Ahmet Kaya

About Ahmet Kaya

Ahmet Kaya was a singer and bağlama (saz) player of Kurdish origin who became one of Turkey's best-selling protest musicians and, in his last years, a symbol of the right to sing in Kurdish. He was born on 28 October 1957 in Malatya to a Kurdish father from Adıyaman province and a Turkish mother. He grew up speaking Turkish and recorded almost entirely in Turkish, but he always described himself as a Kurd. He played the saz from childhood and was performing in public before he was ten.

From his debut album Ağlama Bebeğim in 1985, Kaya set the words of poets such as Nazım Hikmet and Ahmed Arif to plain, driving saz arrangements. His husky, speech-like voice made him the singer of students, workers and migrants in Istanbul's poorest neighbourhoods, and songs like Kara Yazı, Nereden Bileceksiniz and Katlime Ferman became standards across Turkey and Bakur.

On 11 February 1999, accepting a Musician of the Year award on live television, he said he wanted to record a Kurdish song and video. Parts of the audience booed him and threw cutlery, prosecutors opened a case, and that year he left for France; a Turkish court later sentenced him in absentia. He died of a heart attack in Paris on 16 November 2000, aged 43, and is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery. His Kurdish song Karwan was released after his death on the 2001 album Hoşçakalın Gözüm, and the Ahmet Kaya Kurdish Cultural Centre in Paris carries his name.

→ Browse all Kurmanji Kurdish notation