single summer or endure for a few years (Thornton 1996:3)

Hence, I include my ethnographic observations of Turkish music clubs in Hamburg. First, I visited the Yeşilköy8 Club. I was intrigued, as the vast majority of students and choir singers explicitly pointed out that they would never visit such a place. The music, style, and interior of the of the club for them were “cheap,” “trashy,” “pretentious,” and entirely lacking “refinement.” Yeşilköy offers regular entertainment during the weekends, occasionally hosting famous pop musicians from Turkey. The club is located in the borough of Altona. The age of visitors is approximately between 21 and 35. The music routinely offered is Turkish pop or fantezi. There is a red carpet in front of the gate, with the aim to provide attendees with the sense of being a VIP. The bodyguards check visitors thoroughly. There was no trace of Halloween celebrations at the club, even though many German clubs had Halloween programs on that day. Most of the customers seemed to be of Turkish or Kurdish origin. On the way to the main hall, a female (and apparently German) waitress was serving the free-of-charge welcoming champagne. The other waitresses were directing the guests to the dance hall after they had received their champagne and left their coats in the cloakroom. Inside the dance hall, the diffusing smoke from the floor was changing color because of the many disco lights. After a few minutes, two dancers, one female and one male, came onto the stage and performed in a style akin to break dancing, accompanied by a recording of the Turkish hip-hop group Ceza. From the start, a spatial gender separation within the standing audience was

8 All names of the clubs and choirs in Hamburg, as well as the research participants are pseudonyms.

noticeable; men and women gathered separately in the different parts of the dance-hall. The male audience was rather timid, watching the women dance from a distance. This hesitation reflected the unease in public communication with the other gender. What is striking is that a seated audience consisted of heterosexual couples, who surrounded the dance-hall and sat at the tables. In this way, a triple spatial separation was achieved; single women, single men, and couples were not physically mixed. Although only one woman with a headscarf was present in the club and others wore jeans, miniskirts, and knee-length dresses, all indicators of non-religiosity, the club’s strict gender separation was peculiar. Despite the noisy bass coming out of the speakers close to the tables, the audience did not seem to mind. As the time went by, the music shifted into rather “oriental” genres mixed with disco beats. The DJ announced, "Put your hands up" after a recording of "zurna" (a traditional reed instrument) music accompanied by disco beats. The DJ's preceding announcement in English was significant with its didactic discourse: "Turkish music is peace, Turkish music is a joy, Turkish music is happiness." The rest of the night continued with the mixture of Turkish remixes of folk songs and American hip- hop. The Ihlara club is similar to the Yeşilköy club regarding its customer profile and the broadcast and performed music. It is located in the borough of Eimsbüttel. The names of the clubs suggest different geographical locations and thus perhaps connote different musical settings. Ihlara is a valley near Cappadocia in the Central Anatolian Region, whereas Yeşilköy is a wealthy neighborhood in Istanbul. However, there is no significant difference between two places, apart from the fact that Yeşilköy serves free champaign to customers at the entry and has a higher entry fee, whereas Ihlara offers water pipes and alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. The Ihlara Club contains two different parts: The first floor is designed as a nargile café, whereas the second floor is a disco. The security guards, as in the Yeşilköy Club, check the customers when they arrive. The club offers regular staging of a male keyboardist and vocalist and a male percussionist playing the folk drum (Ramazan davulu). The audience joins the instrumentalists by dancing "halay" (a genre of folk dance that necessitates the participants to make a circle together and rotate). The singer

usually tries to provoke the audience to make them more enthusiastic by criticizing their lack of applause, shouting into the microphone: “This much applause is not enough, more, more, more!” During my visits, the club appeared to have a usual and peaceful routine. There were not visible conflicts among the customers. The bodyguards informed me that it was not typical for fights to take place in the club. They seemed to want to present the club in an ideal way and thus avoided criticizing customers and sharing information about conflicts. However, a waitress who worked at Ihlara reported to me that she had very often witnessed violent fights among the visitors to the club. The research participants also tended to avoid this club for similar reasons as in the case of Yeşilköy, labeling it as rather low-brow. The Mekan club, located in the borough of Altona, hosts folk music (halk muziği) groups singing in Kurdish and Turkish every weekend. The club is known to have a Kurdish owner. The waiters and waitresses claim that the venue does not distinguish Kurdishness or Turkishness. From their perspective, Mekan is an ideal peaceful place, playing Anatolian music. During my interview with a waitress who was working at the club, four ethnic Germans were chatting and drinking their beer at one of the front tables in the club. The waitresses told me that the local Germans visiting the club did not support any sides in Turkish politics. She added, "We are neither here nor in Turkey a society," referring to the Kurdish community. On the day of my visit, the music played from a recording had lyrics such as "I was tormented for many years." The lyrics have ambiguous meaning, simultaneously referring to the torment caused by an end of a love affair and to the sufferings felt by the Kurds in Turkey. What was significant was that the waitress dismissed the role of hemşeri - "being from the same city in Turkey" - for the club. In the rural context in Turkey being from the same city or region is important. According to Faist, “Hemşeri ties proved to be important in helping fellow villagers and townspeople find accommodation, jobs, and childcare in the country of immigration” (Faist 2004:28). The statement of the waitress implies that for the visitors of the clubs common Kurdish identity or being supportive of the Kurdish political movement precedes regional ties. Kurdish ethnicity and the political movement appreciated by the visitors of the club were voiced through music. The waiters and waitresses were

appreciative of the Germans who visited their club. A waitress in her thirties said: “Kurdish music is appealing to the Germans who come to listen to it. These people do not take sides in Turkish politics.” Vinyl is the only diasporic “exclusive” music club, that it to say that it is selective in accepting visitors. It is located in the borough of Eimsbüttel. Lacking any signboards and having opaque windows, the club is not visible. It is apparent that the club does not advertise itself in public, although there is a Facebook group. The existence of Vinyl is spread by word of mouth; primarily, friends suggest the club to one another. It is the smallest club in terms of size and all people inside can see each other, thus a presence of unsuitable person would break the harmony. When visitors come to the club for the first time, the owners ask them about the channel through which they heard about it. When someone comes for the first time, the manager checks if that person is decent, speaks articulately, and has good clothes. From a sociological perspective, what the manager requests from the visitors is to share a common habitus in Bourdieu’s sense with the other customers. Even though I was eventually admitted into the club, I was subjected to a mini-interrogation as well. I explained to the owner who stopped me at the door that I had learned about the club from the Turkish Studies students at the University of Hamburg. I revealed my task as an ethnographer who wanted to know about the diasporic musical scene in the city. The owner of the club informed me that they did not accept passers-by, especially those Germans who were just curious. She claimed that it would not be safe to welcome everyone in the presence of so many drunkards outside and added that they would welcome those who had come with their partners. Moreover, she admitted that they excluded the “Arabesk” form of music, which would be out of place with their music policy. The dominant genre of music present in the club was Turkish pop. It also had karaoke parties after midnight on weekends, offering popular songs from the Turkish Art music repertoire such as, “Benzemez kimse sana” (“No one resembles you”) and “İçin için yanıyor” (“Burning inwardly”). The interior part of the venue was decorated with images from Istanbul, especially its modern-European representations in photos from Beyoğlu and Galata. The walls also

contained nostalgic images of Istanbul, covers of the popular “Ses” (Sound) Magazine that portrayed iconic figures in Turkish popular music (Barış Manço, Orhan Gencebay, Erkin Koray) and in cinema (Kadir İnanir, Türkan Şoray), and old record albums. Contemporary Istanbul-based national cartoon magazines, such as the Leman and L- Manyak, were scattered over the bar. The age of the visitors in the club ranges between 25 and 40. While it is difficult to pinpoint exactly how and why, the visitors appear to have the goal to represent the young Turkish diasporic high society of Hamburg. Famous people from the community are announced when they arrive at the venue, such as the chairperson of the Beşiktaş FC- Istanbul in Hamburg. The evening I was there, the visitors to the club were mostly dressed up in an extravagant style and spoke with an Istanbul accent. The owner of the club told me that she had been born into a second-generation working-class migrant family from Sivas in the Central Anatolian Region in Turkey. She spoke Turkish with a distinct articulated Istanbul accent and wore a mini skirt. Her words did not reveal any particular political, ethnic, or religious connotations. Ultimately, considering the decor, the type of music, the dress code and the accent of the participants, I would argue that the club serves as an imaginary bourgeois public sphere that reveres Istanbul as an imagined homeland. It is “imagined” because most of the visitors are third generation, born in Germany. All the observed clubs serve alcohol. Mekan is specific in the sense that its visitors are mainly ethnic Kurds and affiliated with the Kurdish political movement. Ihlara is not a distinctively political place, but its owner is close to the Turkish left-wing. Vinyl, the only exclusive club, is secularist and aspires to revive the club scene in Istanbul around Taksim. Unlike Hamburg, Berlin’s Kreuzberg district encompasses an enormous variety of places run by Turkish immigrants and youth centers where immigrants perform their music. It is immediately noticeable that Berlin is more hybrid, “multicultural,” anti-racist, and anti-sexist than Hamburg. This discourse is explicit and visible in written form on the bulletin boards or shop windows. For instance, Café Kotti in Kreuzberg displays a warning sheet in Turkish and German stating: “Any kind of racist, homophobic, transphobic or other insults is not tolerated under any circumstances.” My observation is

in line with Ayhan Kaya’s arguments on the cultural bricolage emerging within the German-Turkish youth in Berlin (Kaya 2001: 81). According to Kaya, cultural bricolage is constructed between the “local and global,” between challenged territories, between “binary oppositions,” and between “past and present.” This process has opened up new spaces for minority youth, in Bhabha’s terms “third space or culture,” rejecting terms such as “lost, degenerate or in-between” (Ibid: 210-211). Another good example is SO36 – Gayhane9 on Oranien Street, which hosts rock groups from Turkey. Its name “Gayhane” is a pun; the suffix –hane refers to “place or house,” i.e. kahvehane or kiraathane refer to a traditional coffee house in Turkish. The usage of “gayhane” refers to a non-traditional place and concept in the Turkish context: a place or house for gay people. Despite the name, the club is not an exclusive gay club. This is one of the spaces where one can spot the blurring of boundaries, as the club has homosexual, transsexual, and heterosexual German-Turks, ethnic Germans and international visitors. Also,the club hosts Turkish and international bands and performers. On the website of the club, the first paragraph on the “About” page reads: “SO36 stands up against any form of deed or expression of racism, sexism or homophobia. We reserve our right to cancel events or performances and to banish any person from our venue that does not adhere to this policy!”

5.3. Turkish Choirs in Hamburg

The main part of the field research took place in Turkish music choirs – three folk (The ATU, The Serdar Kalan Choir, and From Soul to Soul) and two classical (The Osman Sadık Choir and The Lale Hoşses Choir). The first visit to one of the Turkish Folk music choirs (The ATU) was thanks to the information gathered from the students in the cafeteria at Hamburg University. The choir rehearsals were held in a private flat, where the leader of the choir has a Turkish music school. The group consisted of around thirty people; while the two thirds of the singers were female, nearly all of the 6-7 instrumentalists, except the percussionist, were

9 I kept real names of Café Kotti and SO36-Gayhane, because I do not present information about the visitors. Also, I kept original name of Café Canela, a student cafeteria at the University of Hamburg, because it does not belong to the Turkish music field.

male. The average age within the group was around 40. The membership was diverse, including some with careers in logistics, university students, nurses, airplane mechanics, and teachers. Most of the members were Turkish, and they generally had a good command of the language. I came across with only two people who were non-diasporic. One of them was an ethnic German, who attended bağlama [a folk instrument] courses, had a Turkish Studies background, and an excellent command of Turkish. Another member was a rather sporadic attendee from Eastern Europe. One of the chief features of the choir was that open articulation of ethnic or religious identities was not common within the group. The members organized monthly meals where the host offered alcoholic drinks, which reflected the secular identity of the institution. At these meals, members of the Turkish Consulate in Hamburg were also invited and they often attended. The choir reflected the formal ideology of the Turkish state, as it was secular and it did not recognize the culture of minorities by including Alevi folk songs or folk songs in Kurdish in a repertoire. The leader and conductor of the choir was a teacher, and he was one of the few who openly presented his Turkish nationalist views.

Another Turkish folk choir I observed was led by Serdar Kalan ([hereafter referred to as The Serdar Kalan Choir) who gives bağlama lessons at the music school owned by the leader of The ATU. I was first introduced to this choir by Serdar Kalan, whom I met in the music school of The ATU and by some instrumentalists in The ATU who belonged to both choirs. When I first visited the choir rehearsal, the most obvious fact was that, unlike The ATU, it was comprised of members mostly in their twenties. However, Serdar Kalan was in his mid-thirties and the choir included a married couple in their forties. Regarding occupation, they ranged from university students and craftspeople to professionals, such as accountants. Some of the folk pieces performed in The Serdar Kalan Choir were either the same or similar to those of The ATU. They were all in Turkish and reflected the mainstream, having no association with minority identity claims, such as Kurdism or Alevism. Only when I asked questions concerning ethnic or religious identity did the members talk about this topic. When I regularly observed and sang with the choir, Serdar Kalan never mentioned anything related to Turkish politics, unlike the leader of The

ATU. The participants did not bring up issues related to their ethnic or political backgrounds when they were together in the rehearsals or outside the rehearsals. However, when I talked to the participants in private, many of the responses suggested that music could unite those who had very different political beliefs and ethnic origins. One choir member highlighted his belief in Fethullah Gülen, whereas another appreciated my knowledge about Zazaki Kurds10 and asked me to promote Zazas in Europe. A participant I quote at length in the thesis, Nezihi, showed his leaning towards the Justice and Development Party11. On the other hand, two female university students informed me that their identity would be incomplete without the fact that they are “children from leftist parents.” The third folk choir I observed was From Soul to Soul. The maestro leading the choir was a 65-year-old female retired school teacher who migrated to Germany from Turkey about thirty-five years ago. It was comprised of around 25 people; 15 were vocalists and ten were instrumentalists. It was striking that there was only one male among vocalists and only one female member who plays the bağlama among instrumentalists. The average age in the choir was 45-50. Among the members were female nurses, cooks, accountants, and male and female technicians, most of whom had attended vocational schools in Germany. Some of the members were already retired. Most of the participants in the group interview I conducted with the choir expressed that they participate in the choir because it provides a “warm” environment, and they had intimate friendships within the choir. By 2012, the choir had been rehearsing every Friday for four years in the Billstedt neighborhood at the Kulturpalast, where some of the other Turkish choirs in my sample (The Serdar Kalan Choir and The Lale Hoşses Choir) rehearse and perform. The Kulturpalast presents itself as a cultural center hosting a wide variety of musical groups and a hip-hop academy in Hamburg. It aims to support and foster the “unseen cultural potential” in the city and provide musical training for kids.12

10 “The term Zaza is the widely accepted designation for a certain population in Turkey having in common an Iranian idiom generally called Zazaki” (Kehl-Bodrogi 1999:440). 11 The Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi) , conservative Turkish party that has been having single government rule since 2002 in Turkey. 12 http://www.kphhamburg.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=82&Itemid=95, Retrieved

The maestro of the choir informed me that they had initially been cooperating with the Ataturkist Thought Association for eight years, as well as with another choir. Later, they had financial problems because the Ataturk Cultural Centre in Germany ended its activities, and the Turkish Consulate withdrew its financial support of the choir, and they could not pay the rent for rehearsal space. She added that they started renting the venue in Billstedt from the German state and paying the expenses from the choir’s participation fees. The choir performs in a wide variety of places, most of which are small concert halls in Hamburg. My participants informed me that most of their audience consists of Turks living in Germany, but the German audience also participates, thanks to the invitations they receive from their Turkish friends. The Lale Hoşses Choir rehearses regularly, once a week. The choir is comprised of approximately twenty-five female and male participants. It focuses on popular songs, which even people without a particular interest in Turkish music know by heart. Like From Soul to Soul, The Lale Hoşses Choir is mostly comprised of retired older members and middle-aged members who are cooks, nurses, mechanics, and café owners. What is striking, however, is the representation of younger members who are in their twenties, which makes this choir a place of intergenerational cultural transmission. Its leader, Lale Hoşses, is a Turkish Art music singer who is quite popular in Turkey. Singing is accompanied by two, often noisy violin players and a darbuka (a percussion instrument). The choir members sing loudly and enthusiastically during the rehearsals arguably because the repertoire is comprised of many songs about longing and places in Turkey. The participants in the Lale Hoşses choir are fond of non-academic or “market-style” art music, and this might be another reason why the instruments and the choir sound too noisy. The Lale Hoşses Choir did not reflect a group consciousness concretely. That is to say, they did not have much dialogue except the rehearsal breaks, neither gathering after the rehearsals. The Osman Sadık Choir’s members came together to have a drink and chat for a couple of hours after each rehearsal. The first group usually seemed to portray an apolitical stance, with no political symbols or headscarves. Regardless, I learned that a few members of the group also had membership in the ADD Hamburg (Ataturkist

July 5, 2015.

