Halil İbrahim Alkaç (1934-1994) was a destan-singing minstrel (destancı âşık) from Gümüşhacıköy. From 1959 to the mid-1960s he turned the events of his day into destans in eleven-syllable quatrains, from the martyrs of a plane that crashed at Bafra to Turkish jets over Cyprus, from murders committed in villages to the killing of a member of parliament; he had these destans printed as single sheets and travelled from city to city, singing them to their tunes and selling them. In his study of the destan tradition of the âşık style in Amasya, Cavit Güzel presents him as the first Amasya representative of the itinerant destan-selling that spread across Anatolia after the 1940s. His name also appears as Âşık Halil İbrahim Alkaç in lists of the region's minstrels.

Life

According to information obtained from his family, Alkaç was born in 1934 in the Gümüşhacıköy district of Amasya. He took an interest in minstrelsy at an early age; in the 1950s he would listen to the destan singers who came to his home town and follow them around. Seeing his son's talent, his father, however reluctantly, sent him to the zâkirs of the region. From them Alkaç learned to play the bağlama and to sing türküs in the makam modes. Güzel states that Alkaç grew up in the Alevi-Bektashi tradition and was among the minstrels who served as zâkirs in the cem ceremonies (a zâkir is the person who sings deyiş to the bağlama during the cem).

After finishing middle school he worked at various jobs, and before going to do his military service he began having his first destans printed and selling them. Once this began to earn him money, he travelled from place to place selling destans. Güzel writes that his voice was strong and fine and that he took up the sufferings of the people in his destans. After his military service he continued as an itinerant destan singer for a while, then started work as an attendant at the Post Office in Samsun, carrying on with destan-selling whenever he could. After the 1980s, as public interest declined and civil-service employment proved hard to reconcile with destan-selling, he gave up the itinerant trade. Until his death in 1994 he sang türküs and destans in gatherings of friends but produced no new destan.

Destans

The printed destans that Güzel identified in the National Library show Alkaç's output between 1959 and 1965. Güzel notes that the place of printing most often found on the sheets of Amasya destan singers is the Nurlar Press in Merzifon; Alkaç's plane destan was printed there too:

  • "Bafra'ya Düşen Aziz Uçak Şehitlerine" (To the Dear Martyrs of the Plane that Fell at Bafra), 11 July 1959 (14 quatrains; his earliest identified destan).
  • "Tavşan Dağlarını Mateme Boğan Kanlı Hadise Kahpece Vurulan İki Kardeşin Destanı" (The Bloody Incident that Plunged the Tavşan Mountains into Mourning: The Destan of Two Brothers Treacherously Shot), 29 July 1959 (14 quatrains).
  • "Kuyucak'ta Kocası Tarafından Vicdansızca Öldürülen Talihsiz Melek" (Ill-Fated Melek, Mercilessly Killed by Her Husband at Kuyucak), 24 August 1959 (16 quatrains).
  • "Konyalı Alduvaklı Gelinin Destanı" (The Destan of the Red-Veiled Bride from Konya), 14 September 1959 (15 quatrains).
  • "Şanlı Ordumuzun Zafer Destanı" (The Victory Destan of Our Glorious Army), 14 July 1960 (20 quatrains; written for Cemal Gürsel).
  • "Alan Köyünde 18 Yerinden Bıçakla Vurularak Para İçin Öldürülen İrfan Ordusunun Aziz Şehidi Yedek Öğretmen Eyşen Gürsoy" (Reserve Teacher Eyşen Gürsoy, Dear Martyr of the Army of Learning, Stabbed Eighteen Times for Money in Alan Village), 1963 (12 quatrains).
  • "Türk Jetleri Kıbrıs Semalarında" (Turkish Jets in the Skies of Cyprus), 1964 (13 quatrains).
  • "Ankara'da Öldürülen Eski Amasya Milletvekili Faruk Çöl'ün Destanı" (The Destan of Faruk Çöl, Former Member of Parliament for Amasya, Killed in Ankara), 1 November 1965 (13 quatrains).
  • "Oku da İbret Al" (Read and Take Heed), 1965 (16 quatrains; with Yusuf Değirmenci, under the subtitle "Devrimizin Genç Şairlerinden İbrahim Alkaç ve Yusuf Değirmenci'nin Kaleminden", From the Pen of İbrahim Alkaç and Yusuf Değirmenci, Young Poets of Our Age).

