Changes in Turkey after 1980 and the construction of popular culture (The case of popular music)

VI ABSTRACT Transfer of social values in terms of society and individual is not a simple transfer process. Taking this social reality into account, it is significant to determine the contributions of the main problems related to culture and especially popular culture. To achieve this, the relation between culture, popular culture and the basic social elements such as community and social foundations including mass media, mass culture and folk culture should be understood. Popular music, presumably the most significant component of popular culture practices, presents the most important data of such views. Presently, popular culture has not only popularized particular properties, uses and activities but also the associated and embedded worldviews and manners. The problematic of popular culture should be handled in broad scope including general metafication and alienation facts. In this sense, popular culture is the culture of the dependent and the weak.. Popular culture carries these signs precisely in popular music. In Turkey, popular music has a significant role especially after 1980s. During 1980s "arabesque" and during 1990s "pop" music are the most significant evidence for these signs. The rapid transformation process after 1980s and the cultural form stemming from this transformation underwent serious changes. These changes were resisted, in today's "popularized" Turkey, during all phases, through "re-formation" and re-construction" mechanisms. These reconstructed facts should not be disregarded for they are culture-which makes life meaningful in its entirety-in general and "popular culture" and popular music" in particular.