General View to the Condition Determining Counter Culture Literature in Turkey By Şenol Erdoğan

We Don’t Like Textile, Food and Pharmaceutical Sector!

In a period when modern-democratic states “policed[1]” and wars on sharing organized with economic depression of capitalist block states broke out, it was also inevitable in Anatolian territory that possible signal flares to be fired naturally. Following the Second War on Sharing, the baby boom period[2] that Turkey created in itself set ground for a foolish type of Anglo-American middle class.

This situation would also have been an unavoidable trigger of some conditions that would determine the limiting case and habits of society and the music people listen in the future. OktayRifat who scattered around, according to us, the first examples of modern literature of heavy social trauma that present tension created, and again OrhanVeli one of the representatives of Garip Movement, MelihCevdetAnday[3]who narrates oligarchy porn recklessly in his novels constituted the structure of radical individualism among the names validated socialist wing/literature akin to Marxist thesis.   

         

Afterwards İlhanBerk, who established his own literature on ontologic evaluation of objects and MuhyiddinİbniArabi’s suspicion[4], and his interesting fellows like CemalSüreya, EceAyhan, TurgutUyarfollowed this trend. The works they produced in poetry area were annoying; Berk, Ayhan and a story writer named SaitFaikAbasıyanık[5] were sticking around in Ziba Street together. There was a huge drug circulation in this environment and in terms of sociological organization, the subculture about which we are talking had been sprung to life in Ziba with its prostitutes, immigrants and working class swearing to their lives.

            Maintenance of individualistic narration with other names was carrying on with readings supported by America (San Francisco, Chicago etc.) and paralleling centers (Soho, Paris etc.) without assuming responsibility. Steps, some like as continuance of 1960s, having come into existence of the regions (Tophane, Sultanahmet etc.) in which İstanbul counter culture of 1970s centered, having started Beat Generation's corpus of work to make impression slowly in Turkey, having been reviewed of the works in which Russian futurists and individualists criticized the regime and afterwards had caused them to be relegated, enabled especially post-80s generation to make use of Frankfurt thesis and to be interested in inward-oriented texts[6].

           

            90’s generation, that set up its substructure with music and intense anarchistic – nihilistic emphasis and thus keeping the last resistance hope of the world alive, met with the books of 6:45 Publishing that serviced the milestones of American counter-culture and Parantez Publishing that published the works of important names like Charles Bukowski together with John Fante in the line of Istanbul: Kadıköy, Beşiktaş and Taksim where hosting the central production of culture industry in the Republic of Turkey. Some prominent names who have told the stories of junk, BDSM desires and the ones that couldn’t find the corpses of their friends follows as: küçük İskender, Sibel Torunoğlu, Mehtap Kandemir, Mehmet Kartal.

            Common sense that a community[7] built in an organic manner against military intervention is interesting and, so to say, sickening. While we find post 70s military interventions that were performed all over the world absurd, it is an important detail that a new improvement should occur in people’s civilizing and liberalizing authority perception. Some compelling illness variants that those people[8] live when they try to make sense of everything arise from this situation.

Together with the poets, whom we try to collect their poems, the material/product we want to present to you is that: “visualizing” the texts that published on fanzines or magazines of whom writers – poets that stand up to moral symbols of these military coups and norms of capitalism and thus supporting the ways of killing each other altogether with comfortable and creative forms.

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[1] Thus several radical groups were blockaded; see how 19th century European anarchist movement, Germany barricades and radical socialist movements in İstanbul of Ottoman were interrupted.

[2] When compared with the rate of United States, it was lower in Turkey.

[3] He is generally put forward with his poems, but this effort doesn’t concern us much.

[4] Things deriving from all kinds of material mean deviation from polytheism and essence.

[5] He was living at his modest home in Burgazada and possibly had never announced that he was a homosexual.

[6]Sometimes heavily allegoric.

[7]A community that accepts all kinds of regime.

[8] People that appeal to some alternative – theoretical literary style.