Thought Organization)13 and I spoke to an outspoken right-wing gray-Wolves14 follower and an outspoken left wing Alevi. The discussion of the symbolism of the choir’s female dress-code centered on what the women would wear during concerts, more precisely on the necessity of low-cut dresses, which might be considered a political debate in the Turkish context. The other Turkish Classical Music choir I observed is The Osman Sadık Choir. Osman Sadık takes part in the choir as a spokesperson rather than a leader, and he is active in the TGH (Turkische Gemainde Hamburg)15 along with his spouse, Serpil. The choir is allowed to use the TGH building in Haus 7 in the Altona District for its rehearsals. Some of the choir members are also members of the Turkish theater group led by Serpil. This choir, as the four others, gathers every week for rehearsals and performs publicly 2-4 times a year. The choir employs a conductor who is an Alevi-origin oud player, living in Hamburg since the mid-1980s. During the rehearsal, the choir sings the repertoire accompanied by the conductor’s oud. Unlike The Lale Hoşses Choir, the repertoire includes both popular and less well known and avant-garde songs. The choir is made up of approximately twenty male and female members, and they pay fees to meet the expenses of the conductor/oud player. I was able to get to know these choir members more intimately than the other choirs’ members because most of them gathered at a nearby pub after almost every rehearsal. The membership in this choir is also politically

13 “Atatürkçu Düşünce Derneği: The Atatürkist Thought Association or ADD was established on 19 May 1989, on the 70th anniversary of Atatürk’s arrival in Samsun, which is regarded as the first step of the national struggle for independence. The supporters of ADD thought that the Kemalist ideology and reforms were under serious attack and were in need of protection” (Symons 2012: 143). 14 Grey Wolves represent an ultra-nationalist organization, close to Fascism. According to Arslan, “in Turkish fascism, there are also some popular mythical symbols such as Bozkurt (Grey Wolf), Ergenekon, Asena, Kızıl Elma (Red Apple) and Nizam-I Alem (The Order of the Universe). Most of these myths go back to the “invented” experiences of Turks in Central Asia” (Arslan 2004:115). 15 Turkische Gemainde Hamburg: (TGH) is an association that conducts projects for the Turkish youth or Turkish immigrants who have arrived to Germany. German language and Turkish language courses for illiterate immigrants. TGH also organizes cultural activities where ethnic German and German Turks can meet.

diverse; however, outspoken nationalists are not present. It is comprised of Kemalist secularists, outspoken supporters of the Kurdish political movement, Alevis and left-wing democrats. Two of these left-wing democrats spent a decade in prison for “thought crimes.” My observation is that these dissident left-wing democrats would not feel welcome in the Lale Hoşses choir because of their dissenting ideas. The following table represents an overview of all five choirs regarding repertoire, leadership, membership, articulated goal, reasons for joining the choir, and political position:

The ATU The Serdar From Soul The Lale The Osman Kalan Choir to Soul Hoşses Sadık Choir Choir

Repertoire Turkish Folk Turkish Folk Turkish Folk Turkish Art Turkish Art, Turkish Classical, Turkish Avant-garde

Leader Teacher Bağlama School teacher Professional Retired player in Turkey, singer from computer (musician) cleaner in the state radio programmer Germany Nearly 20 Nearly 25 Nearly 20 Membership Nearly 30 Nearly 20 members; members; members; Secular; members; members; Mostly above 30 Predominantly Predominantly Mostly above Mostly above years; Having aged under 30; comprised of 40 years and Mostly rural includes many 30 years; urban values, but people over 40 origin; Not retired people; Overtly a considerable years and the overtly Predominantly secular and number of retired; Mostly religious; urban; Secular. mostly urban- participants are of rural; Includes origin; rural origin. Ranging from nurses, Includes university technicians, students to Alevis and cooks, etc. semi- dissidents professional.

“Introducing Articulated “Transmitting “Reviving “Transmitting “Performing and spreading goal Turkish music in Turkish folk Turkish music the canons of Turkish Germany to the music in to the younger Classical culture, music, Turkish people.” Germany and generations.” Turkish and folklore in rescuing it Music rather Germany.” from the than very degenerative popular influence of songs.” Arabesk.”

“People have to “We are like a The reasons “Actually, “Turkish “I release my live in a society.” family here.” for joining people first music has a daily stress come into the therapeutic by singing. the choir “Choir members “I feel choir just to effect. People The worries come here and confident and see their are engaging related to relax after relaxed here.” friends, but in therapy work and all working for 40 hours per week.” then we start here.” the sad stuff singing folk just songs disappear.” together.”

Political Secularist; Secularist; Secularist; Apolitical; Secularist; position (in nationalist; linked nationalist; nationalist; secularist; Kurdish order of to the Turkish moderate apolitical nationalist libertarian; prevalence) Consulate in Islamists left-liberal Hamburg (minority)

Table 1: Overview of Turkish music choirs in Hamburg

As Jeffrey Jurgens reminds us, the Turkish diaspora in Germany is split “not only along ethnic, religious, political, and generational lines; it is also undergoing a process of internal differentiation in terms of social class and status inequalities” (Jurgens, in Pries 2001: 95). While this argument is certainly valid for assessing the overall diversity within the Turkish immigrant community, it is crucial to note that the Turkish folk and classical music choirs are specific milieus. The choirs are primarily formed by people who come from similar socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, in spite of certain differences in occupation, urban or rural origin, and political tendencies. The differences in political positions primarily refer to the understanding of an individual’s relation to the Turkish nation and the state and the opinions on the rights to be granted to ethnic and religious minorities. For instance, these rights include a right to claim a separate ethnic identity and official recognition of minority languages, primarily Kurds and Alevis. The issues also include a view of historical events such as the Armenian Genocide, the 1955 pogrom against Greeks, Armenians, and Jews in Istanbul, the Madimak hotel massacre of Turkish Alevi and atheist intellectuals in 1992 in Sivas, and the assassination of Istanbulite Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007. In essence, all of the observed choirs are secularist. Their members openly voice resentment against the Islamization of Turkey by the current political power, the AKP (Justice and Development Party). Hence, it is not a coincidence that there are no veiled

female participants in any of these five choirs. Participants argue that the primary aim of assembling in a choir is to perform Turkish music altogether. As the number of people interested in joining Turkish music choirs is limited in Hamburg, the participants tend to put forward their mutual interests, rather than placing emphasis on their minor differences. Despite the divergences between and within these choirs, none of them includes the migrants lacking knowledge of the German language. Parallel to the general view of Turkish music, the folk choirs tend to have participants reflecting rural values in Turkey, whereas the classical music choirs tend to have those who reflect the urban values of Istanbul. The choirs perform in the City Music Hall, the Hochschule für Music und Theater Hamburg, the Kulturpalast Hamburg, various churches, the Labor Union building, and the nursing home for the elderly, “TABEA Hamburg,” whose residents are primarily first-generation German Turks. The audience is typically comprised of Turkish friends and German friends, neighbors and colleagues. They are all amateur choirs. All choirs were comprised of mixed male and female numbers from different generations. Most of the members, though, were middle-aged and held skilled factory and service sector jobs with the exception of some teachers, translators, and university students. Ethnic, religious, and political identities were (mostly) not allowed to be in the foreground. Except for one German-Turkish student of the bağlama, all of the participants were German Turks. During the interviews, none of the participants from the Turkish folk and classical Turkish Music choruses affirmed that they enjoyed the Yeşil Köy Club in the city. The participants tended to exclude themselves from so-called lowbrow entertainment. The only club the choir members admitted to visiting in Hamburg was 45’lik. It is apparent that the desire to perform Turkish music has priority over contesting cultural and political differences. That is to say, in a group where the members are relatively homogeneous in terms of their political and religious perspectives, the members who are in the minority do not tend to raise their voices and claim recognition within the group. Examples include Alevis singing in nationalist choirs and dissident socialists among predominantly Kemalist choirs. The tolerance shared by members of

different religious and political opinions suggests that music ultimately has a superior role over the previously underlined differences. Here, it is important to note that this sociologically corresponds to a very distinct situation. What Kaya and Kentel argue about Belgian-Turks can be applied to the German-Turks and in this specific case, to the minorities in the Turkish choirs in Hamburg.

Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s (1984) notions of “strategies”and “tactics,” migrant-origin Turks who live under certain strategies (ideologies) existing simultaneously in Belgium such as integration, nation and community,are in a position to transform these strategies with their lived experiences and applied tactics. In other words, while consuming the manufactured strategies, they produce something new. In a way, they have the potential capacity to transform the national polities of integration, nation and community (Kaya and Kentel 2008: 34).

What is questionable for the minorities within the choirs is their power or limit to reshape their choir. The dynamics of each choir is different. While in some choirs, minorities do not or cannot raise their voices or express their differences, in others, they are allowed to act or speak differently from the majority and discuss, contest, and negotiate different beliefs and perspectives. For instance, the Alevis16 in The ATU folk

16 In spite of the official unitary republican ideology (of the homogenous nation state), modern Turkey is an ethnically and religiously diverse society. The Alevis represent the largest religious minority. The estimation on the exact number of Alevis in Turkey varies, due to the lack of official statistics. According to Rabasa and Larrabee (2008), estimates range from 5 to 15 million. Despite the high numbers, the Alevis, as a religious-based group, lack legal recognition. For the followers of Kemalist ideology, “any affirmation of difference is perceived as a danger, as potential or actual separatism” (Sökefeld: 2008: 231). Official associations of Alevis do not exist in Turkey, as “Turkish associational law prohibits the establishment of associations that endanger…the Turkish republic because they are supporting the separation according to language, race, class, religion or sect” or that “carry out activities on the basis or in the name of religion, race, social class, religion or sect” (Ibid). Alevism exemplifies a unique blend of several distinct religious traditions. It has been influenced by pre-Islamic Shamanism, Zoroastrianism, the Shia branch of Islam, and Sufism. According to Rabasa and Larrabee (2008), “Alevis differ from orthodox Muslims in that they observe different fasting days, do not attend mosques, do not follow the practice of daily prayers (or pray three times a day), and do not consider a hajj religious obligation” (20). Besides, the author notes that the Sufi influence on Alevis emphasizes

internal experience, called Tasavvuf, and a lack of systematic theology and sacred books. Instead of going to mosques, Alevis, both men and women, gather in cem, where they also sing and dance. For Sökefeld, cem is “almost an antithesis of Sunni prayers” (42).The fact that there is no gender separation in cem has caused prejudice toward Alevis and different kinds of accusations. Sökefeld provides an example: “The rumor emerged that at a certain point the candles are extinguished and then in the darkness men and women indulge in sexual, even incestuous orgies” (Sökefeld 2008: 42). This kind of prejudice is present in the narratives of several participants. The persecution and discrimination of Alevis continued after the establishment of the Turkish Republic. Although the Alevis supported the secular Turkish republic, the Kemalists subsequently closed their places of worship, considering them a sect. In the officially secular republic, Sunni Islam has remained a crucial element of national identity. Thus, a secular Kemalist elite has maintained an ambivalent attitude toward the Alevis. On the one hand, Alevis are acclaimed by the Kemalist elite as unequivocal supporters of secularism (Navaro-Yashin 2002, 145f.), but on the other hand, Kemalism itself refuses the legal recognition of Alevis as a religious or cultural minority because such recognition is seen as a violation of the principle of a united and homogenous Turkish nation” (Sökefeld 2008: 231). What is significant is that choir members and musicians tend to be divided into three groups, which consider Alevism positively, negatively, and neutrally. While some members think that Alevis are disadvantaged, and thus, they evoke sympathy, others do not agree. Reasons for their objection vary: Alevis play the victim, they constitute a degenerated strand of Islam, or even they are perverts. My ethnographic work also revealed that some of the participants of Alevi origin began to discover and cherish their identity only upon migration to Germany and Austria. In Turkey, particularly in smaller villages and cities, nurturing differences from the norm is frequently met with suspicion if not with violence. As Ruth Mandel explains, “[A] critical difference from religious Sunnis is their rejection of the ultra visible and overdetermined headscarf. This manifestation of the self enables Alevis to live at relative ease with Germans and to be better accepted by Germans, in return” (Mandel 2008: 20). While Mandel has a sensible argument, in my research, I came across examples that suggest Alevi women or secular women who do not wear headscarves do encounter othering by some Germans, along with those who wear headscarves. The case of Gonul from the Osman Sadik choir illustrates the complexity of being an Alevi in Turkey. Gonul, who came to Germany ten years ago from Eastern Turkey, explained that she was an Alevi and a Kurd from Dersim, but her family had been assimilated to Sunnism after having migrated to Elazig. She reasoned that this assimilation was due to the Sunni majority in Elazig. She described the assimilation as the forced articulation of Sunnism in public: “What I can say is that they so much pushed these impositions into people’s unconscious. My family now says that they are Sunni, but we are Alevis.” She admitted that there was a certain coercion: “You cannot escape the pressure because you are an Alevi, [if] you do not fast or something during Ramadan. However, at 3 o’clock in the morning, Sunnis wake up for the meal before dawn. If you don’t turn on the light, they see your windows, and they say ‘Oh my God.’ I

choir could not talk about their cultural or religious values because the leader of the choir was authoritarian and dismissive of other identities. Thus, they were not able to reshape the values of the choir. On the other hand, in From Soul to Soul, the Alevis, and leftist members, were able to ask the other members to donate funds in solidarity with the dissident left-wing folk band in Turkey called “Grup Yorum.” Even though I did not witness any member donating to this campaign, what was notable was that asking for a donation for a dissident leftist folk band was normal or tolerable for the others in the choir. In contrast, The Lale Hoşses Choir was quite homogeneous; most of the choir members were retired and mainstream, and most of the members I talked to were Atatürkists. I did not witness dissenting voices in the choir. The most apparently open choir in terms of the liberty and opportunity it provides to the participants was The Osman Sadık Choir. The choir consisted of Atatürkists, Alevis, Kurds, and dissident leftists. During one interview, a participant said to the founder of the choir, who was sitting next to him: “We are open to everyone here except Islamists and fascists.” There seemed to be no limiting strategies for the participants since none of the members supported ideologies such as Islamism or fascism. The choir members presume that covered women or Islamic/Islamist men would not attempt to join their choirs.. It is taken for granted and it is tacit that they will not join the secularists. This shows how symbolic boundaries that are crystallized through religion are deeply embedded in Turkish society and also in Germany, among Turkish immigrants. It is assumed that habitus of the secularist is incompatible with the habitus of the Muslims. Besides, the Islamic headscarf in Europe has become a symbol of cultural difference, closely interlinked with the fear of Muslim migrants. It is seen as incompatible with civic values and associated with the oppression of women. In terms of dress code, or the debate about dress code, the discourse among the five choirs in Hamburg resembles the discourse present in big cities in Turkey. The dress code debate, based on what female and male participants should wear at concerts, suggests that the participants have a perfectionist attitude towards demonstrating

have witnessed it so many times, and the elder says the same things from the past. I mean these are the realities.”

themselves to the audience. As DeNora puts it, “[A] great deal of identity work is produced as presentation of self to other(s) – which includes a micro-politics - through the enactment of a plethora of mini ‘docu-dramas’ over the course of a day” (DeNora 2004: 62). The deliberate effort to present the self and the group (the choir) to which one belongs as distinguished is present in the debate about the dress code in a rehearsal of The Lale Hoşses Choir. The negotiation on the dress code among the choir members manifests in a serious manner. It is understood that the dress code for the choir members at their concert has equal importance to the vocal performance; thus, it is for the members, a key aspect that leads the way to the general success of the concert. As Anthony Giddens states:

Appearance is primarily designated social identity rather than personal identity. Dress and social identity have certainly not become entirely dissociated today, and dress remains a signaling device of gender, class position and occupational status. Modes of dress are influenced by group pressures, advertising, socioeconomic resources and other factors that often promote standardization rather than individual difference.” (Giddens 1991: 99)

What is represented above in the dress code debate in the choir hints at the idea that secular dress codes are not politically neutral in the context of Turkey or among Turkish immigrants in Germany. The choir members are aware that the way they dress will send a message to the audience. They aim at pleasing the Germans in the audience on the one hand and, on the other, they aim to distinguish themselves vis-à-vis several other actors, such as religious groups, or the so-called problematic/non-integrating migrants. The choir members put forward their desire to resemble the elites and high society in Istanbul. The serious debate about their concert dress code also has a religious dimension. The choir as a community is reminiscent of a Christian choir singing in a church. The aristocratic resemblance forms a direct binary against Arabesk. Choir members seek to please the Germans by their appearance, as it is commonly acknowledged that most native Germans prefer not to see Islamic symbols, especially the female headscarf. Not only Germans but also Turkish immigrants are aware that the secular dress code of women is accepted as an indicator of integration. Resembling high

society and thus feeling confident is important to the group. At the same time, the art music, with its musical and visual representation, embodies a claim of classicism that creates a sense of distinction for the choir. A desire for remembering or imagining their identities as urban – mostly Istanbulite – is conspicuous. The choir participants are meticulous about the way they dress in their daily lives as well. For instance, a deliberate effort to look good is conspicuous in the way members of Osman Sadık’s choir dress. Male as well as female participants dress in elegant semi-formal European clothes (shirts, sweaters, and scarves for the men and shirts, jeans, skirts, or mini-skirts for the women). In other words, the group manifests itself as urban and resembles Istanbul’s secular elite. They are in that sense, identical to a Classical Turkish Music choir in Istanbul. The articulated goals of the choirs (“Reviving Turkish folk music in Germany and rescuing it from the degenerative influence of Arabesk;” “Introducing and spreading Turkish culture, music and folklore in Germany;” and “Transmitting Turkish music to the younger generations”) and reasons for joining the choirs (“We are like a family here;” “I feel confident and relaxed here;” and “I release my daily stress by singing. The worries related to work and all the sad stuff just disappear”) already suggest the role of music as a resource, which is elaborated in-depth in the following chapters.

CHAPTER VI

Music as a Resource for Drawing Boundaries: Sacred, Profane and Differently Sacred

6.1. Introduction

The choir members use music as a resource to draw internal symbolic boundaries within the Turkish community. The participants draw symbolic boundaries against the majority of the Turkish population living in Germany, primarily the listeners of the Arabesk music genre. On the basis of the distinction they make between refined music (Classical, Art, Folk, and Western Classical music) and the uncultured music exemplified by Arabesk, the research participants deliberately create a number of sacred and profane binaries in the Durkheimian sense. According to Alexander (2003), “Whereas the sacred provides an image of the good with which social actors seek community and strive to protect, the profane defines an image of evil from which human beings must be saved” (Alexander 2003:186). Binaries between refined and uncultured genres are not confined to the realm of music, but expand to the lifestyles connoted by the genres. In short, the research participants present themselves as secular, educated citizens, well integrated into German society, who are associated with the culture of large cities, primarily Istanbul, and urban values, as opposed to Turks of rural origin, associated with the culture of Anatolia, whose behavior is bigoted, uncultured, and impure, and hence, they lack the capacity to integrate into Germany. The research participants despise Arabesk listeners even if they are rich, due to the perceived cultural inferiority and the value that they put not on money and wealth, but on professional success and an influential circle of friends. Furthermore, it is highly undesirable for the participants to be lumped together with all the other Turks in Germany. Thus, the highly fragile position of Turkish immigrants in Germany

necessitates rejecting Arabesk due to the stigma attached to it and the association with rural-urban migrants in Turkey. In contrast, the research reveals that participants do not tend to draw strict symbolic boundaries against ethnic Germans. German music and what the participants perceive as intrinsically German qualities, such as discipline and work ethic, although different from Turkish ones, are not taken as binary opposites. Rather, the participants’ narratives disclose the division of Turkish and German domains into sacred and “differently sacred.”

