Onno Tunç, Mor ve Ötesi and the song that moves me every time I listen to it

A few months back, looking to refresh my music playlist, I asked my good friend Durukal Gün to recommend some Turkish bands. Out of the bunch of truly great singers suggested by my friend, there was one that stood out for me: Mor ve Ötesi.

I have since listened to and memorised the lyrics of tens of their songs, but among them one song moves me more than others. True, all of their songs have deep lyrics and the lead vocalist Harun Tekin has an exceptional voice but this song is perhaps the only one that comes close to moving me to tears. And it is not a love song.

1945 is perhaps the most historical song I have ever known. In a few lines the song contains what I feel about history, which is my future profession, and war, which is my main interest in history. The chorus is humanism at its simplest, and I know that I will remember it every time I see or hear someone who justifies wars, past, present or future. It goes like this in my unprofessional translation:

The year is 1945

They, too, were human beings

And they believed in love

They believed in respect

Just like you

Just like me

The video above does a great job in driving home the gist of the song. I don't know where that footage comes from and I doubt it is the official music video. Some guy probably dug up some historical footage and edited it into a film, but the Hiroshima theme fits well with the lyrics.

I think of not only Hiroshima, though, when I listen to the song. I think of Dresden and the children burnt alive there. Of Tokyo under the wings of Allied (mostly American) planes about to drop their incendiary bombs. I think, of course, of the burnt Soviet towns and villages, of the babies smashed against the wall by Nazi soldiers in the presence of their mothers. Needless to say I think of the millions who suffocated in gas chambers, were shot by firing squads, bayonetted, killed with a sword. I think of the Holocaust, the camps, the system created by humans to exterminate other humans. I think of millions that died in that single year, 1945, millions of innocent people, children especially, on both sides of the frontline.

And while I am writing these lines, there are children dying in wars somewhere in the world. And there will be many more deaths in future wars. People, children, just like me and you, with dreams, love, hope and dignity. This is the thought that turns my world upside down.

In my ignorance I would be forgiven, perhaps, for not knowing the real author of the song, until one day I read a comment on YouTube that the song was originally written by Turkish singer-composer of Armenian descent, Onno Tunç, for his friend and long time collaborator Sezen Aksu. Here's her version, sung decades ago, but equally beautiful.

Tunç tragically died in 1996 when his plane, which he was piloting, crashed in some mountains between Ankara and Istanbul. But this song on its own is, I think, a worthy legacy, worth some other singers' whole careers.

What are historians made of? Part 2

When I think about historians, I imagine a group of miners. They are just like your usual miners, wearing their helmets with headlights that send straight beams of light far into the darkness. This light cuts through the cave of the past, snatching tiny bits of history here and there. It also illuminates the way, so to say, retrospectively. Shows us how we came where we are.

I know it all sounds very cliche but this image helps me understand the broader picture, and I think it would be a good analogy to help students imagine the role of the historian. It is handy in outlining the limitations of history writing: no single historian can paint the whole picture with his lonely headlight in the vast and endless darkness. In that respect, every historian is like the blind man from the ancient story about the blind men and the elephant. Only a concerted effort among a group of like-minded scholars can reconstruct the past in a cohesive and meaningful way, but even then it is not guaranteed. Historians might end up as the proverbial blind men if they try too hard to define the whole elephant as one of its parts: its trunk, tail, or ears.

What are historians made of?

What does it mean to be a historian? Does it take a lot to become a good one? Are natural curiosity, good judgement, and passable writing skills enough? Can someone who is curious enough to ask interesting questions and patient enough to sit their arses down for hours every day doing tedious archival work and picking at sheet after ancient sheet of yellow paper write fascinating versions of the past? Are hard work and good imagination sufficient to reclaim from the darkness those little bits of light, hope, love?

Or is there something more that you need?

Can you really call yourself a historian if you cannot cry at the suffering of the generations before you? If the images of broken lives do not move you at all as you look down on them as specimens, objects of study, as mere material. If you can't see the pain, tears and suffering hidden behind every number in that neat table you included in your recent paper. If you can't hear in your mind the voices long lost, can't feel the fear felt long before you were born, can't imagine yourself in the place of thousands - millions - who were fed to the mincing machine of history...

Can you?