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abe IV

a boorish laughter at some hotel pooled, until it's piece got cut off

a laughter so wide that itself in revery becomes a hunt

I

a kicking body i whiffle, my face blew bottles these Low brows of mine:

toning the piece alright, the clown rally fled with a heap of compass

a leather coil, every boat is to some other  so why only His blows count?

a little too big for us too small   coax the ocean's knob

with a letter i will replace from a bottle

until the King unties my lock

an escapade to land on my collar from wandering people

übü, it sounds from the garden

black like the picket fence that is your neck

the passageway to all diaresis:

preemptive prenatal preceptory is the ellipsis

and it's proper use

"why i've seen this before" is the relationship between with me and the dead, offended body

a dry hook is it

exacted by the rose

to picket the flowers in mesh?

the ducks swear by their mouth so dry

it's all haywire.

hard ship iron thighs fit the holster in need

vanity in scale rigged the cloister

simply

to become cinder on lather

forty verse of duodenum all the fruits

in still water canoeing is a servant

yes, but to which Lord?

his only visitor appeared in a yellow jacket and a flanel, spider crunch

vain-meat-is-what-the-eye-harbors, ö-ü-e I-I-ı-ı

?

call it a foot hay waiting onwards!

II (mid-hollow)

ashes

no way (f)ather - that's no way to approach a father

a rolling river with temper will not hamper the harsh bend

to the (V)Acuity

smash the rail face, a brand new train in a riverbed grows as you sleep

-flatten the moon. sneeze arms plentiful

III (the hollow itself)

named the child "a child"

he

is and happy that i am an ache on apocalypse will land

he

wet smoke wipe calls

for mince and meat:

that crevasse in your bosom, that's religion dad

the one you made for all to bear

but you yourself never wore

no

there ain't no man with ö inbetween.

no

there are people with a's. even

families

but no man indeed.

i know no tongue except your path

so get on your throne

head to mouth, come on now, tell me y there are so many a's:

'glued the paper to the swan, planted tall in your garden'

i combed the good looking yuppy to my hair in crimson

he has teeth

got his tight jackets covering one of his enormous mouth

wouldn't make a move for the phone

m(a)ma picks it up

my next of kin 'ma grand ma' is very old

she can't climb no slope, the stairs are all left

(and yet i fantasize)

Ekin Metin Sözüpek

translated by:Anıl Karol

ANKARA KNOCKOUT / ROSA LUXEMBURG

if the city is suburban to be forgotten; the names are a sudden outcry

while your eyes were caressing the windows like shutting your brain against the light

your beauty by chance; mother’s tears you haven’t seen, the  reminiscence

what black says whilst you don’t think at all a trial for white

things that are believed  are losing nonsense and mornings from within the city

you don’t know that you are totally a free-and-easy committee in a despicable season

Zurich and as the rain was splashing on half-burned photographs

Our situation is summarized for now, for now it’s like this.  

my friends will be miserable for one or two more days in Poland, then;

the things that he can’t tell to his shadow whilst man got silent to the sidewalks

you can’t truly speak of the language of streets your hands and the mornings

after those photographs we have lost touch with conscious

as the life stands on this street like an intercity solitude in a bus

all books nestled in your nonexistence,

and all will be crowded as soon as possible.

buried the revolutions into the sidewalks if you go to far

distance as walking, it means everyone pass by same squares

afterwards; meetings and the city which forgot us in a tick;

there is something you said in your face which constantly protest against

when you call out to the street,

time has stopped like graveside remembarances.

Kerim Akbaş

translated by: Gökhan Sarı

I DON’T KNOW SUCH A THING CALLED...

I don’t know such a thing called better than nothing.

I don’t know such a thing called maths is everywhere

I don’t know such a thing called international.

I don’t know such a thing called panic attack.

I don’t know such a thing called long Sunday breakfasts

I don’t know such a thing called kindred spirit

I don’t know such a thing called I killed because I loved

I don’t know such a thing called continuity

I don’t know such a thing called speed

I don’t know such a thing called cinematographic

I don’t know such a thing called store of knowledge

I don’t know such a thing called civilised

we’re approaching the new darkness, with fast dance steps

we’re approaching the grand elegant wound

with the previous and the afterwards of a shameless history book

fate technologies are connecting us and we’re peaceful with all the communication networks

eventually you can see me with your black and blue eyes.

eventually you can understand something, this thing I say.

