CULTURE-TURKEY: Pop Star’s Sexuality Sparks Debate On National Values

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nadire Mater

ISTANBUL, Apr 26 2001 (IPS) - “I would have appreciated him more if he were not a homosexual,” says ultra-nationalist legislator Mehmet Gul of Turkey’s leading pop star, Tarkan.

The remark by Gul, of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), has sparked a heated debate on a series of controversial issues such as sexual preferences, national values and religious beliefs.

Gul might have thought that his remarks would gain him sympathy in a country where traditional values still count. And the confrontation initially seemed normal since Gul is known for his notoriety during the civil strife of the late1970s when he claimed to be defending conservative values.

Refusing to be bullied, Tarkan hit back at Gul. “I am also a nationalist,” he says. “I will settle the matter in court.”

A few days after criticising Tarkan, Gul appeared on the ‘Kanal 7’ television channel assessing the religious purity and moral integrity of the popular Minister of Economy Kemal Dervis.

“Dervis is a dishonorable man,” Gul said, bluntly. “Further, his mother is a non-Muslim, and he is also a Mason.”

In just two days Gul, like an elephant in glasshouse, tore down all what his Prime Minister Devlet Bahceli had done to clean up the image of their party, stained by blood and intolerance in the three decades of violence during 1970-2000.

The public response in favour of Tarkan might provide a hint on how swiftly popular values have changed in Turkey in just a decade.

In 1994 Tarkan’s singing career nearly came to an abrupt end after enraging his fans by carelessly uttering the now famous, “Cisim var, agbi…” (‘I’ve gotta pee, man.’) — before scampering off-camera.

But a year later, in a brilliant public-relations coup, he ditched his pop image and staged a one-man special TV show in which he only sang revered Turkish classics to widespread public acclaim.

His public relations exercise was interrupted a couple of years later when Tarkan angered Turkish conservatives again, this time by refusing to serve the compulsory 18-month military service. He fled to Germany. For that single act of defiance, he was stripped off Turkish citizenship in April 1999 — and publicly disgraced.

It didn’t seem to have troubled him much, though. In fact, he quickly found a new audience and began performing in Europe, to wildly adoring fans there. His Euro-fans say his music is the perfect mixture of Western originality and Turkish romanticism. And they just love his “great, sexy voice, and fantastic dancing.” Plus, say fans of both sexes, he is “soooo good-looking.”

He even received a prestigious ‘Cannes Music Award’ for his blockbuster hit Simarik (‘Spoiled’).

Tarkan was born in Germany in 1972 and lived there until he returned to Turkey to study music in 1986.

By 1993 Tarkan – who never used his surname publicly – was already a star both at home and overseas. His second album Acayipsin (‘You’re sensational!’) sold more than two million copies in Turkey and 700,000 copies in Europe – a first-time-ever feat for a Turkish performer.

In 1997, after a three-year break, Tarkan released his third Turkish-language album – and on the tour that followed, he filled the Hippodrome in London, the Bataclan in Paris, and the Arena in Berlin. When the album’s single was released, it reached No. 3 in France-and No.1 in Belgium and Germany.

Turkish public and the media aspiring for international celebrity at the threshold of European Union have sided with the internationally reputed pop-singer and turned their backs on the ultra-nationalist Gul.

“Who is that Gul, what has he done for this country. But Tarkan is a celebrity who represents Turks in a positive way everywhere in the world. We are proud of Tarkan and Galatasaray football-team,” says Ali Coskun, a waiter in an Istanbul restaurant. “I do not care if he is a homosexual or not.”

Ironically, in the past five decades among Turkey’s most popular singers homosexuals and transvestites have played a prominent part. Turkey mourned for a week for Zeki Muren, a classical Turkish music singer, who had never denied his homosexual preferences, when he died in 1998. Bulent Ersoy, the doyen of the classical singers today, had started his singing career as a male before undergoing operation to change his sex to a female in 1980 and banned from singing for a while by the military rulers of the 1980s.

To tone down public anger, MHP leader Devlet Bahceli reportedly advised Gul to join a parliamentary group now visiting the Australian city of Melbourne to distance himself from public exposure.

Tarkan’s mother Nese Tevetoglu has denied claims that her son is homosexual. “Tarkan is a pure boy. Why are they disgracing my son?” Tevetoglu said, urging “Gul to apologise.”

On his part, Tarkan has neither accepted nor denied the claims, but adopted a more universal stand that “sexual preferences are not a matter of public debate”. Tarkan’s stand has gained him support from among Turkish intellectuals who generally believe pop-music is not a matter of art, but entertainment.

“I would be more than happy to be ruled by those deemed by Gul and his fellow nationalists as dishonorable, non-Muslim and mason,” says Mine Kirikkanat, a columnist for the Radikal daily newspaper in Istanbul. “If Mehmet Gul is a heterosexual I wish and I pray Tarkan is a homosexual.”