Spinners: A girl-power story from Turkey’s punk scene
The story of Turkey’s first all-female punk band
“In the ’80s we had a lot of heavy metal bands in Turkey. There were also some mainstream rock bands… And there were us. The punks,” recalls Zuhal Uneri, my mom’s best friend and the founder frontwoman of Spinners, Turkey’s first all-female punk band. “There weren’t many punk listeners in Turkey at that time,” she adds, “but we wanted to play punk anyway and started our own band.”
To have an all-female punk band in the late ’80s and early ’90s was unusual in Turkey. The 1960s had seen hippies got beaten because of their long hair and unusual wearings. Erkin Koray, so-called “father of Turkish rock”, had found himself in many quarrels because of his hair. However, people (at least in the big cities) got used to them in time. They even loved them — especially after the ’70s, when they shifted away from alternative culture to the mainstream. Now it was the punks’ turn to deal with Turkey’s conservative population. So, being a Turkish punk was not an easy thing when the scene first emerged in the late ’80s. If it was difficult for men, imagine how much difficult it must have been for three young women to overcome all the prejudices and conservatism.
“We had hair shapers and temporary hair color sprays,” tells me Zuhal, “we would go out of our homes as ordinary university students, walk to the bar we gonna play, and we would change ourselves into punks on the front door. It was like Clark Kent changing into Superman.”
According to her, however, their parents were the worst to deal with (sometimes). “They didn’t understand our music,” she says, “It could be easier if we played a traditional instrument or classical guitar. Punk was nothing but noise pollution to them, and it was unusual that girls playing electric guitar.”
Girls playing punk was unusual for Turkey’s punk audience (which was very small indeed) as well at that time. Zuhal recalls their first concert with boos by a man-dominated audience — well, until they started playing. “We’d beaten their prejudices with our music and attitude,” she says, “We played loud, we played aggressively. Perhaps they hadn’t expected that.”
Against all the prejudices and difficulties, Spinners made themselves accepted among Turkish punks. They didn’t last long, but in a brief time, they proved that punk is not only for men. Now, let’s look at their history.
How did Spinners start?
Ankara, the late ‘80s. There is a crowd of long-haired boys and girls with heavy make-up and piercings waiting outside a shabby bar known as Graffiti. It is the heartland of the Turkish capital's underground scene. Again these bastards, grumbles a cab driver passing by the street. And a fascist swears out the crowd: “Faggots!”
There is a couple — a young woman and man — among the crowd. They are going to be married a few years later. The man, Sencer, is having a conversation with his bandmates. He is the bass player of Sceptic Age, a thrash metal band, and they are due to play a couple of minutes later on the Graffiti’s stage. The woman, Zuhal, waiting to see his boyfriend on stage, is dreaming of an electric guitar. Once she got it, she will shake that stage as well. She knows it.
***
Turkey had changed a lot during the last decade. With the 1980 military coup, labor unions and all left-wing organizations had been crushed harshly. Many were executed, and more disappeared. Anatolian rock legend Cem Karaca had fled to Germany as a political refugee — he was sorely left-wing. Many other musicians followed him. Junta stayed in power for three years. In 1983, neo-liberal Turgut Ozal and his party won the general elections and, under General Kenan Evren’s presidency, Ozal became the prime minister. It meant a new era for Turkey: With no one who might resist against it, a sharp but easy change in Turkey’s economy from an import substitution model to a neo-liberal one. From now on, it was going to be easier to find an Ibanez guitar but harder to collect money for buying it.
It wasn’t easy to buy one for Zuhal too. Now, we are in a ratty music studio. “There weren’t many in Ankara,” recalls Zuhal, “and the current ones were in a dreadful condition.”
Yet, a little is better than none. With Sencer’s support, Zuhal had started playing guitar — although her family’s nay say, she was using either studio guitars or her friends’ guitars to learn how to play it. She’s never been a brilliant guitarist, but you know what they say: Three chords is enough to make a song. “Sencer taught me a lot about music and guitar playing, and soon I could play various songs from Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys, and other bands that we would always listen to,” she says, “yet I knew I needed a band. I could sing by myself, I could play guitar by myself but I couldn’t make my music without a drum and bass.”
That was the moment! Zuhal decided to form a punk band. However, she didn’t want to play with men. “There were always all-men bands,” she explains herself, “‘Why not an all-female band?’ I thought.”
Here comes Yasemin. Yasemin was playing bass guitar. She and Zuhal already knew each other. And when Yasemin had introduced Demet to Zuhal, they found their drummer as well. Thus, Spinners, Turkey’s first all-female punk band, was formed by three young women — Zuhal, Yasemin, Demet — in Ankara.
Practice, practice, practice
Forming a band was the easiest part, though. Zuhal was eventually going to buy a green-colored Ibanez through hell and high water in terms of her personal budget as a student, but until that time she had to practice with either studio guitar or a borrowed one. And it wasn’t different for Yasemin and Demet as well. Luckily, there was great solidarity between the bands. Turkey’s first-ever punk band, Headbangers, had never hesitated to give a helping hand to Spinners.
Just to be make everything clear, I want to describe the late ’80s underground scene briefly. Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir — the biggest cities of Turkey — and Bursa, a university and industry town, were the motherlands of the Turkish rock scene. Turkey’s most popular heavy metal band Pentagram was formed in Bursa (1987). Volvox, another all-female band (but playing hard-rock in a more mainstream way), was also formed in Bursa (1988). Alongside Spinners, there were some metal bands like Sceptic Age, Metalium, Dr. Skull in Ankara. Istanbul had all kinds of alternative music including punk. Headbangers was formed in 1987, and such bands like Radical Noise, L.S.D., Dead Army Boots, Tampon (fronted by a female singer, Aslı), CMUK, Rashit followed their path.