6.2. Sacred and Profane in the Turkish Diaspora

Arabesk music has been a symbol of cultural division within Turkish society since its emergence following large-scale migration from rural areas to large cities in Turkey. Along with “Arabesk music,” words such as “Arabesk novel,” “Arabesk film,” “Arabesk democracy,” and “Arabesk economy” are used in a pejorative sense to underline the “degeneration” of Turkish culture and society (Özbek 1991:22). Hence, the arabesk is not confined to the realm of music, but in a broad sense refers to a “culture of the rural-rooted population who could not participate in urban life.” In this view, those rural people stuck “between tradition and modernity,” cling to their traditions, but at the same time strive to adopt the city life. Thus, Arabesk is taken by many Turkish scholars as the cultural entity of a “transitional society.” The scholars defending this view also suggest that it is a “deteriorated” form of the traditional, but at the same time a non-modern “marginality.” Furthermore, as Öncu summarizes:

The epithet Arabesk denotes impurity, hybridity, and bricolage and designates a special kind of kitsch. The word was first coined in the late 1960s and early 1970s to describe a hybrid music genre that emerged and acquired immense popularity among recent immigrant populations of Istanbul (Özbek 1991; Stokes 1992; Markoff 1994). Banned from state radio and television for defying established canons of both folk and classical Turkish music, by intermixing rhythms and instruments from popular Western and Egyptian music, Arabesk music soared in the expanding cassette market of the 1970s” (Öncu 1999: 104)

According to Martin Stokes, Arabesk in Turkey has been associated with the

genre of the “labour migrants from the south-east of the country, a backward and exotic orient existing as a revealing anomaly in a Westernized and secular state” (Stokes 1992:8). It is considered “the domain of morbid emotion and sensitivity (duygu), a domain entirely separable from ‘culture’ (kultur)” (Stokes 1992: 11). Furthermore, it “represents a world of decay and despair, in which signifiers of disorder are linked directly to signifiers of a subversive, internal Orient” (Stokes 2000: 216). As the author reminds us, this genre is associated with the cliché that Arabesk was “fatalistic and masochistic, encouraging a passivity that had no place in a modernizing republic” (Stokes 2010: 100). For another ethnomusicologist, Uğur Küçükkaplan, the Arabesk genre has developed from the commercialized styles of Turkish Classical music and Turkish Folk music (Küçükkaplan 2013: 137). For Küçükkaplan, Arabesk is debated in the Turkish public nowadays not simply as a music genre, but in terms of being a symbol of political and cultural problems (Ibid: 293). In public debates, on TV shows, and among the mainstream media in Turkey, Arabesk is widely regarded as a genre for migrants who hailed from villages and settled in large cities. The members of the choirs are well-informed about these discussions. The fact that participants use some of the arguments that the Turkish intelligentsia have used about Arabesk suggests that they have read or heard about these arguments, for example, the “disharmony of Arabesk.” In many ways, the participants are influenced by, using Bauman’s (1987) term, the “legislators” around them and their thoughts are shaped by their influence. According to Bauman, the legislator’s role “consists of making authoritative statements which arbitrate in controversies of opinions and which select those opinions which, having been selected, become correct and binding” (Bauman 1987:4). The moral meanings assigned to Arabesk represent overwhelmingly the reasons choir participants express strong dislike towards it. The moral reasoning is complex, as it is also concerned with the status of the choir members in Germany. As most of the participants whom I have interviewed express, in having been othered and not totally accepted by the majority society, they can be compared to the Turkish/Kurdish labour migrants who settle in Istanbul and are othered by the other Istanbulites. Yet, most of

them adopt the tone of the “non-migrant” Istanbulites who perceive themselves as elites in the society. Hence, the internal dichotomy created by the “culturally superior” Turks in Germany replicates the negative attitudes and disdain of Istanbul elites towards their economically and socially deprived co-citizens. The highly sensational column written for Radikal Daily by Turkish writer and columnist Mine Kirikkanat, who has lived in France and has somehow experienced what is to be a migrant, is the paradigmatic expression of the aversion of Istanbulite elites against internal rural migrants. The following extract fully reveals White-Turks’ stereotypes about Black Turks:

After the Ataturk Airport… Alongside the sea begin the territories of – not even Arabia – but a version of Ethiopia... or we may as well call it, the “Carnivore Islamistan.” Anything non-Istanbul, anyone not from Istanbul is here. Three million people… move to Istanbul (every year) to graze on meat on the grass on Sundays… As cars pass by the green space… the only thing that is at eye level is the barbecue grills. Men in their undergarments lie down and chew like cows, women either wearing black chadors or a headscarf – but covered without exception – fan the grill, prepare tea and cradle their babies or push them on the swing… Our inlander people turn their behinds to the sea, grill, and eat meat with no exception. You can never see a single family among them who cook fish! Perhaps, if they liked fish, if they knew how to cook fish, they would not lie down with their dirty white tank tops and long underwear, perhaps they would not scratch themselves continuously, would not chew like cows, would not be so thick, so short-legged, so long-armed, and so hairy (Mine Kirikkanat on 27 July 2005, Radikal, cited in Demiralp 2012: 516).

Certainly, the lines above represent the most extreme form of dislike of labor migrants in Istanbul. The author emphasizes an absolute absence of anything in common between her and other representatives of Istanbul and its culture and lifestyles, and on the other hand “everything non-Istanbul.” The categorical differences come in the form of physical appearance, nutrition habits, etiquette, dress code, and perhaps the Weltanschaung (inlanders who turn their backs to the sea). Fundamentally, secular Istanbul is invaded and polluted by the provincial “Islamistan.” Accordingly, most of the participants see themselves as ideal and modern citizens (having Turkish or German or both passports), who are well oriented in Germany, but embrace “Turkish culture,” which is surely a much contested term also among the

Turkish immigrants. Those who come from Istanbul, Ankara, or Izmir tend to distinguish themselves from the “inferior” labor migrants, who have come to Germany and “never changed.” The more educated the participant is, the harder it is to accept that he or she is an “ordinary” Turk living in Hamburg. Aziz (56, ATU), a school teacher, underlined the appeal of Western Classical music for him and claimed that he could not find himself in the Arabesk genre when answering the question, “Do you go to the concerts of any famous musicians from Turkey who come to perform in Germany?”

Sure, I never miss the concerts of Fazil Say [A Classical music pianist]. Then, there are Pekinel Sisters [Classical music pianists]; I also don’t miss their concerts and listen to them with great pleasure. Fazil Say came, but did I go to his concerts consciously? First of all, I went there because an artist from Turkey came to perform. Then I listened to him. I had great pleasure. In other words, I noticed that mostly this kind of music appealed to my soul in the process. For example, Ibrahim Tatlises [a famous Arabesk singer] does not give me that much pleasure. He might certainly be a good musician in his genre. However, when I listen to the Pekinel sisters, I see much more of myself in their music; I see a lot of myself when I listen to Fazil Say.

The speaker above represents a good example of the citizen model of the early Turkish Republic, which embodied a transformational project, and the idea of the state was to educate people about high art, such as Western Classical music. His professional role as a teacher required him to absorb the transformational role of the Republic. From the establishment of the Turkish Republic, teachers have been crucial carriers of official state ideologies and transmitters of officially accepted and propagated cultural forms. According to Demiralp, “The Turkish education system defines the meaning of being Turkish and how to be a responsible citizen. It designates ideas, ideologies and lifestyles that remain outside this model as wrong, inferior or treason” (Demiralp 2012:518). In particular, participants with a professional background in teaching emphasized the need and the responsibility to cultivate and develop the music taste of youngsters. Aziz apparently internalized the division between legitimate high culture (Western Classical music) and vernacular forms such as Arabesk. Although he admits that Tatlises may be a “good musician,” his soul cannot find pleasure in listening to that kind of song.

During the rehearsal of the From Soul to Soul choir, the only female instrumentalist Sevim (51) expressed her disapproval about the lyrics of a song they were singing. She stated: “What people like is not always right. This song is about the marriage of a 15-year-old girl, and we are, of course, against such a thing, so we are changing the words.” She complained that some songs in Turkish Folk music have “primitive” lyrics, such as, in her words: “I am dying; I am burning, come to my grave, cover your head with the headscarf and all that nonsense.” For her, there is a pressing need to compose didactic folk songs for the people, which evokes discourse that intellectuals should enlighten and educate the masses. Another participant, Sinan (47, ATU) expressed more explicitly his aversion toward Arabesk. For him, Arabesk means disharmony, albeit its instrumentalization can be excellent. Nonetheless, in Sinan’s opinion, the lyrics are typically disharmonious and disappointing when fused with the music. When I asked him who listened to Arabesk, he went back to the initial years of Turkish immigration to Germany:

Arabesk is terribly disturbing to my brain. Its lyrics are, as well. Although I perform music as a hobby, I do not claim to be a musician. We were here in Germany in the 70s when nobody was here. Back then, there was a friend who was playing the saz perfectly. He was giving saz lessons, and the guys who were attending his classes generally liked Arabesk music. Those young guys who were coming to these classes were mostly from central Anatolia or eastern Anatolia. They were coming from the lower classes. I did these two evaluations. I was frequently thinking about it, I mean I came from Turkey, but from Istanbul. I know neither these people nor their culture; they seemed to me to have an entirely different culture. Their colors and tastes seemed to me very different from mine. I said to myself that I was probably at the wrong place. The majority was like that at that time. Most of them had a tendency toward Arabesk. I could not get used to it somehow.

Being one of the early comers, Sinan reports that he had met Turkish people entirely alien to him. His account closely resembles the aforementioned statement by Kirikkanat, when remembering his 40-year-old memories, as he underlines his inability to get used to the majority. By mentioning “colors,” Sinan refers to the skin color of the people with whom he was comparing himself. He categorically regards himself, as a person from the Turkish cultural capital, different from the lower classes of conservative

and religious Central and Eastern Anatolia. Two sides of Turkey, each personified in its own physiognomy and culture, come to know each other in the migratory context. Sinan’s, as well as Kirikkinat’s, account belongs to what Demiralp labels as urban secularist discourse. As Demiralp puts it:

The portrayal of Islamic individuals as provincial, lower class actors is not only an outcome of the overlapping of socioeconomic, geographic and cultural cleavages. This depiction of Islamism is also a product of the urban secularist discourse, which has actively attributed religious, cultural, and even physical characteristics to Anatolian populations, in order to define its own (secularist, civilized and Westernized) identity and to justify its authority (Demiralp 2012: 512).

This discourse has apparently persisted over the decades and has not significantly diminished in the diaspora. The narratives of the participants reveal their frustration when being “mistaken” for such Turks by ethnic Germans. Additionally, the participants react against the perceived “Arabesk” representation of Turks evident in the movies of acclaimed Turkish-German director Fatih Akin. Akin’s film, Head-On (Gegen Die Wand), is associated with the tradition of Arabesk films in Turkey (Berghahn 2011: 249). The author draws from Zaimoglu and suggests that the the film’s main characters’ cutting themselves with sharp razors are reminiscent of the fan’s cutting their bodies in pop concerts to express “ecstacy and agony” (Ibid: 249). Actually, the cutting ritual in the concerts is widely associated with the arabesk concerts of the singer, Müslüm Gürses in Turkey. Jale (26, Serdar Kalan), a graduate of the Faculty of Social Sciences in Hamburg, comments:

Well, Germans say in a caricaturing manner to each other, “You know there is a film about the lives of Turks, Gegen die Wand [Head-on]; it is really cool!” They think as if it was the only cultural source about Turks. OK, it is just a single example. But, are all the Turkish women having the conflicts of the main female character, Sibel, in the film? Germans think so. It is certainly a good and important thing that Fatih Akin has become a good film director. However, there is a widespread perception among Germans now that there is only Fatih Akin, who is involved in films and the arts in general among Turks. They do not know anyone else.

Jale, along with many other participants, rejects the stereotype of one true Turkish

way of life and the practices and values related to it. This case demonstrates that the disdainful attitude toward Arabesk is not only limited to musical taste itself. It is, as Öncu states, against “the cultural habitus and lifestyle of those who enjoyed them. Arabesque lovers now belonged to ‘Arabesk culture’ – banal, trashy, but most of all, in-between, hence polluted and polluting, to invoke Mary Douglas (1966)” (Öncu 1999: 104-105). Hence, what happens first, is that those who feel the stigma in the choirs ward off the stigma that comes from the majority society in Germany by suggesting, “We are not them.” Secondly, they show who should actually be the target of the stigma: the despicable Arabesk mass. Alexander and Bartmanski state, “the sensuous surface effects of contemporary icons actually range much more widely, to popular songs” (Alexander and Bartmanski 2012: 2). In this case, our focus is on a genre, Arabesk, which has transformed into an icon of “invasion” (Öncu 2002) and “pollution” (Douglas 1966, Öncu 2002). In order to comprehend “iconic consciousness,” Alexander proposes that “aesthetic and moral approaches,” in other words, “surface” and “depth,” should be blended (Alexander 2012: 26). As often pronounced by the choir participants, Arabesk aesthetically (in terms of vocals and sound) appears disturbing and disharmonious to them. It is described to have unsophisticated lyrics and sound compared to Turkish Folk and Art Music. Since Arabesk is influenced highly by Arabic-Egyptian music, it is not national, for some of the choir members. The fact that it has connotations from the Arabic world makes it sound uncool for some of the interviewees. Dismissing Arabesk and its association with Arabic culture, while simultaneously aspiring to revitalize the culture of Istanbul, even though one does not have roots in the city, is a common denominator of the Turkish classical choir. “The wandering melancholic as lover citizen” is the term Stokes uses to describe the song “Aziz Istanbul” (Stokes 2010: 5). Melancholy could be named as the particular emotion that participants seek in music. They long for an imaginary homeland from a distance with slow and melancholic songs. Osman Sadak’s and Lale Hoşses Classical Turkish choirs have a tacit goal to revive an “imagined” culture of “old” Istanbul. For most of the members of the choirs, cherishing their culture is of utmost importance. However, this culture is not the culture of the entirety of Turkey, but rather the elite culture of Istanbul. Even those

people born in other Turkish cities associate themselves exclusively with Istanbul. They express nostalgia for “old” Istanbul, which presumably existed when it was significantly smaller and culturally homogeneous, before its population rose to nearly 15 million. The following account of Cemalettin (28), a violin instructor from Mannheim, reveals the yearning to revive an imaginary Istanbul and argues that an impediment to doing so is the Turkish population itself living in the city.

Cemalettin: Actually, I have a dream, but to open a typical Turkish meyhane [tavern]. An old, vintage place from the 1920s or 1930s. It is not necessary to invest a lot. Just a gramophone at the corner, perhaps an ensemble. A daily menu. Some side dishes, a few drinks, that’s it. I’m not asking too much. But, you cannot do it here.

Researcher: Because you do not accept everyone?

Cemalletin: No, it is not like that.

Researcher: Islamists?

Cemalettin: Islamists would not be interested in visiting our place; we are kind of comfortable in that respect. Rather than not accepting everyone, what I am thinking is to introduce an alcohol limit. You see that someone is drinking, after the third glass, and when you spot aggressive behavior, you will say, “We are sorry, that’s it for today.” And to say “our drinks are over.” But, in order to accomplish what I say, you need to have a drinking etiquette. You can do it in Istanbul or Izmir. But, there is no such drinking etiquette here. Unfortunately! Most of the people here have not gone through this education. Is it a bad thing? Perhaps it is not but as such, uneducated people are in the majority, you cannot open such a place. The customer would say, “What is this, my brother? Why don’t you play some Arabesk?” when he gets in and hears “Aziz Istanbul” [a canonical Art music song from Munir Nurettin Selcuk]. That’s why, you cannot do it here and you would lose all your financial sources until you achieve your goal.

As the interview demonstrates, the participant has a low opinion of Mannheim’s Turkish immigrant population. His reasoning stems from the fact that the Turkish immigrants in Mannheim lack appropriate manners, which for him exist among Istanbulites or residents of Izmir. He has an imagined vision of Istanbul, the Beyoglu (Taksim) districts from the 1960s and 1970s. He is disturbed by the fact that Turkish people without manners inhabit Mannheim. Although he does not use the term

“maganda,” he refers to a particular type of person who often creates a scene in public. In the 1990s, a new derogatory term, “maganda,” was coined. First, it was used in satirical magazines, but quickly it became a widely used word to refer to “a figure of brute strength, hairy body, and unbridled sexual appetites, who infects and pollutes the cultural atmosphere of social settings he appears in” (Öncu 1999: 111). The participants tend to presume that those Turks who are not like them will not have the intent to join their choir. When I asked Bora (26, Lale Hoşses), a musician, musicologist and translator born in Germany, what he observed as criteria to be accepted as a participant in Lale Hoşses’s choir, such as sharing the same mainstream secularist political view of the choir, he responded with a giggle: “Well, it is not a criterion, but this is rather in the unconscious. Because, it is taken for granted in the minds of people, they cannot even think that what they believe can even be politically criticized. For them, it would be unthinkable to have some participants who are against their political views.” I have not observed that the majority of the Turkish music performers sets strict economic boundaries against many other Turks or Kurds in Germany or Turkey. Socioeconomic boundaries, for Lamont, “are drawn on the basis of judgments concerning people’s social position as indicated by their wealth, power, or professional success” (Lamont 1992: 4). Here, using Lamont’s definition literally is problematic, because in the Turkish migratory case wealth only is despised. However, “professional success” or having a circle full of “very influential of the local elite” is highly respected and desired. The participants often use terms such as “alt tabaka” (low layer/low class). However, this term connotes low cultural and moral standards rather than the economic. The participants despise individuals whose material achievements are not coupled with educational level and cultural refinement. Osman Sadık contrasts Turkish and German society in regard to showing one’s wealth and the significance it has:

Money talks in Turkey. Whoever has money talks there. And unfortunately, that man is someone who cannot formulate a proper sentence. Actually, he is not valuable in our eyes. But, he says, “I am a hillbilly [kiro] but I have money.” Unfortunately, there are so many status symbols in Turkey; you can see them when you also look at the cars. Hamburg is a city that hosts most of the millionaires in Europe and in the world. Nevertheless, you don’t see their bodyguards walking around with them when they show up in the city center. It is

not a place where paparazzi walk with them unlike in Turkey. He/she shops just like you and me in a plain manner.

