Interview: Ozan Tekin x IDGK
“İstanbul’u Dinliyorum Gözlerim Kapalı” is the title of a poem by Turkish poet Orhan Veli Kanık. It beautifully describes a city best experienced with all senses wide open. A sentiment that our 2025 COSMOS Embassy IDGK shares so much, that they’ve borrowed their name acronym from the poem.
Istanbul’s musical innovations have been capturing the imagination of a global audience for decades (if not centuries). To learn more about the latest sounds coming out of the city, we’ve paired IDGK with musician / soundtrack composer Ozan Tekin to discuss old and new venues, emerging bands, and strategies to keep the creative spirits high in times of crisis.
Please note: This conversation between Ozan and IDGK members Berk Uslu and Alena Verbitskaya took place five weeks after the incarceration of Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, which has caused weeks of protests and boycotts in the city.
Before you dig in: for our monthly COSMOS radio show on Refuge Worldwide, IDGK have put together a very special broadcast, GENÇLİK BİAT ETMEZ (Youth bows to no one), in collaboration with 18 different representatives of the Istanbul scene.
IDGK is an Istanbul-based music initiative documenting the city’s alternative scene. The project represents individual voices that make up the underground culture of Istanbul, making space for creative expression for anyone willing to listen. In this interview we speak with IDHK members Berk Uslu and Alena Verbitskaya.
Ozan Tekin is a Turkish-born, Cologne-based composer and producer. He releases both under his own name and the alias Seyrek Rifat, and creates music for theatre, film and TV alongside Academy Award-winning German film composer Volker Bertelmann (aka Hauschka).
Please note: This conversation between Ozan Tekin and IDGK members Berk Uslu and Alena Verbitskaya took place on 27 April, 2025, five weeks after the incarceration of Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, which has caused weeks of protests and boycotts in the city.
—
Let’s start with the basics: Who is IDGK? What is it that you’re doing and what made you start such a project?
BERK
We are a music initiative from Istanbul and have been recording live performances for the past year and a half. We define ourselves as alternative music lovers, at the end of day. The abbreviation IDGK is a reference to Orhan Veli’s poem: “İstanbul’u Dinliyorum Gözlerim Kapalı” (“I am listening to Istanbul, my eyes closed”).
Oh! I was thinking it was “I don’t give something…” (laughs)
BERK (laughs)
No, it’s the poem. Which is nice because it implies active listening and being in the city. Really getting to know it. That's what's been driving us.
I know our co-founder Ercan (Bektaş Ülger) from university. Studying film, I mostly focused on screenwriting and theoretical parts of film. But lately I've been craving to go out and shoot stuff, anything. When I crossed paths with Ercan again – he is a sound engineer – he told me that he is recording the concerts he is doing sound for. The next day there was a concert by singer-songwriter Nilipek. and Ercan was doing sound for her. “Would you guys like to come and record it?", I said yes.
Of course, now I’m talking about the main team, but we work with lots of other amazing people.
The IDGK crew photographed at Yuva
ALENA
Meanwhile, I was exported from Russia (laughs). When the war started in 2022, I was just graduating from university, and I was thinking about what to do next. It was a “I don't know where our country is heading” kind of moment. And I was thinking, I gotta go abroad, but I've never been abroad. What shall I do?
In August, I decided to move to Turkey. For a Russian person, the question is: are you going to Serbia? To Georgia? To Turkey? So I happened to end up in Istanbul. I had a few friends here already. My Russian friends were staying at Berk's. That's how I met him. We started doing music videos together and I realized that there's such a big underground music scene here… and no one who is fully dedicated to showing it to the people. There is a real emergence of punk and experimental music in Turkey. It’s happening right now, at this moment. On this basis, we joined together.
And now I’m doing my Master’s degree in Music Business at the Center for Advanced Studies in Music (İTÜ MIAM).
At the end of 2023, you released the first video on YouTube, capturing a gig by Cemiyette Pişiyorum. Then I saw there is this Nilipek. video, one by Pitohui and one by Wipeç aka Ahmet Gökçeer, who is a friend of mine. I saw a video by Jakuzi, too. Also some more jazz-oriented videos in this place called Yuva. It looked familiar to me, but I've been away for almost eight years from the scene in Istanbul. The texture of the alternative music scene was different then. Especially the rise of punk bands… you shot so many punk bands! When I was there, those things happened mostly in Club Peyote. Watching from afar, this scene is now bigger than I thought.