All the rockers, punks, metal-heads had some meeting spots in the cities. These were usually bars, cafes, or music stores. They would issue zines and record demo tapes and sell them on main streets or boulevards like Taksim (Istanbul). There was a collective solidarity atmosphere among them. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been an actual attempt for a counter-culture collective (or something like that). Nevertheless, it wasn’t rare for one borrows her guitar from another band’s guitarist.
Now, let’s back to Spinners. Indeed, they didn’t have even an amp for their guitar and bass in the very early days. When they got money, they would go to studios for practicing; when they didn’t, they would use Zuhal and Sencer’s flat as their studio. “If we were practicing in home, pillows would become Demet’s drum, and I would play my guitar without an amp — so would Yasemin,” recalls Zuhal shrugging her shoulders, “This is the nature of punk, anyway. If you have everything, you won’t make punk. We had anger against our situation, our parents, and politicians. That’s why we’ve made punk.”
First gigs, the first demo
For Spinners, it didn’t take too long for their first gig. They had a set-list comprising some covers (from Headbangers as well as the famous bands like Sex Pistols, Crass, The Exploited) and some original songs. Zuhal was the band’s songwriter, and she always wrote in English. Indeed, they had intended to write in Turkish as well, but eventually, they gave up their intention. “Every gig had some uninvited visitors, you know… We always had an undercover cop attending our gigs,” she explains — with a huge laugh, “well, they didn’t know English. Thus, we could say anything we wanted to.”
After plenty of gigs, they recorded a demo album: Forget The Sun, Dig That Hole (1991). Not surprisingly, it was an awful-quality recording. But they had achieved to create an album with a true punk soul: It was hardcore — especially, Zuhal’s screaming vocals and primitive guitar-playing were unique for Turkey’s punk scene at that time. Besides their own songs, the album included an outstanding cover of The Exploited’s “Maggie”.
Forget The Sun, Dig That Hole took little attention in Turkey. However, it had some good international feedbacks. They were selling it to audiences from other countries. “Some zines and magazines had reviewed our demo album and made interviews with us. Following these publications, we started getting letters from people asking to buy our album. They were sending the money to our post-box inside an envelope, and we would send them the tape,” she says. For a while, Sencer and Zuhal even could pay their bills with the album’s income.
Lük Haas, a tribute to Crass, and legendary ‘Sevdasız Hayat Olumdur’
Indeed, Spinners got this acclaim from international punk scene thanks to a French guy: Lük Haas. Lük Haas had visited Turkey and spent a lot of time with both the members of Headbangers and Spinners during the 1989 winter. He was publishing a well-known rock zine, Maximum Rock’n’roll. He was the guy who made the first interview with Spinners. Boom! An all-female punk band from a Muslim country was SO DAMN interesting for the readers. That’s why other publications applied to Spinners for interviews and people wanted to hear their music.
Thanks to the international publications they got, Spinners had an invitation from Ruptured Ambitions, a British label. They were due to release a tribute album on vinyl dedicated to Crass, and they wanted Spinners to contribute to it. It was an excellent opportunity to increase their international recognition. Hence, Spinners recorded “So What?” from Crass for the album You’ve Heard It All Before — Crass Covers Compilation (1993).
Meanwhile, Lük Haas had formed his own label, Tian An Men 89. And when he was visiting Turkey for a second time in 1992, he had gathered demos from Headbangers, Spinners, S.A.D., Radical Noise, and Necrosis. In 1994, Lük Haas released a Turkish punk compilation on a limited (with 500 copies) and numbered 7" vinyl. That compilation, Sevdasiz Hayat Olumdur (which can be translated as “A Life Without Love is Death”), is the first-ever Turkish punk compilation on vinyl. It opens with Headbangers’ “Suratina Isemek Istiyorum” (“I Wanna Pee On Your Face” in Eng.), and continues with Spinners’ “Lalala”.
The cover art is also worth to be mentioned. It contains a photo of a child and a soldier sitting side by side. Haas had taken this photo in Diyarbakir, biggest city in Turkey’s south-east where mostly Kurdish population lived. He had put a black line over the eyes of the soldier, on copies that were sent to Turkey, in order to protect him from a possible legal result for accepting to pose on duty.
The End
Until 1994, everything went great for Spinners. They even had arranged a European tour. They were due to play at festivals and clubs in various cities over the Europe. For an all-female punk band making music in a country where people are mostly conservative, and with all the harsh conditions (no money, no decent studios, sometimes even no instruments) they came through, going on a European tour means more than a fairytale. “Everything was done,” recalls Zuhal, “We had even got our passports and arranged our accommodation. But it didn’t happen. Just a week to our flight, both Demet and Yasemin left the band. I’d been left alone, and it’s been the end of Spinners.”
***
Spinners have never been a popular band in Turkey. Today, only hardheaded punks remember them. However, their influence on Turkey’s early punk scene was huge.
Today, Zuhal works as an English teacher. But after two decades, she has taken her old Ibanez out of its case. Now she is practicing with Sencer, and they are working on some new stuff — I hope. Who knows, maybe we’ll see her screaming on stage one more time.