According to Stokes, “The terms maganda, kiro, and sometimes kabadayı are used today by critics to describe this “arabesk-type”” (Stokes 2000:223), and participants avoid being associated with such people. On the contrary, participants commonly enjoy being associated with and surrounded by the intellectual class. I asked Erkan, the owner of a music school in Vienna, what the Turkish [Turkiyeli] intellectual milieu was and where intellectuals were “hanging out.” He replied with a rather proud tone:

For instance, we have friends who are painters, and they are seriously dedicated to their art. Some of our friends are lecturers in academia; then we have musician friends, sociologist friends, and friends who are scientists. They attend elite and exceptional events. For example, they join in the activities that we organize. They have a high opinion about Tim because of the job we are doing and because of our perspective. These people are interested in multicultural activities. Austrians target the intellectual audience at these events. These intellectual people are not attending the events that only the Turkish people organize. We also have a friend in the parliament, from the Greens. She is Alev Korun from the Greens. She was a friend of ours, we know her and she is one of us.

Being successful in intellectual professions is clearly more valued than mere material success. The participants are proud to belong to a social circle comprised of people who are either experts in their fields or artists and intellectuals. In this way, they also distance themselves from both low-skilled workers and rich individuals who lack cultural capital. The following table shows the internal cultural boundaries set by the choirs’ members in Durkheimian sense. The profane characteristics are associated with listeners of Arabesk.

SACRED PROFANE Urban values Rural values Association with the culture of large Association with the culture of cities Anatolia

Secular, educated citizens Bigoted, uncultivated, impure masses Intellectual elite, professional Kiro, maganda success

Table 2: Sacred and profane in Turkish Diaspora

I have not observed a clear distinction between moral and cultural boundaries in Lamont’s sense when they are drawn on the basis of music. Rather, moral, cultural, and socioeconomic boundaries are intermingled. To be more precise, moral judgments are made on the basis of perceived of cultural differences and cultural superiority. Even seemingly economic boundaries derive from cultural differences and are expressed in moral terms. Hence, the boundary work revolving around music is absolute and not confined to cultural boundaries. On the contrary, when the boundaries are drawn around other issues, they are not necessarily merged. For instance, the symbolic boundaries some participants draw against Alevis are solely moral, without involvement of cultural and socioeconomic boundaries. This shows the significance of music as a resource for boundary drawing.

6.3. The German domain: differently sacred

What is most prominent about the boundary work against Germans is that that the research participants do not draw strict symbolic boundaries around what they perceive as the differences between qualities perceived as intrinsically Turkish or German. It is noticeable from the accounts that in the case of Germans, cultural boundaries play a much less prominent role than in the case of co-ethnics. Although some participants argue that Turkish Art and Folk music is more valuable than German mainstream music, music is not a cultural resource used to draw impermeable boundaries between the participants and Germans. No genre of German music is othered in the way that the Arabesk is. German classical music is widely respected, and German pop is not taken as a symbol of otherness

In a Durkheimian sense, the participants do not create a distinction between sacred and profane, but rather a distinction between sacred and differently sacred. Even if they do not like something German and do not associate themselves with it, they do not ascribe to it such negative values and attributes as in the case of the Turkish “profane.” A good example is German music, which the participants generally dislike, but do not consider polluted. Nonetheless, many participants form binary oppositions in regard to Turkish and German music and songs. This is caused by the social construction of emotions within the Turkish audience and choir members. What participants seek in music is the quality of being emotional in a particular way. The songs need to produce “intimacy” in Martin Stokes’ (2010) terms. Participants and in general, the Turkish audience for Turkish Classical and Folk music, favor the sense of yanik (burnt) voices.17 This is explained through the differences in Turkish and German music systems. The quarter tonal foundation (see Stokes 2012: 97) existing in the makam scales of Turkish Classical and Folk music requires an ear accustomed to listening to pieces written in this sonic system. As Rose Nash writes, “To Western ears, Oriental music written in these extremely complex tonal systems is often difficult to enjoy and even painful to listen to, because our culture has not trained us to distinguish musical intervals smaller than a semitone” (Nash 1973: 47). While the sonic structure of Turkish music renders the performers of Turkish music a specific ability, it excludes those who were only trained in the Western music system. As Nash implies, in order to understand and enjoy Turkish music, Western ears must undergo training in the Turkish musical system. The performers of Turkish Folk and Classical music do not intentionally exclude themselves from ethnic Germans in their musical activities; the chief reason behind the exclusion is the different sonic characteristics of Turkish music. Ines, the only German student who was attending Turkish folk instrument courses in one of the choruses, argued:

17 Martin Stokes describes the voice of Orhan Gencebay, a famous Turkish singer, in his book Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music (2010): “Gencebay’s voice is correspondingly choked and emotional – to use the Turkish expression “burnt “(yanik).”

I think Turkish and German or European music are very different. Sometimes, musicians do not open up to the other music because the theoretical systems are very different, [and] for Germans it sounds a little bit strange. Sometimes they say, Mozart, Bach, European Classical music is the best, but it is not because Turkish music is not as good, but it is difficult for their ears. Sometimes German musicians look down on it, or they don’t even say that there is Classical music in Eastern culture.

Ines, was, at the time of my in-depth interview with her, learning how to play the bağlama at the instrument class of the ATU choir. She stated: “Turkish music is not difficult. I played the guitar, but I didn’t know the notes. Now I am learning music theory, but it is new to me. So, I started with the Turkish system, and now I only know the Turkish music system or harmonies.” Ines was certainly an exceptional example who did not find the Turkish music system odd; in addition, she had a certain decisiveness and enthusiasm in learning this musical system. As her musical story suggests, those who start learning music in the Turkish system do not have big obstacles to indulging in Turkish music, unlike the majority of German and Western listeners who are foreign to this genre. Choir members agree that Turkish Folk music is usually regarded as foreign to a German ear. Ahmet (51, Soul to Soul) narrated an anecdote about how Germans regarded Turkish Folk music some years ago during one of the concerts at which he was performing. He asked the German audience how Turkish Folk music sounded and one response was: “The songs sound as if they were sung by vocalists who have a stomach ache.” Emine (38, ATU) stated: “Can a German come here and understand the emotions of Turkish Folk music… Could she/he understand the lyrics of the folk music? I don’t think so.” Apart from the two female participants who tend to be “omnivores” in Peterson and Kern’s (1996) terms in their relation to music, despite the fact that they said they primarily listened to Turkish Art music and then Turkish Folk music, the participants in this research provide a similar answer: “German music is not appealing.” The common attitude towards German music among the interviewees is to respect the classics but to show a shallow interest in contemporary German music. The answers given to the question “Do you also listen to music with German lyrics?” suggest that people involved

in Turkish music do not establish strict binary opposites that separate “sacred” and “profane” in a Durkheimian sense. Rather, most responses suggest that a non- Durkheimian binary, (sacred vs. differently sacred) is prevalent among these people in their judgment of music with German lyrics. The differently sacred category can be described as a quality that does not evoke strong dislike, but usually is formulated in the manner of “German lyrics do not appeal to my soul.” What is striking here is the emphasis on language. The German language is often categorized as “cold” whereas Turkish and Romanic languages are categorized as “warm.” Cemalettin, a violin instructor in Mannheim at a school of Eastern music, describes the German language as “one of the coldest languages in Europe.” In his words:

The pronunciation of the German language is cold. That’s to say, it’s not warm. The German language is not too lyrical or poetic. Unfortunately, we have to acknowledge this. Do you know how to say “butterfly” in French? Papillon. In most languages in Europe, the word “butterfly” is very soft. Germans call it Schmetterling! I believe that the decline of German music is caused by the stiffness of the language. Why does French music still live in France? I don’t think that it is because the French are so nationalist. They are simply doing a good job. Why there is still Italian music? Why does Spanish music still exist?

Ahmet (51, From Soul to Soul) claimed that he did not find subtleties in German folk music, and it seemed to him very “pruned” and “blind.” When I asked Esra (40, Osman Sadik) what kind of emotions listening to German songs evoked, she expressed that listening to songs with German lyrics did not satisfy her. Since she did not know the lyrics, despite having overheard the songs and understood what they were saying, she could not sing them. For her, it was essential to be able to sing the songs while listening to them. She added that songs with German lyrics could not connect with her. When I asked her which song was her favorite, she responded that it was “Yaprak Dokumu” (The Fall of Leaves) by Zeki Muren, which they had sung the previous year in the choir. She commented: “Actually, all of our songs were so beautiful; all were very, very slow in the makams of Hicaz and Ussak.” The superficial interest in German music is exemplified by the statements of some participants who listen to popular songs while they are busy with home activities. Nalan from Osman Sadak’s choir recalled the lyrics and sang a few lines of “Herzilein” with

laughter: “Du musst night traurig sein/ ich weiß/du bist nicht gern allein/ und schuld war doch nur der Wein.”18 For her, this pop song is funny and pleasant, but not taken seriously. Similarly, the bağlama player, Sevim (51, From Soul to Soul), told me that sometimes she listens to German news radio, which broadcasts songs in English and German: “I also listen to the German songs and some of them are very emotional. Indeed, there is a song in which the boyfriend of a woman died; that song made me cry. It presents the emotions so strongly, and the music is also nice. I listen to that sometimes.” This specific song is appealing to Sevim because she can recognize the emotion and relate to it, which is in fact one of the reasons the participants join Turkish choirs and deeply appreciate Turkish music. Even though many participants at times essentialize Turkishness and Germanness, they still do not tend to regard the German domain as “profane” in a Durkheimian sense. The notion of “differently sacred” is thus applicable to other spheres of life when contrasting Turkish and German ways of existence. Although the participants admit that German practices and values differ from their own, this difference does not evoke the strong sentiments and moral judgments comparable to their negative reaction to the lifestyles connoted by Arabesk music. For Esra, the first adjective that came to mind when considering the word “Turkish” was “warm-bloodedness”; on the other hand, it was “cool-headedness” for “German.” Neriman (45, From Soul to Soul) argued that Turkish culture is different from the German in its music, cuisine, the way people “sit and stand” (she is here referring to etiquette). Another participant confidently adds that Turkish culture is distinguished from the German by the “neighborliness” of people, in other words, Turkish people have closer relationships with their neighbors than Germans. Furthermore, Sevim (51, Soul to Soul) elaborated: “Germans are very disciplined about their work and laws, and I appreciate it very much. We don’t have that culture; there is no culture of discipline generally among Turks in Turkey and Germany.” She gave the example of visits with short notice among Turks and according to her, these are

18 “You don't have to be sad, I know you don't really "enjoy" your own company, but at least, only the wine was to blame for it.”

nonexistent among Germans. For her, this shows how Germans have internalized a sense of discipline. In addition, for her and in this respect, for many other participants, Germany is a country of law, and citizens and non-citizens alike hold consumer rights and win trials having to do with these rights, whereas in Turkey, there is no culture of law but rather a threat. In addition, in an extreme form of essentialization, the oud player Sinan (48, ATU) first elaborated on perceived ontological differences between the emotional Orient and the rational West (see Said 1978) and subsequently argued for the synthesis of “Turkishness” and “Germanness.”

How much you get into the system and become systematic, that much you start to lose your human side. Because you start to transform into a machine. How much the machine you become, that much you start adopting the spirit of that machine. But, human beings are not machines. Humans have souls. What is a soul? It has feelings, joys, anger, times when it is offended, that is to say, the souls have Emotion [with German pronunciation]. The machine does not have Emotion. That is to say, there is mechanization in Western societies. In Turkish societies, or rather in southern or eastern societies, you see rather “emotional” [pronounced in German] lifestyles. There is more Emotion. I do not certainly see either of these two as superior, because both are bad. When you become too mechanical, when the Emotionlar [he added the Turkish plural suffix “-lar” after “Emotion”] are reduced, then you lose your humanity. But, when you become too Emotional, then you lose your reason. When you lose your reason, I do not know how to put it, but somehow, you also lose being a human. As you know, animals usually act with their Instinktler [He adds the Turkish plural suffix “-ler”]. They are both extremes. That is to say, one is a robot, and the other is an animal. These two are two extreme opposites. I do not like opposites, indeed. What is important is to connect these two at some point.

The following table summarizes sacred and differently sacred domains:

SACRED (Turkish domain) DIFFERENTLY SACRED (German domain) Turkish Western Classical music, German Classical, and Folk music pop “warm-bloodedness” “cool-headedness” Friendliness, closeness among Discipline, rule of law

people Emotion Rationality Turkish etiquette German etiquette

Table 3: Sacred (Turkish domain) and differently sacred (German domain)

Eviatar Zerubavel argues that society has an impact on what occurs in the “minds” of people. Moreover, society has an impact on how people “classify the world.” For him, people engage in classification because they are “social beings.” He stresses that people do not classify because they are “individuals” or “human beings” (Zerubavel 1999: 53). Zerubavel defines three types of mindsets: “rigid,” “flexible,” and “fuzzy.” The rigid- minded individual is defined as “highly inflexible,” a “purist” who functions according to “either/or” reasoning (Zerubavel 1999: 56). “Flexible-mindedness” is defined as a “fluid mindset” that recognizes the existence of “both/and” and promotes “ambiguity” (Zerubavel 1999: 57). Zerubavel associates fuzzy-mindedness with “an aversion to any boundary that might prevent mental interpenetration” (Zerubavel 1999: 57). My findings indicate that the participants tend to communicate in a rigid-minded manner when discussing the other Turks in Germany. The differences are in that case put forward as dichotomous binaries of sacred and profane. However, when contrasting the Turkish and German domains, flexible-mindedness is much more prevalent. The differences exemplified in sacred and differently sacred are not binary opposites, but frequently they are even taken as complementary qualities. The migration experience makes it difficult for individuals to express rigid- mindedness towards the host society. Certainly, ultra-nationalists or Islamic fundamentalists among the Turkish population in Germany may regard German society as profane. However, the choir members predominantly are unlike these two groups. Despite the fact that a few members do have strong nationalist sentiments, it is observed that even those members acknowledge the internalization of various positive attitudes after living in a foreign country as immigrants and the change they undergo. The common agreement is that the positive outcome of living in Germany is acquiring

discipline and a work ethic. Besides, as will be seen in a subsequent chapter, the research participants aim at surpassing the integration debate in Germany by claiming greater inclusion and recognition of Turks in German society. Particularly the second and third generations are eager to belong and express their attachments to “localities.” Music is taken as a resource that can diminish the stigma attached to the Turkish diaspora, enhance the status of the Turkish community and foster inclusion.

CHAPTER 7

Music as a Resource for Destigmatization

7.1. Introduction

This chapter first presents participants’ views on the integration debate in Germany, their experiences of discrimination, and the complexity of ethnic and national identification and belonging. Participants claim to be fully integrated, but not accepted in

German society, in particular due to the stigma (Goffman, 1963) attached to the Turkish community. Hence, the second part of the chapter elaborates their short and long-term

“destigmatization” strategies, in Lamont’s (2009) sense. The research reveals that the participants regard music as the most adequate (and perhaps only) cultural resource for improving the general status of the Turks. This strategy encompasses both “improving the Turks” through musical education and educating Germans on Turkish culture. It corresponds to the most commonly reported goals of the choirs, respectively “transmission of Turkish music in Germany” and “presentation of Turkish music to Germans.” Finally, the chapter concludes with the participants’ preferred mode of interaction with the wider society. It is integration in Sam and Berry’s (2010), terms, which places emphasis on the simultaneous maintenance of their original culture and participation in the networks of the host society, as participants reject both assimilation and multiculturalism and do not advocate for any collective rights to be granted to Turks.

7.2. Integration, discrimination, and non-acceptance

The interviews I conducted went smoothly as long as the questions did not focus on the difficulties participants face in their everyday lives, the relationships they establish with ethnic Germans, and the perceived general low status of Turks in Germany. When the conversation turned to these topics, participants overall became defensive and at first reluctant to discuss them. Frequently, participants became upset or angry when they

heard the word “integration.” They decisively dismissed the topic, arguing that it does not concern them personally. Likewise, participants disapproved of formulations such as “living as a Turk in Hamburg,” as they perceive such declarations as putting them into ready-made boxes and being “ethnicized.” Participants in the choirs and other musicians that I interviewed regarded themselves as fully integrated into German society. All of them informed me that they had learned German very well, and some were proud that their German accents are not recognizable as foreign. The third generation born in Germany attended only schools in Germany. The members of the first and second generation studied in Germany in vocational schools and universities. Most of them were employed as semi-professionals and professionals in German companies where they work together with German colleagues. However, after initial hesitation, they tended to open up and report on the problems and the feelings of not being accepted by ethnic Germans and the presence of stigma attached to ethnic Turks. The group debates and the interviews I conducted on the integration issue revealed one notable tendency: being integrated does not necessarily converge with the feeling of being accepted in the German society. The same participants who emphasized their full integration, concurrently reported that they feel like foreigners and that they are considered foreigners by ethnic Germans. Strikingly, this occurs despite the fact that the majority of the participants, who are now in their 40s and 50s arrived very young, primarily during the family reunification wave in the 1970s. In particular, people who belong to the first and the second generation of immigrants are inclined to perceive themselves univocally as foreigners. During the informal group discussion in the From Soul to Soul choir, I asked if members felt like locals or foreigners in Hamburg and several female singers together exclaimed: “Foreigner!” Ahmet (51, From Soul to Soul) responded confidently: “You cannot totally feel like a local; it goes against the grain.” Then his wife Sevin (51, From Soul to Soul) continued: “People of our age cannot feel like locals here, but our kids who were born here can.” This statement prompted everyone in the group to become involved in the discussion; the rest shouted in one voice, “Even they cannot feel like locals.” Another member interfered: “Both of my kids were born here. My daughter and my son who are

24 and 25 years old speak German very well; they attend the university here. It is partially caused by the attitude of families, but at some point they also feel like foreigners.” The following account of Esra (40, Osman Sadik) illustrates the complex and ambiguous relation between integration and belonging:

Ali: OK, you have been living here since you were thirteen, but do you have any feelings that you are a migrant here? Esra: No! I see myself as a fully integrated person here. Ali: You have been living together with Germans. How do you feel about it? Esra: I went to school directly with Germans and socialized with them since I came here when I was 13-14 years old. I went to the vocational school with them. Nevertheless, no matter that we feel so integrated; the Germans have not accepted us 100 percent. Some of them make you feel this. Wherever you are, they make you feel this.