BERK
There has been a big underground scene in the early 2000s in Turkey. Cemiyette Pişiyorum, Kilink, Rashit, Düz Mantık… all those names. The current bands, they're part of this greater mythology, I think. It feels like a tradition. More recently, like Alena said, there’s a new generation of musicians.
ALENA
I'm, of course, an observer in IDGK. I noticed that in Turkey, there is such a big punk culture from the past. Young people, who were listening to Cemiyette Pişiyorum or Kilink, they grew up listening to this music. Even some of the pop songs, they are taking riffs and elements from punk and rock music. As you can imagine, there's a whole generation who grew up on this and now want to make music themselves. “What kind of music can I make?” And a lot of people are gravitating towards punk.
We live close to a school. Every day, we hear the children, and I have never seen anything like that before. Children running around screaming. There was this one moment, they were playing one song over and over again, and children kept on screaming. "Bir daha, bir daha" ('one more time, one more time').
I’m curious, when you go to punk shows, what’s the demographics of the audience?
BERK
There’s a lot of people who are really interested in the music and in the counter-culture per se. You have some collectives in Kadıköy, some in Beyoğlu, some collectives in Bakırköy, but we all know each other, we hear from each other. There is a lot less gatekeeping. We heard stories from punks in the early 2000s who told us: back then ‘we wouldn't be able to go to Kadıköy because the metal people would beat the hell out of us'. That was the identity of their musical culture. Very fanatical, really embodying it.
Which, of course, also raises questions about diversity.
ALENA
I guess the Taksim/Beyoğlu area used to be a center for music culture with iconic places like Peyote, Kemancı, but then Kadıköy has risen with lots of music stores, so it slowly grew into a contemporary music hub.
Ozan Tekin by Lucie Ella
Your project is a little over a year old. You started on YouTube, and you're publishing a new video almost every month. I also work in film music and I see a very serious effort and lots of determination here. There’s a wide diversity in the music portrayed and you’re actively creating a catalog, an archival memory. What’s your intention behind that?
BERK
We always hear great things from people, “what a nice thing you do” and such. But it’s the scene, it's so organic and it’s already there. People are always experimenting. There is an audience, and there's an infrastructure. And nowadays, music production techniques and video production are so accessible. Full frame 4k / 6k cameras, some lighting equipment and good microphones…
We just want to see that being represented. There are stories that need to be heard.
Between 2005 to 2017, I was part of the Istanbul scene with many bands and projects. With my band Yora, for example, we were filmed by La Blogoteque, from France. They were shooting musicians in acoustic settings. Insane to think that that was 15 years ago! I also remember Pürtelaş, a video channel, they also shot acoustic sets, always in the same place. You already mentioned that 10 - 15 years ago, equipment and transportation was a whole different thing. Do you have any role models in terms of your mission, so to speak?
ALENA
I guess for me, the main source of inspiration would be Audiotree. And secondly, there are so many Russian YouTube channels doing great live sessions. Back in 2019 in Russia, I was so inspired that I took my cameras to a concert of my favorite band, Uvula. It felt different than anything I shot before. I was also doing aftermovies, I was interested in documentaries... but that night I felt: ‘this is it’. It truly is so important to preserve a moment. I feel that way because the band I recorded, they played for the last time. Then the war started and they got separated. They live in different countries now. That is why I think what we do is important. Things are happening so fast. In Turkey, İmamoğlu was arrested, then there was an earthquake.
If we are looking at how labels and the music industry operate right now, they’re following data. But we are trying to do it the old way. We are going to a concert. We enjoy the music. This is the most valuable thing. We also think it’s significant to talk to musicians about how they make their music, what kind of gear they’re using etc. Musicians who are doing so much for the underground scene rarely get to talk about that. And of course we’re trying to translate our interviews into English, to give these artists exposure outside of Turkey, too.
IDGK at Yuva
When I was living in Istanbul, places like Peyote, Dogzstar and Karga were shaping the scene by giving space to small- and medium-sized independent projects. Karga is still around, but the others closed down. Are there any new venues where underground or independent music can be experienced?
