Turkish Hip Hop - Diasporic Community

Diasporic Community

In embracing these Turkish traditions, accessible to them from their parents as well as familial ties to Turkey, Turkish youth in Berlin are influenced by a culture not tied one hundred percent to their current geographical location. Through ‘imaginary’ journeys back to the homeland—whether it’s reminiscing about vacations to Istanbul or public discourse about Turkey—Turkish-German youth construct their local identities from global places. In addition to the physical transmission of hip-hop cassettes to Germany, globalization enables a transnational movement as well as identity by connecting alienated youth to their ethnic roots. Modern circuitry connects youth not only to the rest of the world, but also to the ‘homeland’. This transcendence of physical borders is exemplified in Turkish hip hop. Azize-A, born in Berlin to a Turkish family, released her first hip-hop album called, Es ist Zeit (It’s time) in 1997. Considered the first ‘Turkish hip-hopper lady’ Germany, Azize-A gained popular media attention by addressing issues Turkish women deal with as double-minorities. While her appeal is largely to young girls—Azize-A has often been described as the Turkish Queen Latifah—she also directly addresses issues of national identity. In her song, ‘Bosphorus Bridge,’ this Berlin-Turk rapper attempts to “locate the descendants of Turk migrants in a hybrid space where cultural borders blend, where periphery meets the centre, and where the West merges East (. She raps in Turkish," We live together on planet earth/And if we want to grow in peace/We need to erase our borders,/Share our rich cultures./Yes, connect and blend the West/ West with the East." Using a reference to the ‘Bosphorus Bridge’—a bridge in Turkey that connects the European and Asian sides—she calls for Turks in Germany to cross invisible cultural borders. In a similar vein, MC Boe-B expresses his double diasporic identity as well as the quest for his homeland in his song ‘Selamın aleyküm.’ Translated by Ayhan Kaya, Mc Boe-B raps the following lyrics, " They arrive in Istanbul from their villages/ And got searched in the German customs/It is as if they got purchased/Germans thought they’d use and kick them off /But they failed to/Our people ruined their plans/Those peasants turned out to be clever/They worked hard/Opened a bakery or a doner kebab/on each corner/ But they paid a lot for this success" Referring to those who have been twice migrants, these lyrics begin by expressing the hardship guestworkers faced when they first arrived in Germany. As the song progresses Boe-B identifies himself within in this context of struggle when he raps, “We are losing life, losing blood/I was chosen to explain these things/Everybody screams ‘Tell us Boe-B’/ And I am telling our story as hip hop in Kadikoy’/…We tell you our experiences/we present you the news/we connect our neighbourhood and Kadikoy/we are doing real hip hop/and we tell it to you/…I am telling this story in a far land, Kadikoy. In defining himself as a ‘messenger’ chosen by his community in Berlin, Boe-B simultaneously expresses the struggles his people have faced in Germany as well as transnational implications of holding a Turkish identity. He gives a ‘shout out’ to Kadikoy, his home village, highlighting both the importance of Turkey his own identity and the role of hip hop in expressing that identity. In acknowledging himself as a ‘messenger’ to his people, Boe-B directly speaks to the idea that hip-hop culture acts as a medium for communication among minorities. At the same time, Boe-B actively exposes the oppressive role Germans have played in their ethnic narratives and creates a public discourse that uplifts Turks as ‘survivors’ while challenging the status quo.

In distinguishing themselves their German counterparts, Turkish hip-hop culture in Germany creates a diasporic Turkish community essential to the nature and success of a Turkish youth subculture. In Global Culture, Appadurai describes diasporic communities as a type of ethnoscape. He defines ethnoscapes as, “the landscapes of persons who constitute the shifting world in which we live: tourist, immigrants, refugees, guest-workers and other moving groups and persons” Ethnoscapes, “allow us to recognize that our notions of space, place and community have become much more complex, indeed a ‘single community’ may now be dispersed across a variety of sites”. Through hip hop Turkish youth in Germany have done precisely that; they have created a community that transcends one specific geographical location. As demonstrated by popular Turkish hip-hop artists, it is only through the global connection to their homeland, that Turkish youth in Berlin find meaning in their local contexts. Turkish hip hop is a “youth culture that enables ethnic minority youths to use both their own ‘authentic’ cultural capital and the global transcultural capital in constructing and articulating their identities”. By embracing hip-hop culture, Turkish youth reclaim a sense of pride, assert their space in the public sphere, and reaffirm their Turkish heritage. As they rework hip hop to act as a mode of expression for a range of local issues—a common theme in global hip hop—Turkish youth also create a diasporic community. It is only through the creation of this diasporic community that Oriental hip hop moves beyond simple appropriation of African-American and German tradition while performing cultural works at a grassroots level