After the protests were broken up in Saraçhane, a historic square in Istanbul, Professor Aslı Tunç descended into the metro, thinking she’d left the street noise behind. On the platform, a man stood quietly behind a food cart near the stairs. Then, from a small speaker beside him, the lyrics started to play:
“Padişahı yine deviremedik, abi/Kuzular çok cahil/Kurtlar şeytani.” (“We still couldn’t overthrow the sultan, man/The lambs are too ignorant/The wolves are demonic.”)
“I was on the platform,” she recalls, “and suddenly, ‘Kufi’ started playing from someone’s speaker. The lyrics filled the station. It gave me goosebumps. I thought, ‘This is the song of this protest.’”
What she heard in late March wasn’t a chant or a manifesto. It was a song layered with repetition and absurdity, playing from a vendor’s speaker beneath the streets of Istanbul. But that’s exactly how modern protest sounds in Turkey, where humor and art are some of the only ways to cope with the socio-political environment.
After Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was detained on March 19 and formally arrested four days later, a wave of protests shook the country. İmamoğlu had previously been convicted of insulting public officials in a 2019 speech, and prosecutors have since accused him of corruption and organized crime in connection with municipal contacts. These allegations are still under investigation and remain opaque to the public. The timing of his arrest — coinciding with his expected presidential candidacy announcement on the same day — has led many to view this as a politically motivated blow to Turkey’s leading democratic opposition party, the CHP.
In response, the public took matters into their own hands, speaking up in the streets and online. Lyrics like “Elleri havada, kufi kafada” (“Hands in the air, kufi on the mind”) were blasted from speakers.
“Kufi,” the first song that Turkish rock band Duman has released in over a decade, became the unexpected soundtrack of a politically charged movement. More than just a rock song, it’s an anthem chanted in protests, blasted from subway speakers, and shared online by millions. The song has been streamed on Spotify more than 62 million times, drawn more than 50 million views for its two lyric videos on YouTube, and featured in more than 43,000 TikToks and Instagram reels collectively.
“Kufi” wasn’t the only unexpected voice to rise during the protests: One of the most recognizable figures to emerge was Pikachu. Videos of 21-year-old sports enthusiast Hasan Taşkan, dressed as the iconic Pokémon character, appeared in protest coverage across social media. He didn’t carry a sign, chant, or sing. Instead, he moved through the crowd in his bright yellow suit, sometimes running, at times jumping, and usually just weaving quietly between protesters.
“I didn’t really do it for a specific purpose or to even protest,” Taşkan says. “There was a lot of tension in the atmosphere. I chose the Pikachu character to lighten things up, to add some color. It was a costume I used to wear to entertain little kids.”
He hadn’t expected to become a symbol. But when videos of him began circulating online, people responded. “Thousands of people said, ‘You made us smile.’ That made me really happy,” he says. Soon, people began showing up in copycat Pikachu costumes — like the one pictured at the top of this story — turning his gesture into an unexpected trend at the protests.
Others, he notes, were less generous. “There were people who misunderstood me, or just wanted to criticize.” Taşkan is careful to clarify that his intent was never political: “I love my country, my nation, and my police.”
While Taşkan’s costume caught the eye with its surreal charm, others engaged with the protests in more personal and reflective ways. B.G., a Turkish student at Columbia University in New York, was visiting Istanbul and Ankara, the capital, when the protests began. She witnessed protests unfold in both cities. “People were marching in huge crowds, chanting,” she says. “The tension in the air was something I’d never experienced before.” (B.G. requested anonymity in this story out of concern for the potential consequences of speaking openly.)
As the protests spread, she notes, so did the song: “‘Kufi’ had actually dropped on Dec. 13, 2024, but it really gained traction once the demonstrations began.”
A fixture in Turkey’s alternative rock scene since the late Nineties, Duman rose to fame with grunge-influenced albums that blend poetic melancholy with protest undertones. The band had drawn attention in past political moments as well. During the 2013 Gezi Park protests — demonstrations over civil rights and public space sparked by an environmental sit-in in Istanbul — their song “Eyvallah” became one of the era’s defining anthems. While Duman declined to participate in an interview for this story, the band has indicated that they believe their music expresses everything they want to say clearly and completely.
For B.G., seeing artists express support, even if indirectly, feels significant. “It’s nice to see that a musician isn’t afraid to be associated with protests. Some are afraid, and others who post without fear end up losing their jobs,” she says. “To see participation in this way, even through music, means something.”
Though “Kufi” doesn’t make an overt political statement, its message has resonated. “It’s like a code, a form of symbolism,” she adds. “It became popular for that reason too. And even though some parts of the lyrics have been criticized, that symbolism stuck.” (Some listeners have found the lyrics “too surreal”, suggesting its cryptic tone left too much open to interpretation.)
She recalls seeing a TikTok video where Duman’s lead singer joked during a concert: “‘People keep asking me, when are they going to throw you in jail?’ And he laughed. It’s strange, we don’t know whether to laugh or cry anymore.”
Duman
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For B.G., music has become a stand-in for other forms of protest. “Gathering around a song gives people a sense of belonging, it strengthens unity,” she says. “The fact that you can still criticize, at least in some form, reminds us that space for expression still exists. Even if it’s slippery ground.”
That same tension between visibility and risk is something Aslı Tunç has spent her career analyzing. A professor at Istanbul Bilgi University, Tunç specializes in media, protest culture, and freedom of expression. She sees this moment not just as protest, but as a cultural turning point — one likely to leave a lasting mark. “Every moment of resistance finds its soundtrack,” she says, pointing to examples like Italy’s “Bella Ciao,” a folk song that became an anti-fascist anthem during World War II. “‘Kufi’ is becoming one of those songs,” she adds. “You can’t erase it now. Every time we hear it, we’ll remember these days.”
She sees Duman’s reappearance in recent months after more than a decade of silence as intentional. “They’ve always carried a quiet protest energy,” Tunç says. “Now they’re back with lyrics that are direct, absurd, ironic, and for this moment, brave.”
What started as a cryptic lyric – “Hands in the air, kufi on the mind” – became something more. Not a slogan. Not a headline. Just a few words that found their way into playlists, protest chants, school yards, and social media platforms. Sung not because it was safe, but because it put into lyrics what could not have been spoken in speeches. And for many, that was everything.
For Tunç, it’s the rhythm and repetition that make the song stick. “It captures that mechanical, urban loop, the sameness of political life here,” she says. “And then turns it into resistance.”