Initially, Esra denied that she was a migrant and stressed that she was an integrated person but later complained about not being fully accepted, and even underlined the constant, pervasive feeling of non-acceptance (“Wherever you are, they make you feel this”). Typically, answering difficult questions about identity and belonging follow a pattern that has three sequences. First, the participants would deny the problem; subsequently, they would reformulate it and express it in their own words, and finally, they would accept it. This pattern corresponds to the tendency to refuse initially to talk about the perceived differences between Turks and Germans, and to report it later in the conversation. Only after participants become relaxed and build confidence in the researcher are they able to admit difficulties and to express an honest opinion. For instance, Necla (40, Osman Sadik) first stated that she approached everyone as a human being and later expressed that Turks are very different from Germans. One of the important issues in fieldwork is to accept the hardship in receiving reliable answers to questions that ask directly about identity. Some participants may respond to questions about being othered in Germany with a certain unease, at times, denying difficulties in being an immigrant. At times, the answers follow the sequence of “recognition, rejection, and relevance,” suggested by Pierre Hecker (Hecker 2012: 163). First, participants will recognize the problem. Then, they affirm that they are not affected,

but they express that there are some other Turkish immigrants who undergo these difficulties. By looking at social media, I realized that even those who regard themselves as fully integrated are members of the Facebook group called “ALMANYA ACI VATAN/ Gocun 50. Yili/ 50 Jahre Migration aus der Turkei.” The capitalized part has not been translated into German. This part can be translated as, “Germany Bitter Land/Home Land.”19 Two middle-aged returnees, Ismail, (male, 59) and Nurseli (female, 45) whom I met in Istanbul through common friends were not so willing to discuss with me with the issue of being an immigrant. They had both lived in Germany for about two decades and studied at universities in German cities. When I asked Nurseli if she wanted to take part in an interview about the musical lives of Turks in Germany, she refused by saying that it was too disturbing for her to be mixed with all other Turks in the diaspora. It was unbearable for her to be exposed and to be treated liked an immigrant and she had returned to Turkey partly because of that feeling. Ismail argued that even Germans who have good will toward Turks claim that Turks are different than Germans, but still Turks should be included into the society. He informed me that even those who discuss these issues using multiculturalist discourse remind him of his difference. He concluded that it was his best choice to move back to Turkey. The two interviewees came from a similar background, from the pro-European Turkish intellectual elite. One can here conclude that higher-educated immigrants find it more challenging to cope with latent racism and othering in German society. Furthermore, many participants, especially those who did not have the opportunity to study at universities in Germany complained about discrimination against the Turks in schooling and employment. Sevda (47, From Soul to Soul) confessed that she had struggled with her son’s teacher, who had insisted that he should study at a vocational school mainly because of his Turkish immigrant background. Sevda added that this is a technique some German teachers use without mentioning ethnic origin; instead, they stress that they do it “for the benefit of the student.” It was a general tendency among my participants to blame teachers for not achieving a higher education level. The choir

19 The rest of the title translates to “50 years of migration from Turkey.”

members who were parents regretted that they had attended Hauptschule, and they believed that it had prevented them from receiving a university education. Becoming friends with Germans and the limits of inclusion could be discussed in a calmer atmosphere than issues of integration and discrimination, but still participants expressed strong attitudes and emotions. Some of the participants claimed that the Turks do not take the first step in developing friendships and sometimes isolate themselves, while others complained about the distant and uninterested attitudes of their German neighbors. Sevda complained that the parents of German children who attend her son’s kindergarten were reluctant to meet the Turkish kids and their parents at a party organized by the kindergarten. It seemed to her that German parents were eager to meet the African children and their parents and hear African music, but uninterested in listening to Turkish popular tracks. She added that it took a long time for the German parents to start greeting the Turkish parents. The leader of a folk music choir, Fikret (47, ATU) stated, “They treated me like a migrant. They have a feeling of superiority, and it is in their subconscious.” Emine, 38, from the same choir, lamented: “I would like to establish friendships with Germans, but friendship does not emerge with the Germans. After a while, you are only having chitchat with them. I do not know why, but they treat Turks distantly.” Sibel (30, Osman Sadık), with dreadlocks, who likes contemporary German novels and rock music, confessed that her circle of friends consisted of non-Germans, mostly people of Latin and Balkan origin. She added that the Germans, including the politically left-wing, were too aloof towards Turks, and they placed all Turks into a single category. Despite sharing the same social environment, such as school, work, and the public sphere, in general, the fact that the participants had few or no real ethnic-German friends, points to Fredrik Barth’s idea about the persistence of boundaries even when two groups are in contact with each other. As Fredrik Barth writes:

First, it is clear that boundaries persist despite a flow of personnel across them. In other words, categorical ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of mobility, contact and information, but do entail social processes of exclusion and incorporation whereby discrete categories are maintained despite changing participation and membership in the course of individual life histories. Secondly, one finds that stable, persisting, and often vitally important social relations are

maintained across such boundaries, and frequently based precisely on the dichotomized ethnic statuses. In other words, ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of social interaction and acceptance, but are quite to the contrary, often the very foundations on which embracing social systems are built. Interaction in such a social system does not lead to its liquidation through change and acculturation; cultural differences can persist despite inter-ethnic contact and interdependence (Barth 1969: 9-10).

In the view of the majority of participants, integration in employment and schooling has not led to social integration, meaning they had experienced neither acceptance into informal networks of German friends nor appreciation of Turkish culture by ethnic Germans. After having comprehended what participants think and feel about integration and after they had shared with me their experiences of and opinions about the discrimination they faced, I would bring up ethnic and national identifications, such as Turkish, German, German-Turk and Almanci.20 When the mood and the setting were calm and hospitable, I was sometimes able to ask even more intimate questions about this delicate topic. For example, during a friendly conversation with a group of musician friends in Mannheim, I initiated such talk by asking, “Do you ever receive questions like ‘Do you see yourself as Turkish or German?’” They all found the question a bit ridiculous, and Cemalettin, a violin instructor (28), replied resolutely: “The Germans are rather asking these questions.” Serpil, a vocalist (34) said: “Turks don’t ask such questions.” Finally, Ümit, a luthier (48) stated:

It is impossible for a Turk to see himself/herself as a German. A Turk here sees himself or herself merely as an Almanci or a Turkiyeli [He stresses the word Turkiyeli, which means being from Turkey, without an ethnic reference] who has seen Europe. Certainly, it varies depending on the surroundings where one lives and grows up. In the shop next door, only Turks are working, and the customers are 100 percent Turkish. I also have the same kind of people around me. If we happen to ask them, we will get more or less the same answers. We refer to them as the general Turkish population. On the other hand, there are also those who are exceptional like me. We are seen as the lunatics of the society. For sure, our views

20 Amanci is a derogatory word used in Turkey for Turkish gastarbeiter in Germany, meaning literally “Germanist,” which connotes their lack of competence in Turkish language and their working-class background.

are different; they cannot be counted within the generalizations. But if we ask those in the next shop whether they see themselves as Turks or Germans, we will even hear an aggressive reaction.

Ümit’s statements were in line with those of participants in my research who regarded themselves as intellectuals and saw themselves beyond ethnic terms. However, he denied the possibility to see oneself as German, and he did not present reflexivity over this issue. What he underlined is that the majority of Turks, due to their isolation from the wider society, find it unthinkable to consider themselves anything but Turks (Turkiyeli) or Turks from Germany (Almanci). However, those, as Ümit says, “exceptional” Turks who work in professional milieus and inhabit ethnically mixed neighborhoods tend to have more complex ethnic identification and even strive to be recognized as Germans. Umit’s observation is supported by the empirical findings of the project “Muslims in Berlin” of the Open Society Institute: “Self-perception as being German is extremely low among those working in unskilled manual jobs (under 10 per cent) and quite high among those in lower, middle and higher management and higher administrational jobs (over 60 percent)” (Open Society Institute 2010: 57-58). Unlike Ümit, who argues that the Turks do not perceive themselves as Germans, Suphan T., a famous hip-hop artist from Berlin (38) insists that ethnic Germans set physical appearance as a criterion for fitting into the German nation:

Germans don’t understand the thing about skin and hair color. Now, if you’re dark, you’re a Turk. For example, they don’t regard the light-skinned Turks with blond or with light-hair as Turks. My mum is also blond, and no one tells her that she’s a Turk. Then there’s also the headscarf thing. During the first years of Turkish migration, there were few women with the headscarf. The number of Turkish women wearing the headscarf increased during the 2000s. Now, everyone thinks that Turks are like that: Dark and headscarfed. Most Germans don’t see me as a Turk. Who they imagine as a Turk has a certain appearance and style. Most of them are shocked when they go to Istanbul. Because they say, “Wow, there is also another kind of Turk!”

I want to appear in public and make a statement [He said the word “statement” in English], because, Turks here don’t have problems with Germans, in general. Most of them have already regarded themselves as Germans. You can also see it in the German team in the World Championship of Football. However, the Germans have a problem with the Turks. They can’t accept it. You accept

yourself as a German, but the German guy tells you: “You don’t look like a German at all, you are not German” (laughter). Of course, this is to do with racism

However, the complex issue of the ethnic identification of Turks in Germany must be seen as the juxtaposition between Turks’ socioeconomic position, tendencies toward self-exclusion, and the willingness to preserve Turkish national identity on one hand, and a historically formed German national identity on the other hand. The same study that found low identification as Germans among Turkish low-skilled workers argues, “Those ethno-cultural identities must be seen in the context of the German identity which also historically has perceived itself as an ethnic-national identity.”21 Suphan’s statement accurately captures what participants, in short, regard as Germans’ usual perceptions of Turks (dark and headscarfed). As was shown in the previous chapter, dark and headscafed Turks are equally being othered in Turkey by Turkish secularists as they are in Germany. Precisely, it is a stigma, an image of all Turks as such, that participants want to distance themselves from.

7.3. Music as a resource for destigmatization

The participants agree that the Turkish community and Turkish culture are stigmatized in Germany. This perception corresponds to Greve’s claim, “Generally, Turkish migrants are primarily perceived as a social problem by the white, Christian European majority. European-Turkish culture is rarely seen in terms of cultural enrichment” (Greve 2009: 123). Furthermore, according to Breger and Hill, “Definitions of who constitutes outsiders are also open to change; they vary depending on who – in class, regional, national, generational or gendered terms – is doing the defining, and whether personal or collective definitions are used” (Breger and Hill 1998:8). Furthermore, the author claims that “not all of the groups appear equally ‘strange’; some groups seem more familiar, their presence is more tolerated, their cultural practices perhaps even admired. This leads to a hierarchy of acceptable ‘foreign-ness’” (Thränhardt 1985; Breger 1992 in Breger and Hill 1998:8).

21 Muslims in Hamburg, At Home in Europe, Open Society Institute, 2010:57

Overall, participants agree that there is a hierarchy of ethnicities and nations in Germany, where Turks have a very low position. It is well exemplified in the following accounts by Halit (57) and Osman (60) from the Osman Sadık choir:

Halit: This is a sociological fact. For example, Germans don’t say anything about those nations that are superior to them. For example, Germans don’t say much against Norwegians, Dutch, English, or French. However, they call those that are inferior to them…; for example, they call Italians garlic eaters, spaghetti [Osman and Halil say at the same time and laugh]. Then, the Spanish are thieves. Osman: The Germans call the Polish thieves. Osman: We are fans of the West. Halit: We revile against the countries that are in a worse situation than us. Osman: Like Yugoslavia. Halit: All kinds of crap. For example, we [Turks] don’t have such disparagement against the West. But, for whatever the reason is, we say, “Dirty Arab.”

These choir participants claim that there is a hierarchy of ethnicities in Germany and admit that Turks are not the only ethnic group labeled negatively by ethnic Germans. Furthermore, Halil asserts that Turks also label so-called “inferior” ethnicities in a derogatory way. Bakic-Hayden argues that such hierarchization derives from the basic dichotomy between East and West in Orientalist discourse, as explained by Edward Said in his famous book “Orientalism” (1978). According to Bakic-Hayden, “the designation of ‘other’ has been appropriated and manipulated by those who have themselves been designated as such in orientalist discourse” (Bakic-Hayden 1995: 922). Stigma is attached to those at the bottom of such a hierarchy. According to Goffman, “The term stigma, then, will be used to refer to an attribute that is deeply discrediting, but it should be seen that a language of relationships, not attributes, is really needed” (Goffman 1963:13). In this case, stigma concerns the relationship between the Turkish community and ethnic Germans as well as relations within the Turkish community. As Goffman further argues, “The awareness of inferiority means that one is unable to keep out of consciousness the formulation of some chronic feeling of the worst sort of insecurity, and this means that one suffers anxiety and perhaps even something worse, if jealousy is really worse than anxiety” (Goffman 1963: 24). The narratives that the participants reluctantly shared with me reveal their feelings of anxiety. Attributing the discrimination they face and non-belonging in the German

society to the low status of Turkish ethnicity and culture, the participants develop different strategies to overcome it. In other words, they engage in what Michele Lamont calls “destigmatization strategies,” or “how ordinary members of stigmatized ethnic and racial groups respond to exclusion by challenging stereotypes that feed and justify discriminatory behavior and rebutting the notion of inferiority” (Lamont 2009). The research reveals individual short-term and collective long-term destigmatization strategies. The short-term individual strategies allow participants to escape stigma by denying that it applies to them or by verbally diverting it to “unintegratable” Turks. The two short-term strategies are typically combined and follow the pattern: “I am fully integrated, so the integration debate does not concern me, but there are these Turks who cannot or not want to integrate.” The long-term destigmatization strategy is the deliberate use of music as a resource to destigmatize the Turkish community collectively, which will eventually lead to the acceptance of the Turks as an integral part of German society. Within this strategy, music serves as a resource that targets both Turks and Germans. On one hand, music education and activities such as concerts and performances are aimed at enhancing the competencies and the taste of Turkish musicians and the audience, thus making them more integratable. On the other, it is expected that by presenting high-quality Turkish music production to ethnic Germans who will eventually start to respect it, certain aspects of Turkish culture will become an integral part of German society and respected as such. Importantly, the assumption that music is the most appropriate cultural resource to change the perceived negative image of Turks is widely held by the amateur musicians from the choirs in Hamburg, as well as by the professional musicians and the music instructors I interviewed in Berlin, Mannheim, and Vienna. Regarding the short-term strategies, Goffman reminds us, “One way of avoiding the social inequalities that many stigmas incur is to try to hide the stigma, to prevent it being observed by others and so to ‘pass’ undetected” (Goffman, 1968 cited in Howarth 2006: 447). Typically, young people of Turkish origin born in Germany argue that they are not the target group for the integration debate and integration policies and instead emphasize their nativeness. To illustrate this, Hatice refused to answer the question, “How it is to live as a Turk in Hamburg?” by saying, “I cannot answer it since I was born

and raised here.” She clearly dismisses the importance of being ethnically Turkish and emphasizes attachment to “here.” Subsequently, Hatice has argued that the issue of integration does not apply to her, underlining once again that she was born “here.” By repeatedly referring to her nativeness, Hatice excludes and distances herself from the integration debate, which is a typical strategy for third-generation immigrants. Moreover, Hatice combines the strategy of denial with the strategy of diverting the stigma by claiming that some people are neither willing nor able to integrate. Hence, integration policies are not successful: “There are compulsory language courses, but I do not believe that it is a positive thing. People cannot make someone do something by force. There has to be a will.” This finding contradicts the arguments of some scholars studying descendants of Muslims in Europe, which posit that in particular the third generation is inclined to cling to universal Islam, while concurrently dismissing the importance of their ethnic origin and not being integrated. For instance, according to Parekh:

The first generation of Muslim immigrants defined their identity in terms of country of origin and saw religion as one component of it. Their offspring are quite different. Their country of parental origin has no emotional of even cultural meaning for them, and its place has been taken by religion. Religion distinguishes them from their fellow citizens and is something they can call their own; it links them to Muslim immigrants from other countries and provides a basis of national unity. (Parekh 2006: 180-181)

The secular third-generation Turks in Hamburg, rather than preserving their faith, focus on preserving preferred cultural aspects of Turkey, while being strongly attached to place and locality. The attachment to a certain place rather than to Germany as a whole is also related to the ethnocultural character of the German nation. The second destigmatization strategy takes the form of criticizing Turks in a variety of ways and thus diverting stigma from the participants. The notion of the Turkish people is fervently debated in the group discussions regarding, for instance, inadequate education, ability to follow the norms and rules in Germany, criminal conduct, and the limits of proper self- expression in the Turkish and German language. What the groups ultimately tend to do is to reproduce the discourses of the state and elites about common people, who in the

German context are labeled as unintegratable and thus responsible for a negative image of all Turks. Hence, I label this strategy as the “discursive diversion of stigma.” When Ahmet (51, From Soul to Soul) criticizes so-called “ordinary” Turks in Hamburg by saying, “Mosques are full, coffee houses where men go are full; when they see that there is a dominating ladies group here, they probably are caught in an inferiority complex,” he underlines two main issues. The first is adherence to Republican secularism and criticism of Islam, and the second is the emphasis on gender equality within the choir (those who go to mosques also go to men-only coffee houses and obviously follow traditional gender roles). This short response, typical for the highly educated participants, brings in two common and salient symbolic boundaries that divide the sacred (secularism, gender equality) from the profane (Islam, traditional gender roles). Hence, such verbal diversion of stigma is a mechanism for further reproduction of the urban, secularist discourse and its application in the migratory context. However, the necessity to create differentiation within the Turkish nation differs in Turkey and Germany. As Demiralp (2012) explains, othering in the Turkish secularist urban discourse is a mechanism for defending privilege and justifying authority. It is a legitimization of the privileged position of urban elites connected to secular political structures. Whereas urban elites in Turkey are those who attach stigma, in Germany, they are in a position to defend themselves from comparable stigma. In the migratory context, the othering and the discursive, rhetorical strategies of diverting stigma to unintegratable Turks is a consequence of the discrimination and non-acceptance by ethnic Germans that the participants face. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the research participants do not only defy being mixed with the stigmatized Turks in Germany, but also react against being considered gästarbeiter when visiting Turkey. When the choir members go to Turkey, they undergo another stigmatization, as they are sometimes confused with the unskilled workers who hail from Anatolia, listen to Arabesk, and act in a crude manner. Pervin (61, Lale Hoşses) told me: “We are frustrated to be called ‘Almanci.’ It sounds like a curse word to us.” Ironically, when visiting Turkey, they become targets of the very same discourse they apply to the other Turks in Germany. It is a circulation of discourse between the contexts.

