The şıklık (minstrelsy) tradition of Turkey is performed by wandering poet-singers known as âşıks.
The term asik refers to a storyteller and folksong performer who plays a long-necked lute (saz) in Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Iranian Azerbaijan. Tradition has it that epic poetry originated from the Turkic peoples of Central Asia in the pre-Islamic period when itinerant singers known as ozan (Turkish, "poets") sang their songs to lute recitations called komuz (kopuz). Turkish traditional singers mainly sing melodies from a free-rhythmic genre called uzun hava. Besides singing love songs, Aşiklar also comments on current social problems. Aşiklars are rarely female.
As a performer who wears traditional clothes and plays a stringed instrument, the âşik is commonly seen at weddings, coffeehouses, and at public festivals. It is through their dream that the âşik is called to undergo a long apprenticeship in the arts of playing strung and percussion instruments, music and song, storytelling, and repartee that form the soul of their vocation. In the recitation of poetry by âşiks, love is usually the subject, and their verses are written in rhymed syllabic meter. At the end of each line, the âşik utters his pseudonym, Mâhlas. A minstrel's improvisation may also include riddles, folk tales, verbal duels, and recitation of verses while the minstrel holds a needle in his mouth as he avoids the sounds B, P, V, M, and F.
As âşiks travel between communities, they are able to spread cultural values and ideas and help facilitate a healthy social dialogue through topical poetry and social and political satire. They are also considered instructors and guides at weddings in particular, and their traditions provide insight into Turkish literary culture and the daily lives of communities throughout the country.
Since the state-funded aşiklar in the 1930s, the songs of the aşiklar have been regarded as the typical Turkish national poetry. Some of these songs are tied to a meter (kirik hava) and some are presented in a mixed form. The range of music goes beyond the often assumed uniformity of "Turkish folk music" today.
When some of the aşik artists came to Germany in the 1960s with the Turkish guest workers, they took on the topic of migration and the Turkish diaspora in their texts. Furthermore, some aşik performed in Germany until the 1980s. But the interest in aşik music has declined in both Turkey and Europe around the same time. Today, political songwriters are reciting the tradition of the aşik and songs by Pir Sultan Abdal and Aşık Veysel.
References
(https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/klk-minstrelsy-tradition-00179) (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C5%9F%C4%B1k#Heutige_Spielpraxis)