BERK
Lately, Blind (Ex-Babylon) is bringing pretty good names together. There are a bunch of smaller venues trying to make it happen, too.
Everything feels like in the process of happening. For Beyoğlu, we were slowly starting to see a renaissance of the Taksim scene, before the arrests. Leman Kültür is coming back, for example, Goblin Daycare played there.
ALENA
It used to be a place that originated as an extension of Leman, one of Turkey's most iconic satirical magazines, a hub for underground stand-up, live performances and political satire. I think they’re going for a vibe similar to what Karga has going on. They started to host performances and underground musicians too. Also, Roxy, has had good line-ups lately, which is really nice, because we all live in Cihangir, and it takes five minutes to get there.
Roxy is an old place, actually.
ALENA
Yes, exactly. And that was sweet to see. You cannot imagine, it was like, all of the Kadife sokak (street) moved to Cihangir.
BERK
Kadıköy people were slowly coming back to Beyoğlu to listen to music. But in the past few weeks, you know, it felt like some kind of oblivion. We’re really not sure how things will shape up. We’ll see how it goes and how the scene will be affected by everything. Seeing venues and artists forming their opinions and playing gigs again, it’s interesting.
ALENA
Maybe I can name a few more places and initiatives. For example, Bant Mag. organizes concerts at Bina, mostly acoustic ones, but they’re great. At Arkaoda, there was a concert by MAY, a Kazakh artist singing in Turkish. Goblin Daycare and naberkötüdür also performed there, which was really interesting to see, since Arkaoda is a small place after all.
It’s a good room! I’m just now realizing the huge time gap between when I was there and talking to you now… And it’s maybe a sad thing to say, but since I was living there, this whole political, social, economical collapse has occurred. There was already an acceleration when I was living there, I was seeing it, and I was in it. For years, I contemplated if I could exist in such a place as a musician, or not. I made a decision that I can't do it. That’s why I'm now in Germany. All the unknowns of the time might have felt different, but now you’re going through your own situation, unfortunately. It all feels like part of the same machinery, but the effect and the intensity seems to be even harder now. Exponentially so. Back then we used the word crisis, now it indeed feels more like a collapse.
BERK
How to put it... I was seeing a punk friend of mine, and his face was bruised and all purple. I said, what happened? And he's like: “Kanka dövdüler beni" (‘Bro, they beat me up’).
He was just hanging out in Havuz (a tiny square in Kadıköy) and some guys got out of the car and beat him up, just for looking punk, I guess. He just said, “the circle is getting tighter and tighter”. We think we are safe in Kadıköy, but like, they are right at the door, dude. That’s how it feels in reality. We live in a bubble and we look at nice things and interact with people who are nice to us. There are huge cons, of course, but while we are here, we have to look at the pros. What else can we do? This community really knows each other. There is an audience, there is an infrastructure. The boycotts right now, and the solidarity in all of that… We do feel that the people have the power to make real change. It's a bubble, but it has an influence beyond the circle. But like you said, there is a collapse, there’s bad news coming every day.
Concerts are coming back. We shot a Pickpocket concert, like, two weeks ago. They were unsure about how it would turn out, but the air was electric. People were queuing at the gate, they were shouting out slogans and everything. That was a real communal space right there – one of the most energetic concerts ever…
ALENA
Can we mention what people were screaming? (laughs)
“If you don't go on stage, you are Erdoğan."
.png)
Audience at an IDGK event
That’s so funny. I attended the Adamlar concert in Cologne, in Germany, where I live. They're my friends, and I went to their gigs in Turkey some time ago. I couldn’t witness how much they’ve grown. But when I went to the concert, the audience was way more Gen Z than I thought. Way more male dominated, too. They finished their concert and for the encore, they were all shouting “Sahneye çıkmayan Erdoğan’dır" (‘who does not appear on stage is/supports Erdoğan’). I never thought, especially in Germany, I would hear this. I think there were more, like, secular German-Turkish people in the audience, but that was still the last slogan I thought I would hear at their concert. Generally, how would you define the vibe of the current audiences in Istanbul, at the concerts that you go to or that you capture?