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The verbal discursive strategies of dismissing and diverting stigma function at individual and small group level. Employing them does not go beyond making participants feel momentarily better and destigmatizing them personally. When they deny being associated with the Turkish majority and explain it to German friends by using these two strategies, there is no impact on destigmatization of Turks as an ethnic group. On the contrary, this is actually a reinforcement of the stigma. By discussing unintegratable Turks, the participants as a group present themselves as something else, but concurrently they reproduce stigma further. Unlike perhaps unconscious, individual attempts to discursively deny and divert stigma, using music as a resource for destigmatization is a deliberate, collective strategy. Whereas the participants dislike film director Fatih Akin, due to his Arabesk representation of Turks, they highly appreciate high-culture musicians who have an ethnic German audience. I asked Adnan (28, Serdar Kalan) how he likes Mercan Dede’s synthesis of East and West, and he replied, “Actually, that is a good thing regarding the promotion of our culture. It serves Germans to know us more closely. We happen to show and prove ourselves.” Notably, in the account Mercan Dede’s music serves to prove the worth of all of us. The need to introduce the Turkish culture to ethnic Germans was equally pronounced by Nezihi (33, Serdar Kalan):

Of course, as an association, our goal is that we spread our culture, to introduce and promote Turkey, not all of Turkish culture, but Turkish Folk music, folklore, and instruments. When we give a concert in a month, our main goal is to introduce culture. We are playing the zeybek, we wear dresses, and the Germans come and ask where these dresses are from. This is also a kind of policy, to introduce ourselves better, to increase the friendship between us and them. People are fearful of those who are not familiar with them.

The choir members deliberately select which aspects of the Turkish culture to introduce and attempt to entice Germans (i.e. by wearing special costumes) to show more interest in Turkish culture and inquire further about it. From Nezihi’s claim that such a policy aims at increasing friendship between Turks and Germans, one can observe an eagerness to develop closer inter-ethnic relationships. Remarkably, the desire to teach

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Germans about Turkish music is one of the main reasons behind the establishment of the choirs. Accordingly, active involvement in the preservation of Turkish culture does not hinder integration. On the contrary, it is rather a promotion of dialogue between ethnic groups. As in Berlin, I found the same explicit intention to destigmatize Turks through music in Berlin, Mannheim, and Vienna, among the professional musicians and music teachers. In Berlin, I spoke with Suphan T., a hip-hopper from the Ballhaus Nauynritze Theater. I noticed at the youth center a poster announcing, “Happy Vibrations: Don’t panic, I’m Islamic! with Ceza and Suphan, feat[uring]: Ati, Natur, Sirin, Alevito, Bunni, Rapzilla 61, Rap-G, Okan, Aylin.” In his work, Suphan explicitly aimed at changing the image of Turks in Germany. The point he emphasized was that most Turks born in Germany strived for recognition as Germans, but the Germans could never accept it. He described the Ballhaus Theater’s aim was not only to reveal the prejudices in German society against German-Turks, but also to inform German society about the history of Turkish migration through sketches and different projects. He confirmed that using the title, “Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic,” connoting Islamophobia, was not his or Ceza’s idea or intention because they do not have Islamic identities. However, such a title made it easy for them to receive the German state’s financial support. The title above demonstrates that Turkish identity is frequently seen as inseparable from being a Muslim. The hip-hop performers are not religious, and the profanity used in their lyrics is far from Islamic. However, for pragmatic reasons, they adjust to the official state discourse and representation of the Turkish community. The title supported by the authorities, “Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic,” explicitly communicates the non-belonging of the Turkish hip-hoppers specifically and the Turkish community in general to the KulturNation “ (as a cultural nation) in which the nation is imagined as independent of and prior to the state” (Brubaker et al. 2006.: 27). It reveals the monolithic view of the Turkish community, locates them as outsiders to German society and culture, and sets clear boundaries in which Turks and Muslims are on one side and “real” Germans are on the other. The title also echoes “the essentialist and culturalist” approaches dominant in studies of identity formation among German-Turks. Turkish-German hip-hop is a unique phenomenon, and its emergence can be

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unmistakably traced to one specific locality, Kreuzberg. As such, it is the product of a singular migratory context. Nonetheless, it is the pragmatic strategy of active social actors aware of the prevailing discourse to challenge and transform it by seemingly complying with it. By performing under this specific title, they implicitly pursue their goal of showing the complexity of the Turkish community, approaching the German public, and in the long run, changing the public view of German-Turks. By participation in an event bearing an official title with which they do not agree, the young hip-hoppers renounce “self-exclusion” and engage in dialogue with the wider society. Thus, the gathering of explicitely non-religious hip-hop stars under the slogan “Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic” is an attempt to get closer to Germans. In Vienna, I met Erkan, an Istanbulite Kurdish-Alevi musician, the owner of the music school Tim. Tim functions as an organization that helps the cultural development of immigrants and provides them with artistic competences. Erkan explained that those immigrants who live isolated in their own communities in Vienna have a constant feeling of homesickness, and hence, they can never adapt to living in Austria. He blamed the Turkish/Kurdish side for the fact that there were few ethnic Austrians that attend his band’s concerts. Being active in attempting to change the image of Turks and Kurds in Austria, his attitude reveals a stark contrast to the attitude of Suphan T. from Berlin who found the biggest fault among ethnic Germans for having prejudices. Erkan described those few ethnic Austrians who are friends with Turks and familiar with Turkish music as the alternative university youth. However, the majority of ethnic Austrians have a negative image of Turks. Furthermore,

Because in order for Austrians to know us, we have to erase and redraw the portrait that Turks drew here. How will you change the approach like: “Ah, again, the Turks are doing it, for goodness sake”? Because, it is difficult. Because, in every street, each Turk swears and tends to commit a crime and makes improper remarks. I’m thinking more positively about the new generation, but the rest, the other bad portrait, is more dominant.

Despite his pessimistic view of the “dominant portrait “of Turks in Vienna, he firmly believes in music’s potential to change people for the better. When I asked him if “music could create new individuals or identities,” he replied:

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Certainly, music is even perhaps the only tool for this, because people don’t have so many open ports that they can connect. You can do it with the value judgments she/he can find plausible. And, this is possible with music. Because music is a language, a common language. Two foreigners may not get along well, but they can gather and make music together. Then, they can see that they have common values based on humanism. We strive for developing the new generation and getting them into a process of change, with musical education that is based on humanist, social and cultural values.

As Erkan says, and the participants tend to agree, there is a pressing necessity to redraw a portrait of Turks in Austria and Germany and such a transformation can be achieved through music. My research reveals that amateur Folk and Classical Turkish choirs, as well as hip-hoppers and employees in music schools in Mannheim and Vienna, take the introduction of Turkish music and instruments to Germans as the first required step in a long-term destigmatization strategy. Once Germans become familiar with Turkish music and start appreciating it, Turks as a group will also become familiar and appreciated. In the long run, certain aspects of Turkish culture will become an integral part of German society. Going back to the criticism participants express toward unintegratable Turks, music is an importance resource for education. In that sense, Turkish choirs are important places of cultural transmission. Educating young people in quality Turkish music enhances the cultural capacities of the Turkish diaspora, which in turn facilitates acceptance and fosters belonging to German society.

7.4. An eagerness to belong

Zygmunt Bauman argues that in the contemporary world characterized by mass migration, immigrant communities tend to emphasize their differences and achieve collective rights based on them. In Bauman’s words: “In order to become a ‘right,’ difference needs to be shared by a group or a category numerous and determined enough to be reckoned with; it needs to become a stake in a collective vindication of claims” (Bauman 2001: 76).

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The choir members aim at the recognition of their music and its worth as equal to Western classical music, but not for the recognition of the Turks as a separate ethnic group. They do not aim at achieving separate collectively based rights. What they desire is simply the destigmatization of Turks as an ethnic group through their quality cultural production. Moreover, there is a tendency to reject both assimilation, regarded as “the decline of an ethnic distinction and its corollary cultural and social differences” (Alba and Nee: 2003: 11), as well as multiculturalism, taken as “the encounter between different cultures in a single social (and usually physical) space” (Schreiter: 2011: 18). What is more, the recognition of the collective rights embodied in multiculturalism policies is something that research participants certainly do not aspire to. Not even once during my in-depth, lengthy interviews did participants express the desire to build a mosque or acquire further collective religious rights in Germany. The preferred mode of adaptation to German society expressed by the research participants echoes the approach of David L. Sam and John W. Berry 2010). Sam and

Berry (2010) proposed a theoretical model outlining four acculturation strategies of immigrants to host societies based on two dimensions: “the degree to which people wish to maintain their heritage cultures and identities” and “the degree to which people wish to have contact with those who are outside their group and participate with them in the daily life of the larger society” (Sam and Berry 2010: 476). According to Berry: “When there is an interest in both maintaining one’s heritage culture while in daily interactions with other groups, integration is the option. In this case, there is some degree of cultural integrity maintained, and at the same time seeking, as a member of an ethnocultural group, to participate as an integral part of the larger social network” (Berry 2005: 705). All research participants that I have interviewed emphasizes their participation in the wider German society, while simultaneously working actively on preserving and promoting Turkish culture. Remarkably, participants go further than Berry’s definition and aspire to incorporate their cultural aspects into the culture of German society. The other strategies proposed by Sam and Berry (2010) are “assimilation”, “separation”, and “marginalization”. Assimilation refers to the individuals who are not interested in preserving original culture. Furthermore, “The marginalization strategy is

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defined by little possibility or lack of interested in cultural maintenance (often reasons of enforced cultural loss) and little interest in having relations with others (often for reasons of exclusion or discrimination)” (Sam and Berry 2010:476). However, in spite of reported discrimination, none of the participants have employed this strategy. It illustrates their eagerness to pursue belonging in German society, in spite of the negative experiences. Finally, “the separation strategy is defined by individuals who place a high value on holding on to their original culture and avoid interaction with members of the new society” (Sam and Berry 2010:476). None of the participants avoid interaction with ethnic Germans, although they claim that there are Turks who live in exclusively Turkish neighborhoods and do not have contact with wider society. What is more, they wish to have closer contacts with Germans and to develop close friendships, going beyong a “nice dialogue”. The participants strive for acceptance and advocate for what Alba conceives as boundary shifting. According to Alba, “boundary shifting involves the relocation of a boundary so that populations once situated on one side are now included on the other: former outsiders are thereby transformed into insiders” (Alba 2005: 23). The genuine music genres that have emerged in Kreuzberg, such as German-Turkish Aran’besk, a combination of R&B and Arabesk, prove that music as a resource has the potential to incorporate its producers and listeners into German society. As Anthias suggests, “A nuanced understanding of belonging, a central issue in our modern times, requires a shift from focusing on ‘groups,’ identities and culture. Instead, it asks us to look at the role of processes and outcomes of social relations and narrations, representations and practices” (Anthias: 2009: 14). Following Anthias, music, through music-related practices, is a resource that can impact social relations and change group representations. However, until acceptance in the wider society is reached, immigrants and people of immigrant origin will continue to create what Ehrkamp (2005) calls “places of belonging.” Ehrkamp further argues, “Immigrants are actively carving out belonging in the face of often hostile attitudes from German residents” (Ehrkamp 2005: 345). As will be seen in the subsequent chapter, Turkish music choirs are certainly places of belonging, where choir members, by using music as a resource, establish a

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community of safety, deal with nostalgia, and create a space for expressing themselves freely.

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CHAPTER 8

Music as a Resource for Belonging

8.1. Introduction

For the participants in this study, music is a resource for the establishment of a “third sphere,” or a symbolic place of belonging, as understood by Ehrkamp (2005). The third sphere is a space between the public sphere, where participants feel othered and discriminated, and the private sphere of family and close friends. According to Bohnsack and Nohl, a third sphere refers to a “third group who are able to shape space beyond the inner and outer spheres” (Bohnsack and Nohl 2003: 380). In this case, its uniqueness lies is the emergence of particular emotional states among the choir members. In emotional terms, regular participation in weekly joint activities leads to feelings of safety and warmth, helps to deal with nostalgia for the motherland, allows for self-expression, and provides a sense of freedom. These emotional states are achieved through rituals. Tia de Nora describes music as “a material that actors use to elaborate, to fill out and fill in, to themselves and others, modes of aesthetic agency and, with it, subjective stances and identities. . . a resource for producing and recalling emotional states” (DeNora 2004: 74, 107). During the rehearsals, participants achieve particular emotional states, such as melancholia or joy.

8.2. Choirs as places of belonging and safety

Zygmunt Bauman claims that all people strive to belong to a community. Ideally, the word community refers to “an understanding shared by all its members” (Bauman 2001: 10). Importantly, the members of a certain community do not reach understanding by negotiation or compromise. Rather than something being achieved, understanding within the community is tacit, unconscious, and intuitive, it is “the starting point of all togetherness” (Bauman 2001: 10). Following Robert Redfield, Bauman points out three

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defining features of community: they are necessarily distinctive, small, and sufficient. More precisely, “‘Distinctiveness’ means: the division into ‘us’ and ‘them’ is exhaustive as much as it is disjunctive” (Bauman 2001: 12). As it relates to the choirs in this study, this feature has been elaborated in the chapter on internal differentiation and the drawing of symbolic boundaries, which demonstrates that choir members explicitly distinguish themselves from their compatriots with “bad taste.” The choir members share a tacit understanding that those who are not like them, in not only the sense of musical taste, but also in terms of political stance and religiosity, will certainly not attempt to join them. Bauman explains the second feature: “‘Smallness’ means: communication among the insiders is all-embracing and dense” (Bauman 2001: 12). As this chapter will show, the choirs are formed around a shared interest in a specific music genre and the intention to perform together. However, before and after the highly structured time and space dedicated to rehearsals, choir members share intimate stories and feelings, and develop close, long-lasting friendships. Finally, the third feature, self-sufficiency, refers to “isolation from ‘them.'” In this sense, at least temporarily, the choirs are a third space isolated from co-ethnics, from German society, from the private sphere of family and friends, and from the public sphere of work. Furthermore, the choirs can be partially compared to “aesthetic communities” in Bauman’s sense:

(Other) aesthetic communities are formed around “problems” with which many individuals are struggling separately and on their own in their daily routine (for instance, weight-watching and inch-fighting); this kind of “community” comes to life for the duration of the scheduled weekly or monthly ritual, and dissolves again. (Bauman 2001: 72)

Bauman’s observation is accurate for the case of the choirs, as the list of problems that members face in their daily lives is lengthy. The weekly rehearsals serve as an escape from not only, for instance, discrimination, but also work-related stress, boredom, and monotony. The account of Cemalettin, a violin instructor from Mannheim, precisely captures the problems underlying the motivation to join a choir:

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The exhaustion of the day. Let’s think of our moms. Their aim is to earn money, isn’t it? It is the exhaustion that comes with that. It is also the exhaustion of the family. We assume that they are used to living in Germany, but they are still having certain difficulties. It is an escape from those [difficulties]. When we go to the choirs, it is 99 percent Turkish. You speak Turkish there. People who are interested in Turkish Classical Music are more or less similar. In the end, you have a hobby, and it is Turkish Classical Music. In general, people who are interested in our classical genre – I hope I’m not saying anything wrong – are more educated, and they have more depth. It relieves you; it’s like, one feels rather at home. There might be an accumulation that comes from his/her family, and this accumulation comes from Turkey. It is a longing for Turkey. Now, why do I remember when I listen to Turkish Classical Music things like, “See, my grandfather used to listen to it a lot and my grandmother was doing this and that!”

Accordingly, the Turkish music choir represents a space where one can experience relief from all the daily stress (i.e. problems of work and family and the difficulties encountered by living in a foreign country), freely express oneself in a native language with like-minded people, and establish cultural continuity by reconnecting with Turkey and with the ancestors who used to listen to and sing the same songs. Importantly, participants who were born in Germany use choirs to culturally and symbolically reconnect with the country of origin. However, the most important reason behind establishing and joining the choirs is the search for a safe community, as is evident from the story of how the Osman Sadık choir was established. The idea of forming the choir had emerged while Osman Sadık and his friends were singing at a restaurant at the end of the 1980s. The group of friends felt the need for a space in which they could sing freely:

There was an older association of Turkish society in Hamburg. Some friends of ours were returning to Turkey, so we were organizing “farewell dinners.” We were going to local restaurants for these occasions. And after the Germans left, we started singing Turkish Art music among ourselves in a corner, slowly and quietly. Yes, it started like that.

The account shows the unease among the migrants about expressing themselves and their culture in the public sphere. The friends are ashamed of singing in their mother tongue and wait for the natives to leave, not to disturb them. Even when they are alone in the restaurant, they are cautious and sing in a slow and quiet manner. This short narrative

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captures the eagerness of a group of people to belong and the inability to find belonging in the wider society. Maria Wurm uses Moser’s suggestion that “contexts, necessities and needs” determine the “network” that people should join in parallel with the “individualization of life situations” (Wurm 2008: 388-389). Hence, it was a need to sing freely in a mother tongue that influenced emergence of the network of people who gather in the choir. Over the course of more than two decades of the Osman Sadık choir’s activities, music that once was a source of embarrassment has become a source of pride for choir members. Within the safe space of the choir, the members find “cultural intimacy” in Michael Herzfeld’s terms, which he defines as: “a recognition of those aspects of a cultural identity that are considered a source of external embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with their assurance of common sociality” (Herzfeld 1997: 3, as cited in Stokes 2010: 33). According to Ehrkamp (2005), because immigrants do not feel accepted and sometimes even threatened in German society, they establish their own places of belonging exemplified in mosques, tea houses, and Turkish shops. In this way, entire neighborhoods in German cities are appropriated by ethnic Turks. Furthermore, Ehrkamp argues:

[The] transnationalisation of immigrants’ lives leads to an increasing de- territorialisation of belonging and identification, and with such arguments that characterise transnational ties and practices as preventing immigrants from creating belonging in the receiving society. As immigrants are negotiating their belonging, they engage in creating places, transforming the urban landscape of contemporary cities (Ibid: 349).