This being the case, nothing seems that dark to me anymore.

You’re in a weird deficiency of focus, I’m appearing before black birds.

I don’t know such a thing called popstar solitude

I don’t know such a thing called humorous cliches

I don’t know such a thing called gifted curator

I don’t know such a thing called hygenic, photogenic and romantic

I don’t know such a thing called editorial staff

I don’t know such a thing called god give me patience

I don’t know such a thing called keep a seat for me

I don’t know such a thing called what are you wearing right now

I don’t know such a thing called recreation park for families

I don’t know such a thing called stop crying like a woman

I don’t know such a thing called Cain

I don’t know such a thing called Abel

you believe in thrillers, you’re separating me from the big part

from the big park, big trunk and the Big Tree

the city is opening before us, we’re surrendering in to the highway

tell, explain, digest, pee, talk to the automatic token machines

tell, migrate and be freed, leave a destroying force behind yourself

new and complicated, new and complicated, new and complicated

you’re awake and enwrapped with electric cables

they’re giving you plants, you’re receiving a blow, they’re giving you time

I don’t know such a thing called emergency hammer

I don’t know such a thing called let me see if you can

I don’t know such a thing called lubricant gel

I don’t know such a thing called getting blood out of a stone

I don’t know such a thing called deduction

I don’t know such a thing called prospectus

I don’t know such a thing called committed and handsome

I don’t know such a thing called making history

I don’t know such a thing called full of hope

I don’t know such a thing called official journal

I don’t know such a thing called surrounded by seas on three sides

I don’t know such a thing called utopia

let’s get a job darling so that we can feed ourselves

I know that we can’t avoid trouble but I want your hands to put me somewhere at least

will you entrust me to the turkish poets?

you can’t answer this question

something to be blamed over and over again

something wicked over and over again

written eden, harmonic eden, papers full of prophecies

something to blow up over and over again

I don’t know such a thing called 4 person passenger lift

I don’t know such a thing called raw material

I don’t know such a thing called radar

I don’t know such a thing called civil registry office

I don’t know such a thing called Yeşilcam tragedy

I don’t know such a thing called little pleasure of tipsiness

I don’t know such a thing called we’re making you quit smoking in one week

I don’t know such a thing called scorekeeper

I don’t know such a thing called warning to stop

I don’t know such a thing called laboratory

I don’t know such a thing called worthy of attention

I don’t know such a thing called what a slut

my sweetheart who thinks that the society is not ready for him/her

if you construct a world for yourself made up of “take care”s, I’d be pissed off

let me take a quick look around

you go join the life, I’ll be watching out

while I succumb to the enormous pain, while you’re tuning in the radio,

stop, stop, this is the song... dıtım dırım dıtım dırım (bu nasıl olur acaba, bulamadım)

brotherhood and stupidity and rush and terror and apology

you say that it won’t be enough to return home, even if we add up all

I don’t know such a thing called visions of life

I don’t know such a thing called a serum per one crisis

I don’t know such a thing called compromise is beautiful

I don’t know such a thing called necessity

I don’t know such a thing called microscope

I don’t know such a thing called big kisses

I don’t know such a thing called asexual

I don’t know such a thing called que sera sera

I don’t know such a thing called search engine

I don’t know such a thing called cradle of civilization

I don’t know such a thing called smiling makes a difference

I don’t know such a thing called graduate of management

do you know what we created

we created a greasy and sticky darkness

the importance of gravity in the world history

the importance of gravity between you and me

the importance of gravity among the passive aggressive

as if an elegant funeral cortege

and a good digestive system will save

everything everything everything

I don’t know such a thing called share of rightness

I don’t know such a thing called be there at midnight

I don’t know such a thing called romanticism of rain

I don’t know such a thing called satellite views

I don’t know such a thing called pre-ejaculation

I don’t know such a thing called ally

I don’t know such a thing called we’re out of wine

I don’t know such a thing called this is it

I don’t know such a thing called grow a moustache

I don’t know such a thing called geopolitical status

I don’t know such a thing called take care

I don’t know such a thing called are you a fagot my son

Emre Varışlı

translated by: Tuğçe Yapıcı