Anatolian rock
genre that emerged through a fusion of Turkish folk music and rock
Anatolian rock (Turkish: Anadolu rock), or Turkish psychedelic rock, is a fusion of Turkish folk music and rock. It emerged during the mid-1960s, soon after rock groups became popular in Turkey. The most widely known members of this genre include Turkish musicians Barış Manço, Cem Karaca, Erkin Koray, Selda Bağcan, Fikret Kızılok alongside bands such as Moğollar.
History and development
Background (1930s-1960s)
Anatolian rock has a long history that dates back to the founding of the Turkish Republic decades ago. Atatürk pushed extensive changes to build a national form of music from the early 1930s forward. He believed that music should be based on national and modern foundations and musicians should work on Turkish melodies and make them polyphonic according to the rules of Western harmonic music. As a result, Anatolian folk music began to spread and people began to listen to Anatolian folk tunes instead of Ottoman music.
In the 1960s, rock and roll began to be played and rock groups such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Yes, Status Quo and Omega became popular especially in Istanbul. It began to spread and became popular among the elite youth of the city. In Istanbul, high school and university students began forming their own bands and performing covers of rock'n'roll and twist music in 1957.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q483740. The first chronological checks are 1957.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anatolian rock” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.