The choir members transform the places where they conduct weekly rehearsals by equipping them with typical Turkish items, such as a kettle and glasses for tea, and reproducing specific Turkish rituals such as drinking tea. All the observed choirs perform a ritual unique to Turkish society, drinking tea prepared in the traditional manner. The choir members reproduce a deeply embedded social practice and reconnect with the homeland. The presence of tea and its consumption in gatherings among friends and even during rehearsals and breaks are taken for granted. In this respect, tea is an essential

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element, which people would find unthinkable not to have during gatherings, as in Turkey tea is served during the entire day and in private and public spaces. Even though drinking tea is universal, the way it is prepared and served in Turkey is unique. According to Ger and Kravets, ritual tea drinking refers to “‘the divine’ in the Turkish culture, its values such as sociality and hospitality, its artefacts such as the ince belli, and its institutions such as the family” (Ger and Kravetz 2009: 200-201). The choirs each keep a Turkish-style caydanlik (a type of samovar) in their kitchens. The caydanlik, the Turkish tea kettle, has two parts, upper and lower. While the water boils in the lower part, the tea is placed in the upper part and the water is added once it boils. While in two of the choirs, tea is served during the breaks, in Osman Sadak’s choir, tea is served before the rehearsal starts and continues during the break. Only in Osman Sadak’s choir are the participants allowed to bring their thin-waisted tea glasses into the rehearsal hall. Since the choir members perform while seated at a round table (except for the standing soloists), they are able to put their sheet notes on the table as well as their tea glasses. In the ATU choir and the Lale Hoşses choir, drinking tea is not allowed during the rehearsals. However, the participants are offered tea during the breaks. In Lale Hoşses’s choir, a caydanlik is present in the rehearsal hall. In the Serdar Kalan and the From Soul to Soul choirs, tea is not served, but each person can go to the kitchen on the lower floor and prepare tea in the kettle. In the choirs, most participants feel automatically accepted. It seems as if they do not feel obliged to prove anything. From my ethnographic research, I have concluded that most of the choir members feel that they can potentially be the target of an attack (a glimpse, disapproval of an accent or a verbal insult) in the public sphere. These participants seem to fear that as Turks they could be targeted due to the ethnic collectivity to which they belong, regardless of the fact that they might not feel as if they belong to this collectivity. In the third sphere of the choirs, the participants do not need to be always in a guarded position. According to DeNora, music is used to “regulate, enhance, and change qualities and levels of emotion” (DeNora 2003: 93). It is “a resource for the production and self- production of emotional stances, styles, and states in daily life and for the remembering of the emotional states” (DeNora 2003: 91). Singing in the choruses of Turkish classical

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or folk music provides members with a sense of safety. By joining the choirs, participants develop friendships and networks and the weekly choir rehearsals become an integral part of their lives. The participants are able to establish a collectivity and thus feel secure and accepted in their choirs. Membership in the choir is indeed the combination of the search for the meaning and having in Giddens’s terms, “ontological security” (Giddens: 1991). As Giddens puts it, “A creative involvement with others and with the object-world is almost certainly a fundamental component of psychological satisfaction and the discovery of ‘moral meaning’” (Giddens 1991: 41). They not only share involvement in an activity together, but also tell similar stories about being a migrant in Germany. Being distant from the milieu (work and the general public sphere in Germany) in which they are othered by ethnic Germans, the members feel at home, able to imagine and feel connected to the homeland (mostly urban areas) by performing the music of Turkey in the choirs. The From Soul to Soul choir, as well as the other choirs I observed, seems to reinforce a sense of unity, security, and solidarity. When I asked Esra (40) what kind of contribution Turkish Classical music made to her life, she responded that it helped her recharge herself. No matter exhausted she was, she could refresh herself after 8 pm by – in her own words – “being intimate” with close friends. For Nalan (42, From Soul to Soul), who works in Hamburg as an accountant, the choir members are just like her own family members, which illustrates the importance of choir membership for her. Ahmet (51, From Soul to Soul), during the group interview, presented the choir as a gathered community, whose members are friends for almost ten years and solidary to each other in private lives. He gave the example of frequent phone conversations between them and told me that they intimately ask each other about their lives, their state of health and problems or difficulties with living in Germany. One may argue certainly here that the speaker is in Goffman’s sense performing “front stage” behavior in front of the researcher, but what he says can be taken at least as an idealized presentation of the choir. However, this account shows a high group dynamic. The ATU choir occasionally had informal singing and bağlama-playing gatherings after the rehearsals at the same place. Predominantly, the male participants attended these gatherings as vocalists and instrumentalists. Most of these sessions lasted a

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couple of hours. As an outsider, one could get the impression that these gatherings were like those in a private flat’s kitchen – a friendly gathering around an untidy table filled with wine and Coke bottles. What this scene also marks is the fact that participants could act freely and safely with minimum constraints. In addition, Gonul (61), the leader of the From Soul to Soul choir stated, “Here in Germany, we have monotonous lives and we can hardly get out of it,” implying that joining the choirs was an attempt to escape from hard work, but at the same time from a society in which they feel excluded. Melancholia, lyrics expressing the loss of a partner, and fear of dying in Germany and not being able to be buried in Turkey were frequently brought up in free discussions. These topics illustrate how intimate choir members are and how much confidence and trust they have toward each other. During the non-formal gatherings with choir members after the rehearsals in the rehearsal places, and also in bars, I observed that participants often jump from one topic to another, which shows that they are not obliged to speak in a coherent, consistent way, but can freely express whatever comes to their mind. In his ethnographic study in North East England, Rimmer finds that a “strong group mentality and the sense of solidarity” is inextricably connected to the common attributes of the “musical habitus” of youngsters (Rimmer 2010: 261). As Rimmer points out, the musical exercises of the group are connected with “social ties” (hanging out together, going out at night as a group), besides creating and being attentive to the music. Rimmer illustrates how music plays a crucial part in “sociability and in the sort of significant rituals.” He claims that music has thus a strong unifying effect and sense of “belonging” through mutual and affirmative “in-group identity” (Rimmer 2010: 261). Rimmer argues that music helps the group overcome the stigma caused by their economic situations by “group acceptance and pride” (Rimmer 2010: 261). Performing Turkish Folk and Turkish Classical music provides participants with a space of their own and the freedom to express themselves. Ahmet (51, From Soul to Soul) stated during the group interview that Turkish folk music enhances ways of self- expression, especially for those who do not have enough courage to express themselves otherwise in daily lives.He claimed that this was a unique quality that could not emerge from other genres, quoting the lyrics of a folk song: “My darling, I have a complaint to

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you; it's unclear whether you love me or dislike me.” He emphasized that by singing a Turkish folk song, people could express very complex things, such as ambivalence in love relationship. In his own words, “One could dive into the ocean of freedom.” Clearly, music is an indispensable resource for choir members, one that they could hardly live without. As Sevin (51, From Soul to Soul) confessed, “If you would tell me not to play the bağlama or the singers not to sing for a week, that would be the greatest punishment.” Then, she mentioned how music enhanced the confidence of an absent member of the choir. According to Sevin, she was very nervous about singing in the choir at the beginning, “But, she is now saying ‘I wish someone would make me a soloist so that I could express myself in front of people.' She has really found freedom.” In so many respects, participation in the choirs is of great importance to the members. They come to the choirs after the tiring work week to meet people they trust and with whom they can talk freely about the most intimate topics, such as fear of death in a foreign land. Besides, they share with each other the burdens and stressors of their daily lives and the troubles they encounter when interacting with the wider society, receiving in turn support and consolation. Time spent at the rehearsals is a special time- out from their regular life conditions. The choirs are thus genuine places of belonging and spaces of ultimate safety. As will be seen subsequently, when they play and sing together, they further enhance positive emotional stages and deeply connect with Turkey and with each other.

8.3. Dealing with nostalgia: Symbolic reconnecting with Turkey

“Feeling” the music enables the participants to recall, rebuild, or imagine their (or their parents’) homeland, Turkey. Music, as Tia DeNora reminds us, “comes to the fore, as part of the retinue of devices for memory retrieval (which is, simultaneously memory construction). Music can be used as a device for the reflexive process of remembering/constructing who one is” (DeNora 2004: 63). As far as the choirs are concerned, participants undergo the musical experience collectively by being part of “the social and cultural activity of remembering, the turning over of past experiences, for the cultivation of self-accountable imageries of self” (DeNora 2004:63).

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A close observer of the choirs, Bora (28), an instrumentalist who has worked for many choirs in Hamburg, humorously stated that many participants come to choir rehearsals to deal with the nostalgia for Turkey and Turkish music. They come to socialize and also to eat borek [a type of pastry from Turkey and the Balkans] and make others eat borek during the breaks. As an instrumentalist who worked in Lale Hoşses’s choir, he observed that Lale Hoşses’s repertoire was a compilation of the most popular Turkish songs. For him, this choice was made because many of the participants were retired people who came not to learn and perform Turkish music in a scholarly way but merely as a free-time activity, in which they meet friends, enjoy small rituals such as eating food from the homeland and drinking tea, and singing their favorite songs in their native language. Gonul (61), the leader of the From Soul to Soul choir, admitted that listening to Turkish folk music helps her imagine the natural beauty of Turkey and its different regions. At the same time, she confessed that the standard of life in Germany is much better for her and even though she can go as a tourist to Turkey, she cannot imagine living there permanently. However, although participants in general do not plan to continue their lives in Turkey, they still have a pressing need to symbolically connect with the country and with co-ethnics through rituals within the rehearsals. Hence, the choirs are important fields of interaction. Symbolic interaction occurs through singing and music. The people who are interested in Turkish music do not simply sing along to a CD and record it on YouTube. They prefer to perform music with others. According to Collins, the motivation for attendance at a music event, be it a pop concert or a classical music performance, is not only hearing music, as one can hear it perfectly well on recordings. Rather, it is the subjective experience of ritual belonging (Collins 2004: 59-60). The same argument is valid for choir rehearsals; the joint creation of music is a ritual interaction event. As Randall Collins explains, interaction ritual theory

puts emphasis on the situation, not as a cognitive construction but as a process by which shared emotions and intersubjective focus sweep individuals along by flooding their consciousness. It not so much a matter of knowledgeable agents choosing from repertoires, as it is a situational propensity toward certain cultural symbols (Collins 2004: 32).

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Randall Collins argues that when people gather at a certain location, a bodily adjustment occurs. The author emphasizes the word “body” in the course of interaction. Furthermore, Collins draws attention to the transformation of emotional states, attentiveness, or caution, and a noticeable difference in such a location (Collins 2004: 34). The presence of the bodies at the same place enables the strengthening of “shared experience” or in the Durkheimian sense, “collective effervescence” and the establishment of “collective consciousness” (Collins 2004: 35). Following Durkheim, Collins highlights two prerequisite conditions for the emergence of this state: “shared action and awareness” and “shared emotion” (Collins 2004: 35). In the former, for Durkheim, the genuine interaction involves the amalgamation of certain feelings into one. The development of this oneness lets people know that they are in agreement and creates the awareness of “moral unity.” Durkheim provides such examples: “It is by uttering the same cry, pronouncing the same word, or performing the same gesture in regard to some object that they become and feel themselves to be in unison.” Regarding the latter (shared emotion), Durkheim states: “active passions so free from all control could not fail to burst out” (Durkheim 1912/1965 262-263, cited in Collins 2004: 35). The conductors of the choirs often exhort the choir members to sing the songs by “feeling” them. This encouragement is related to the sheer performative dimension of this social activity. As Jeffrey Alexander suggests, “Successful performance depends on the ability to convince others that one’s performance is true” (Alexander et al. 2006:32). and also to the fact that the lyrics often relate to the desire for the homeland. Hence, the choirs’ rehearsal performances at certain moments go beyond what is accepted as the norm in the academic Turkish music tradition. For instance, during the rehearsal of “Ada Sahillerinde Bekliyorum” (Waiting on the Shores of the Island), the participants in Lale Hoşses’s art music accompany the instrumental parts with claps and whistles as if they were the audience at the concert. However, transgressing the academic musical norms is not a major concern for the choirs in the diaspora, as the chief aim is not achieving musical excellence. At times, the energy in the rehearsals increases, especially when the choirs sing about the homeland, absence from home, and returning. “Vardar Ovasi” is one of the

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distinctive songs that Lale Hoşses’s choir performs with the utmost enthusiasm. The lyrics of the song are mainly about the longing for the homeland. Despite the fact that the lyrics suggest a melancholic mood, the performance of the song is traditionally joyful and cheerful. The English translation of the lyrics is:

The Lowlands of Vardar

The geese that departed from Mount Maya (Are similar to) the white girls with red heels The heart of my darling is very moved

I can't have fun, I can't amuse myself I can't stay in these places (anymore) The lowlands of Vardar, the lowlands of Vardar I couldn't make money for home (to turn back home)

I am the star of Mount Maya I am one daughter of a mother (the only daughter in a family) I am the right eye of my master (the apple of his eye – note: probably “master” is the father here)

I can't have fun, I can't amuse myself I can't stay in these places (anymore) The lowlands of Vardar, the lowlands of Vardar I couldn't make money for home (to turn back home)22

When they sing “The Lowlands of Vardar,” the voices of the choir members become strained and uncontrollably loud. The lyrics themselves, independent from the music, connote feelings of melancholia and uneasiness. What is unexpected is that during the performance of this very song, the singers are unusually energetic and even joyful, in

22 (http://www.allthelyrics.com/forum/showthread.php?t=70357) Retrieved, Jan 12, 2015.

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other words, in a moment of ecstasy. During the rehearsals, the performance of this song represents the moments of the greatest intra-group connectedness. Through this song, they not only confirm and demonstrate the unity of the group, but also act more affectionate to each other. They express this mental state through increased physical contact (women touch and caress each other’s backs). Such actions are manifestations of a successful ritual. Drawing from the example of Lale Hoşses’s choir singing “The Lowlands of Vardar,” we can see that the members of the choir confirm to themselves momentarily that they are a group by touching each other, expressing closeness, intimacy, and affection to each other. It is a shared mental and emotional state. Yet, this confirmation is not usually stated verbally. There is a difference between proving to outsiders that they are a unity and proving it to themselves. In this respect, this moment of confirmation develops naturally and emotionally without rational and deliberate thinking. The participants are not really aware of this confirmation. It is in line with Collins’ argument about the outcomes of “ritual:”

Collective effervescence is a momentary state, but it all carries over into more prolonged effects when it becomes embodied in sentiments of group solidarity, symbols or sacred objects, and individual emotional energy. The experience of heightened mutual awareness and emotional arousal gives rise to group emblems, markers of group identity (Collins 2004: 36).

The idea of the necessity of symbols in the choir-specific context is crucial. The particular songs that the choirs perform are important symbols of their status, beliefs, belonging, and desires. For instance, “The Lowlands of Vardar” is a symbol for the immigrants who are unlikely to return to the homeland. It is also a crucial symbol of their dedication to Ataturk, who is known to have taken pleasure in listening to this song. Indeed, Ataturk is a symbol for the choir, among secularists and nationalists. On the other hand, many songs, such as “Ada Sahillerinde Bekliyorum,” (Waiting on the shore of an island) are symbols of Istanbul. By associating themselves with Istanbul and the Istanbulite culture, choir members attempt to reduce the stigma of being a Turkish immigrant in Germany. Performing songs associated with Istanbul, they emphasize the

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positive side of being Turkish. They regard or imagine themselves as ideal inhabitants of urban Istanbul. This also distances them from the so-called “Arabesk” culture. During the rehearsals of Lale Hoşses’ choir, it is conspicuous that some female members touch each other while singing. Caressing each other or putting arms on each other’s chairs represent signs of intimacy. One could observe joy in the gestures. From a distance, this affection could also be read as a sign of crossing personal boundaries. Nonetheless, from the perspectives of the participants, it is not perceived as odd or problematic; they are simply sharing the joy of performing Turkish music at that moment. However, these signs of intimacy among members of the choir appear to be demonstrated only temporarily, within the rehearsal space. (At least, as an ethnographer, I could not observe such group dynamics outside the choir building.) After the rehearsals, most participants leave for home, unlike in Osman Sadık’s choir, in which the members gather at a nearby pub after almost every rehearsal. Thus, it is possible to argue that although the members of Lale Hoşses’s choir do not go out together after rehearsals, temporal group dynamics is established through singing Turkish music together. As Alexander and Mast remind us, “During liminal movements, Turner maintained, social distinctions are leveled and an egalitarian order or ‘open society’ (1974a: 112) is momentarily created amongst ritual participants” (Alexander et al. 2006:11). In the case of the choirs, the political differences of the members dissappear during the singing process. Through such rituals in safe spaces, participants resolve the accumulated hardships of immigrant lives. They have neither to defend themselves nor to explain themselves, because there is a tacit mutual understanding. They do not need to ask each other for further clarification of certain statements. Therefore, the basic feeling of safety and belonging allows for achieving states of relief, joy, intimacy, and happiness. In the end, the joint creation of music gives them energy and they leave rehearsals feeling recharged. Finally, the previous chapter documented how perceptions and feelings of participants about the German public sphere. The recurrent themes are discrimination and not being accepted as equal to Germans. Thus, choirs represent shelters, places of belonging, where negative emotional states are altered and even desired emotional states (i.e. melancholy when remembering Turkey) are achieved through rituals. Boundary

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work is apparent in contrasting public and third sphere of choirs. The following table summarizes negative emotions felt in the public sphere and their positive counterparts felt in the third sphere:

Public sphere (profane) Third sphere (sacred) Alienation, being othered Intimacy, belonging Discrimination Acceptance Shame, embarrassment Pride Monotony Joy Exhaustion Recharging Anxiety, unsecurity, fear Safety, security

Table 4: Public sphere (profane) and third sphere (sacred)

The public sphere is not where the participants feel on their own. In the narrative of participants, the public sphere is mainly described in negative terms. Participants are overall overwhelmed by negative emotions when in public. The process of recovering and transformation of emotions that occurs in the choirs they often label as recharging. The word recharging itself connotes a necessity. A person needs recharging to continue with regular life. Belonging, as Yuval-Davis argues, is more complex than citizenship. “It is not just about membership, rights, and duties, but also about the emotions that such membership evoke” (Yuval-Davis 2004: 215). However, in the migration context, belonging may become problematic, as the native population draws boundaries and prevents immigrants from achieving belonging. Hence, as participants feel that their belonging to the German nation is denied, they attempt to achieve boundary shifting and become included, along with their cultural production. While the public sphere does not become their own, the choirs will remain to serve as spaces of belonging.

