Abstract
MUSIC AND TURKISH MUSIC IN TERMS OF MASS MANIPULATION (I Can't Eat Olive Oil)
This study aims to examine manipulation, mass manipulation, and the role of music in these processes through selected examples from Turkish music. The research was conducted using Critical Discourse Analysis, drawing on Fairclough's three-dimensional discourse model and music anthropologist Alan P. Merriam's "ten functions of music" framework.
Manipulation is defined as a deception-based form of social influence that seeks to alter individuals' perceptions and behaviors without their awareness. Mass manipulation is a structural phenomenon that directs collective will through misinformation and distortion, ultimately transforming into a process of forced acculturation (transculturation). Music, through its functions of communication, symbolic representation, and reinforcement of social norms, has historically been one of the most effective instruments of this process.
Discourse analysis of tavern (meyhane) songs prominent between 1950 and 1990 reveals that these songs exhibit a manipulative discourse pattern presenting taverns and alcohol as the sole remedy for all hardships, steering individuals toward fatalistic passivity. The claim that the folk song "Zeytinyağlı Yiyemem" (I Cannot Eat Olive Oil) was commissioned under the Marshall Plan, however, cannot be substantiated; the song was collected in 1954 — after the Marshall Plan had ended — and its lyrics bear the hallmarks of an authentic folk narrative expressing a bride's longing for her homeland and her unfamiliarity with local customs in a new environment.
Keywords
Manipulation, Mass Manipulation, Turkish Music, Critical Discourse Analysis, Forced Acculturation