The list shows clearly how the itinerant destan singer chose his subjects. Accidents, murders and political or military events that shook the public were quickly turned into destans, and the destan was sung and sold in the marketplace while the event was still fresh. The four destans printed one after another in the summer of 1959 mark the period when Alkaç pursued the trade most intensively.

Poetry

Copyright note: Since Halil İbrahim Alkaç died in 1994, his destans remain under copyright protection for seventy years after his death, that is, until the end of 2064. For this reason his poems cannot be published on this site as separate pages, and only two quatrains are quoted below.

According to Güzel, all of Alkaç's identified destans are built of eleven-syllable quatrains; the shortest has twelve quatrains, the longest twenty. The length of a destan was determined as much by the page size of the print as by how well the minstrel knew the details of the event. The dominant theme is death, but the minstrel was not indifferent to the political and military developments of the day either. Güzel says that the features Mehmet Ergün identified in the Istanbul destans, namely that the story is told in the voice of the person it concerns and that the minstrel keeps his own feelings out of it, can also be seen in Alkaç: the "Red-Veiled Bride from Konya", the two brothers shot in the Tavşan Mountains and the soldier whose wife was assaulted by his father tell their sufferings in their own words. In the other destans, by contrast, the event and its aftermath are related from an observer's point of view in dramatic language.

"Bafra'ya Düşen Aziz Uçak Şehitlerine" belongs to this second kind. The destan sets out the date and place of the event and what followed it; every quatrain closes with the refrain "Ana ağlar vatan ağlar kan ağlar" (the mother weeps, the homeland weeps, blood weeps). Its first quatrain and the last, in which the minstrel names himself, run as follows:

Temmuzun ikisi Perşembe günü
Çevirdik dünyadan ahrete yönü
Cihan duydu uçağın düştüğünü
Ana ağlar vatan ağlar kan ağlar.
İbrahim de der ki yüce vatanı
Şehit kardeşlere yardım destanı
Örttüler tabuta Türk bayrağını
Ana ağlar vatan ağlar kan ağlar.

Despite the observer's narration, the line "çevirdik dünyadan ahrete yönü" (we turned our faces from this world to the next) in the first quatrain tells of death in the first person plural, in a voice that speaks together with the martyrs; in the last quatrain the minstrel, following the folk-poetry convention of the signature (mahlas), enters with the name "İbrahim" and presents the destan as a "destan of aid" for the martyred brothers. The repetition of the same refrain in every quatrain suggests that the destan was sung to its tune before a crowd and that listeners could join in the refrain.

Connection with Amasya

Alkaç was born in Gümüşhacıköy, and his earliest identified destan was printed in Merzifon. Güzel names him as the first of Amasya's destan singers of the age of print and places him in a continuity running from the janissary saz poets to the destan singers of the twentieth century. His name also appears, in a study of the area known locally as "Gaziler Ovacığı", which takes in Gümüşhacıköy, Merzifon and part of Suluova, in a list of the best-known minstrels of Amasya. The minstrel tradition of Amasya is described in the site's articles on the minstrel tradition in Amasya and Amasya folk songs and long songs.

State of the Sources

Almost all that is known about Alkaç rests on Güzel's study. The information on his life comes from testimony the researcher gathered from the minstrel's family, and the list of his destans from the printed copies in the National Library. Other studies listing the region's minstrels give his name but add nothing new about his life or works. The full texts of his destans have not been published in any collection; the quatrains on this page are taken from the passages quoted by Güzel.

Chronology

1934: Born in Gümüşhacıköy.

11 July 1959: His earliest identified destan, "Bafra'ya Düşen Aziz Uçak Şehitlerine", is printed.

14 July 1960: "Şanlı Ordumuzun Zafer Destanı" is printed.

1965: The Faruk Çöl destan and "Oku da İbret Al", written with Yusuf Değirmenci, are printed.

1980s: Gives up itinerant destan-selling.

1994: Dies.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Books

  • Halil İbrahim Alkaç, Bafra'ya Düşen Aziz Uçak Şehitlerine, Merzifon: Nurlar Matbaacılık, 1959 (as quoted in Güzel 2020).

Online sources