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CHAPTER 9:

Conclusion

In this ethnographic research project, I studied five Turkish music choirs in Hamburg from a cultural sociological perspective. In Chapter 2, “The Perspective of Cultural Sociology and the Literature on Turkish Migration,” I elaborated the theoretical framework of my research based on the Strong Program in cultural sociology and a focus on meaning-making. In this sense, I have interpreted how the members of the Turkish choirs make sense of their immigrant experiences through music. Chapter 2 also analysed contemporary works on Turkish music, culture, and identity in Germany. I further introduced DeNora and Bennett’s concept of music as a resource. The significant contribution of this thesis is that it goes beyond their original definitions and develops further the notion of music as a resource. Based on the perceptions and emotions of the research participants, I have concluded that the use of music as a resource primarily derives from feelings of not being accepted as equal and experiences of discrimination in German society. Consequently, participants use music as a resource to distinguish themselves from the majority of the Turkish population in Germany, to deliberately formulate destigmatization strategies that can help them to detach stigma from the Turks, and to create a “third sphere” in which they cherish their cultural heritage and find safety and closeness with like-minded people. In Chapter 3, “How to Study Choirs? The Research Methodology,” I introduced the ethnographic method employed during the research. I placed particular focus on establishing rapport with the research participants and conducting the interviews in a friendly manner, so that they forgot that they were being interviewed. Subsequently, I transcribed and coded the interviews and the most common theoretical codes became a basis for the analytical chapters. Chapter 4, “The Role of Music in Turkish Nation-Building and Turkish Music in Germany,” set the context and background of my study. It showed how the Turkish state, over the course of the Turkish nation-building process, approached and engaged with different music genres. It demonstrated how the Turkish Classical and Folk music sung in

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the choirs I studied had been in different ways appropriated by the state. Besides, this chapter explained the gradual diversification and professionalization of the Turkish musical field in Germany and the emergence of authentic Turkish-German genres. In Chapter 5, “The Turkish Musical Field in Hamburg,” I briefly introduced some Turkish music clubs before discussing in detail the five Turkish choirs that are the focus of this study. It is noteworthy that these five choirs and the complementary musical spaces researched for the thesis are not religious. This thesis thus contributes to migration studies, as it focused on secular, well-integrated Turks, which are rarely the subject of research. The thesis has not attempted to shed light on the entirety of the Turkish diaspora in Germany. It does not include the migration experiences of the immigrants whose first identification is Muslim. This thesis shifts the focus in migration studies from religious Muslim immigrants on one hand and youth, immigrant cultures on the other hand to studying mainstream cultural forms and well-integrated, secular immigrants. The secular milieu of the choirs includes the third generation, which does not base its identity on Islam, as some theorists have suggested. In chapter 6, “Music as a Resource for Drawing Boundaries: Sacred, Profane, and Differently Sacred,” I demonstrate how the research participants create sacred and profane binaries in the Durkheimian sense within the Turkish diaspora on the basis of music. The ways in which they do so echo the urban secularist discourse in Turkey in which secular, Westernized, and civilized elites are contrasted to rural, Islamic, lower classes from Anatolia. The thesis shows how this discourse is further reproduced in the diaspora through the drawing of symbolic boundaries. Moreover, in this context, there is no clear distinction between cultural, moral, and socioeconomic boundaries in Lamont’s sense. Rather, they are intermingled. Chapter 6 also introduces the theoretical concept of “differently sacred,” which has the potential to enrich the field of cultural sociology. In the migration context, the division into sacred and profane does not encompass the entire complexity of social relations. It can satisfactorily encompass the Turkish sphere. However, when there is significant internal differentiation within the given diaspora, and when immigrants do not express animosity and do not draw strict boundaries against the host society, “differently

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sacred” is a fruitful complementary concept. Participants acknowledge the differences between them and ethnic Germans and even essentialize the Germans sometimes, but they are not regarded as profane. However, one important finding introduced in Chapter 8 is that the German public sphere is indeed regarded as profane. While German music, culture, and “German qualities” are differently sacred, the reality of the German public sphere where participants feel excluded is profane. Finally, in Chapter 6, I develop further Zerubavel’s concepts of rigid- and flexible-mindedness, by arguing that both can be found in one person, depending on the context. The tendency is that the participants express rigid-mindedness when discussing the Turkish diaspora, but become flexible when talking about Germans. The contribution of Chapter 7, “Music as a Resource for Destigmatization,” to migration studies is threefold. First, the narratives of the participants reveal the distinction between integration and acceptance. Second, the research conceptualizes three distinctive destigmatization strategies: the individual discursive strategies of denying and diverting stigma and the collective strategy of destigmatization through music. In particular, the first strategy and its emphasis on local attachment and belonging, which is employed mostly commonly by the third generation, sheds new light on studies of the descendants of immigrants. Third, the thesis finds that cherishing Turkish culture is not an obstacle to integration. Rather, the participants aspire to incorporate Turkish cultural aspects into the culture of German society. Chapter 8, “Music as a Resource for Belonging,” introduces the distinction between the choirs as a sacred, “third sphere” and the profane public sphere of German society. It shows how in the choirs, in spaces of belonging, negative emotional states are altered through singing rituals. Finally, an important contribution of this thesis is that it can serve as a basis for studying music in the context of other stigmatized diasporas in different countries. To illustrate, this thesis has direct implications for studying the Serbian diaspora in Germany. The majority of Serbs in Germany came in the same wave as Turkish guest workers in the 1960s and 1970s. As a result of the massive brain drain from Serbia in the 1990s, they were joined by a high number of highly skilled professionals. In the Serbian case, there is a tension between listeners of the hybrid music genre of Turbo Folk,

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comparable to Arabesk, and Western music. Turbo Folk has never been popular among pro-Western, educated Serbian elites. It is a genre associated with the “backward Orient.” According to Marina Simic, “‘turbo folk’ music was connected to the concepts of ‘Balkanness’, ‘rurality’ and ‘barbarity’” (Simic 2010: 327). Furthermore, according to Simic, for young, well-educated Serbs who listen to Western music and identify with it, “[I]dentification strategies were directed towards ‘cosmopolitan’ practices that exceeded local boundaries” (Ibid: 326). This example illustrates that my understanding of music as a resource has the potential to be applied and further developed in various migratory contexts.

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ANNOTATION

The overall aim of the thesis is to explore the role of music in the Turkish migration context in Germany. It is an ethnographic study of five Turkish music choirs from Hamburg. I approach the research from the perspective of cultural sociology, which is focused on the meaning-making process. Besides, following Andy Bennett and Tia DeNora, I consider music as a resource, and I scrutinize how Turkish immigrants make sense of their lives through music. The research is based on the qualitative analysis of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with choir members from Hamburg. Inspired by the documentary method, my questions ask “how” rather than “what.” The writing and analysis process utilize “thick description” from the philosophical perspective of interpretivism. The research results are presented in three chapters, each documenting a distinctive way choir members use music as a resource, in response to the feeling of not being accepted in German society. First, choir members use music as a resource to draw internal symbolic boundaries within the Turkish community. Participants draw symbolic boundaries against the majority of the Turkish population living in Germany. On the basis of the distinction they make between refined music and the uncultured music exemplified, choir members deliberately create a number of sacred and profane binaries in the Durkheimian sense. In contrast, the research reveals that participants do not draw antagonistic symbolic boundaries against Germans. Rather, the participants’ narratives disclose the division of Turkish and German domains into sacred and “differently sacred.” Second, the research reveals that choir members regard music as the most appropriate (and perhaps only) cultural resource for improving the general status of Turks in. Their long-term destigmatization strategy involves the deliberate use of music as a resource to destigmatize the Turkish community collectively, which they hope will eventually lead to the acceptance of Turks as an integral part of German society. Third, for the participants in this study, music is a resource for the establishment of a “third sphere,” or a symbolic place of belonging. Boundary work is apparent in the ways choir members contrast a profane public sphere with the sacred third sphere of the

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choirs. The sacred sphere is characterized by positive emotions, whereas the public sphere is characterized by their negative counterparts. The thesis provides new insights into the Turkish migration context in Germany, because it applies the perspective of cultural sociology and studies the meaning-making processes related to music. It contributes to migration studies, as the findings may apply to other, particularly stigmatized, diasporas. Additionally, the field of migration studies is enriched by the insights this thesis provides about well-integrated, secular German- Turks’ perceptions. Regarding the sociology of music, this thesis goes beyond the typical focus on studying youth sub-cultures related to lifestyles. Finally, the thesis contributes to the field of cultural sociology, as it introduces the concept of “differently sacred.”

Keywords: migration, music, symbolic boundaries, destigmatization, belonging, German-Turks

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ANOTACE

Hlavním cílem této práce je prozkoumat úlohu hudby v kontextu turecké migrace do Německa. Konkrétně se jedná o etnografickou studii pěti tureckých pěveckých sborů z Hamburku. K výzkumu přistupuji z perspektivy kulturní sociologie, která se zaměřuje na proces utváření významu. Stejně jako Andy Bennett a Tia DeNora považuji hudbu za prostředek a zkoumám, jakým způsobem turečtí imigranti prostřednictvím hudby dodávají smysl svým životům. Výzkum je založen na kvalitativní analýze hloubkových polostrukturovaných rozhovorů se členy hamburských sborů. V návaznosti na dokumentární metodu se ve svých otázkách neptám „co“, ale „jak“. Při psaní a analýzách využívám intepretativistický „zhuštěný popis“. Výsledky výzkumu jsou představeny ve třech kapitolách, přičemž každá dokumentuje jeden specifický způsob, jakým členové sborů v reakci na pocit, že je německá společnost nepřijala, využívají hudbu jako prostředek. Za prvé, členové sborů využívají hudbu pro vytvoření symbolických vnitřních hranic v rámci turecké komunity. Vytvářejí symbolické hranice, s jejichž pomocí se vymezují vůči většině turecké populace žijící v Německu. Na základě rozlišování mezi vytříbenou hudbou a hudbou nekultivovanou, členové sborů záměrně vytvářejí binární opozice posvátného a profánního v durkheimovském smyslu. Výzkum zároveň odhalil, že účastníci studie naopak nevytvářejí antagonistické symbolické hranice vůči Němcům. Výpovědi účastníků dokládají dělení turecké a německé domény na posvátné a „odlišně posvátné“. Za druhé, výzkum odhalil, že členové sborů považují hudbu za nejvhodnější (a možná jediný) kulturní prostředek pro vylepšení celkového statusu Turků v Německu. Jejich dlouhodobá destigmatizační strategie zahrnuje vědomé využívání hudby jakožto prostředku k destigmatizaci celé turecké komunity, což, jak doufají, nakonec povede k tomu, že Turci budou akceptováni jako integrální součást německé společnosti. Za třetí, pro účastníky této studie je hudba prostředkem k vytvoření „třetí sféry“ či symbolického místa příslušnosti. Hraniční práce je patrná ve způsobech, jimiž členové sborů kladou do kontrastu profánní veřejnou sféru a posvátnou třetí sféru sborů. Posvátná

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sféra se vyznačuje pozitivními emocemi, zatímco veřejná sféra se vyznačuje jejich negativními protiklady. Tato práce poskytuje nový pohled na tureckou migraci do Německa, protože využívá perspektivu kulturní sociologie a studuje proces utváření významu ve vztahu k hudbě. Práce obohacuje migrační studia, prezentované výsledky výzkumu lze totiž aplikovat i na další, zejména stigmatizované diaspory. Migrační studia jsou touto prací obohacena také o informace, jak dobře integrovaní sekulární němečtí Turci. Pokud se jedná o sociologii hudby, tato práce přesahuje typické zaměření na studium subkultur mladých lidí a jejich životního stylu. A konečně, tato práce je příspěvkem ke kulturní sociologii, protože zavádí koncept „odlišně posvátného“.

Klíčová slova: migrace, hudba, symbolické hranice, destigmatizace, příslušnost, němečtí Turci

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List of participants

Participants in Hamburg23

Name Choir Age Occupation Fikret (M) The ATU 46 Teacher. He conducts the choir. Aziz (M) The ATU 56 Primary school teacher. Sinan (M) The ATU 48 Technician in an airline company Ines (M) Bağlama course 30 Student of Turkish studies. at the ATU Osman (M) The Osman 60 Computer programmer. Sadık Hikmet (M) The Osman 65 Writer Sadık

Gönül (F) The Osman 34 Caretaker for elderly people. Sadık Ercument (M) The Osman 52 The oud player and the condctor of Sadık the choir. Halit (M) The Osman 57 Translator Sadık Sibel (M) The Osman 30 Graphic designer. Sadık Serpil (M) The Osman 52 Actress Sadık Nalan,(F) The Osman 40-45 Informal, spontaneous interview Necla(F), Sadık Hatice (F), Esra(F) Jale (F) The Serdar Kalan 26 History graduate Serdar (M) The Serdar Kalan 35 Bağlama player, conductor of the choir. Nezihi (M) The Serdar Kalan 33 Administrative worker Şule (F) The Lale Hoşses 58 Nurse Bora (M) The Lale Hoşses 28 Musicologist, musician, and translator. Adnan (M) The ATU/The 28 Logistics worker Serdar Kalan/The Lale Hoşses Lale (F) The Lale Hoşses 62 Conductor of the choir.

23 Only participants who are quoated in the thesis are included.

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Pervin (F) The Lale Hoşses 61 Retired. Gönül(F) From Soul to 63 The maestro of the choir. She Soul was a primary school teacher in Turkey. She worked as a cleaner in Germany and now she is retired. Sevda (F) From Soul to 47 Accountant. Soul Ahmet (M) From Soul to 51 Car mechanic. Soul Sevim (F) From Soul to 51 Accountant Soul Naci (M) Not in the choirs 32 Bağlama Player. PhD student in Hamburg, known for his Alevi identity.

Participants from Berlin, Mannheim, Vienna, and Istanbul

Name City Age Occupation Suphan T. (M) Berlin 38 Hip-hop artist. He studied ethnology in Berlin. Cemalettin (M) Mannheim 28 Violin instructor at a Turkish music conservatory. Serpil (F) Mannheim 34 Semi-professional Turkish Classical music singer, works in a shoe store. Ümit (M) Mannheim 48 Luthier. Erkan (M) Vienna 32 Kurdish-Alevi guitar instructor Nurseli (F) Istanbul 59 Freelancer returnee Ismail (M) Istanbul 45 Freelancer returnee

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List of Tables

Table 1: Overview of Turkish music choirs in Hamburg ……………………………62/63 Table 2: Sacred and profane in Turkish diaspora…………………………………….80/81 Table 3: Sacred (Turkish domain) and differently sacred (German domain) ……….86/87 Table 4: Sacred (third sphere) and profane (public sphere) ……………………………121

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Index

Adorno 17 Abadan-Unat 22, 23 Adelson 23 Adorno 17 Ahiska 42, 44 Alba 105,106 Alexander 5, 8, 11, 12, 17, 20, 21, 37, 70, 77, 117, 120 Allievi 22 Al-Hamarneh 43 Anderson 41 Anthias 106 Arslan 61 Atkinson 30 Bakic-Hayden 97 Barth 93, 94 Bartmanski 77 Bates 43, 45, 46 Bauman 72, 104, 108, 109 Bennett 8, 11, 16, 18, 25 Beck 25 Berghahn 76 Berry 89, 105 Bhabha 57 Bohnsack 16, 31, 108 Bourdieu 14, 15, 16 Breger 96 Brubaker 26, 102 Campbell 37

146

Charmaz 30, 39 Clifford 6, 28 Collins 16, 116, 117, 119 Caglar 11, 23, 24, 25 de Certeau 65 DeNora 8, 11, 18, 19, 68, 108, 112, 115 Demiralp 74, 76, 100 Devine 5 Diessel 25 Douglas 77 Durkheim 117 Ehrkamp 106, 108, 110 Elflein 25, 41 Erol, A. 43 Erol, M. 46 Eyerman 13 Fay 39 Fetzer 22 Faist 54 Geertz 37 Gellner 41 Ger 112 Giddens 68, 113 Giesen 23 Goffman 16, 89, 97, 98, 113 Gökalp 42, 43, 45 Grazian 1 Greve 16, 43, 46, 47, 48, 49, 96 Hammersley 30 Hecker 91

147

Hendrick 33 Hennion 19 Herzfeld 110 Hill 96 Hobsbawm 41 Holloway 13, 14 Howarth 98 Jurgens 62 Kadioglu 41 Kağıtçıbaşı 22, 23 Kaya 8, 11, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 57, 65 Kehl-Bodrogi 57 Kentel 65 Kern 83 Kirikkanat 73, 76 Klebe 48, 49 Kravetz 112 Köşer Akçapar 22 Küçükkaplan 72 Kürsat-Ahlers 11, 23 Lafleur 13 Lamont 5, 8, 11, 14, 15, 16, 79, 89, 98 Larrabee 65 Lassiter 37 Mandel 11, 23, 24, 25, 26, 66 Marcus 31 Martiniello 13 Mason 40 Mast 120 McCormick 17, 18, 19 Moser 21, 111

148

Nash 82 Nauck 23 Navaro-Yashin 66 Nee 105 Nielsen 22 Nohl 16, 31, 108 O’Connel 44, 45 Öncu 70, 77, 79 Özbek 71 Parekh 99 Peterson 83 Ponterroto 37 Rabasa 65 Redfield 108 Rimmer 16, 17, 114 Rosenow-Williams 22 Said 86, 97 Sam 89, 105, 106 Schreiter 105 Schütz 5 Shaw 45 Shephard 5 Simic 125 Symons 61 Smith 11, 12, 20, 21, 37 Sökefeld 65, 66 Solomon 25 Soper 22 Soysal 25 Spillman 12, 30 Stokes 16, 45, 46, 47, 71, 72, 77, 80, 81, 82

149

Thielmann 43 Thornton 52 Turner 120 Üzüm 34 Wheeler 13, 14 Wurm 8, 11, 19, 110 Yuval-Davis 121 Yükleyen 22 Zerubavel 16, 87, 124

150

151