ALENA
Pickpocket was popular a long time ago, but at the concert, there were a lot of young people. When Pickpocket was active, these kids were five years old. That was surprising. They were not making music for like, how many years?
BERK
Ten years. Before the Gezi Park protests.
ALENA
Ten years ago. At the same time, there were so many young people just screaming the lyrics.
That's very good to know. That's so nice.
BERK
We have an Instagram channel with lots of young followers and they really identify themselves in their profile descriptions as fans of punk bands from the 1990s… They were born in, like, 2006 but they write the band names of Radical Noise, Cemiyette Pişiyorum, Kilink and Palmiyeler in their bios. Kilink has not been active in years, and they still are shouting at every concert, "Torba var mı beyler?".
ALENA
You see lots of university students, lots of people of that age. That feels really nice. When the earthquake happened, there was a Hood Base event, a small concert they organized with ITU (İstanbul Technical University) students and the Boykot Collective in Maçka Park. Right after the earth was shaking, we went there. The whole park was filled with young people. They were drawing protest posters, boycott posters, there was music, bands were performing right there on this self-made stage. It felt really nice to be part of like-minded people. You are part of the community and you are reunited on the basis of music and art.
BERK
100+ people formed a really long halay (a chain of people doing a traditional folk dance).
This is so nice to hear. Hey, I was wondering, which of the videos you shot so far were the most challenging or most important ones for your work?
BERK
Cemiyette Pişiyorum was big for us, because the audience was really in there, shouting all the lyrics. But challenging…?
ALENA
All of them! (laughs)
BERK
Yeah, because we usually find ourselves in the middle of a mosh pit in front of the stage!
ALENA
I remember, at the Frozen Clouds concert, people were mosh-pitting hard. I turned my head like, holy shit. What's going on? Like, are we going to survive? What's happening? (laughs)
BERK
And it was almost three hours. They had so much energy. They pogo’d for hours. It was crazy.
ALENA
I would like to mention this obscure venue Sahne 74, too. That was really something else. It felt like a rare kind of alternative show for that venue. Holistic Tsunami was playing. You could see, like Frida Kahlo posters around the place and a lip-shaped sofa… (laughs)
BERK
That venue used to be a TV studio for, I think Olacak O Kadar (a satirical sketch comedy series from the 90s). I'm not sure, but I think so.
That’s funny! And outside of Istanbul. Do you have any idea of how the independent music scene is evolving in the rest of Turkey?
BERK
Izmir has a great scene. Ankara has stuff going for them, especially in the rap and hip-hop scene. There's some nice collectives there. Antalya has some really interesting projects we keep hearing about. Going forward, we are definitely interested in collaborating if someone wants to reach out. But as you know, Istanbul is a lot to tackle. (laughs)
And what do you have in the future? Any surprise projects?
BERK
We definitely have some surprises. For example, Karga had to close their main backstage. They had to give it back to the owner and now it's part of the next building. The Karga backstage is really important – the stickers, people writing on those walls… It’s an important document itself. That place is now closed, and they painted all the walls white, but luckily, we got to record a live performance during the painting process.
ALENA
I think by the time this interview is being released, we will have already posted this one.
BERK
Yeah, and we asked people for their photos and memories from this backstage room. So in the film, while the walls are being painted and the performers play their sets, we also see photos and images from the memories of the audience.
This is sad for me to hear. I, too, spent so much time there. But at least Karga still exists. Peyote is gone, Dogzstar is gone. The old Babylon is gone. I mean, gentrification is everywhere.
BERK
Maybe you have some photos as well, we would love to include them!
There must be! Actually, I have a project called Mornings for Sale, for which I was documenting the dawn of the city and playing improvised music for it. It was just a one shot video with improvised music. The first time I did it was in 2016 at Karga. But I will check for photos and if I find something, I will send you some. But hey, thank you very much for the conversation.
—
Watch: Goblin Daycare – Live at Yuva
Goblin Daycare is one of Istanbul’s most outrageous contemporary live acts. Here, IDGK have captured their lo-fi punk-meets-funky-weirdness at Yuva, an attic-style performance space. We’re most happy that Goblin Daycare will perform live at Le Guess Who? in November, too.
