Who is Haluk Levent?
Who is Haluk Levent, whose name has become more popular with the great earthquake disaster that took place in Turkey recently? Why is Haluk Levent being investigated?
Haluk Levent Emergency or better known as Haluk Levent (26 November 1968, Yüreğir, Adana), is a Turkish rock singer.
He was born on 26 November 1968 in Yamaçlı neighborhood of Yüreğir district of Adana. Haluk Levent, the eighth of nine siblings, states that his family is Nusayri but not Arab.
He attended primary school at Sabancı Elementary School. He graduated from Adana Atatürk High School.
Later, he worked as a student at Karadeniz Technical University Forest Engineering, Ankara University Kastamonu Vocational School Computer Programming, Middle East Technical University Physics Department and Ankara University Accounting Department for a short time. He was winning the university entrance exams, but was not making steady progress in his education. In this case, the financial difficulties of his family also played an important role.
Haluk Levent, who was dealing with trade in these years of exams, left Adana as an unsuccessful businessman and gave himself to the roads. The name of his first album, “Yollarda”, is also the reason for what’s going on these days. He toured many cities and sang. Sometimes he would wander the streets and sing, trying to raise money for a sick girl. Some of these efforts have been successful.
He came to Istanbul in 1992. He worked in various bars in Ortaköy. He met with Yıldıray Gürgen. He also improved the quality of his albums by working with quality musicians such as Serdar Öztop and Akın Eldes. In July 1993, he released his album Yolda.
This album is also one of the first works of the second rise period after the emergence of Anatolian rock music in the 70s. In the same year, the Mongols released their first album after 20 years. Unexpectedly, it reached nearly two hundred thousand sales on the roads. This was like the first sign that a new track opened in the Turkish music market would attract millions.
After the first album, One Night Time reached close to one million sales in October 1995. Again, at the end of 1996, the album Arkadaslar was released. With this album, the artist created one of the most successful musical examples of Anatolian rock music. The artist says “I caught world standards with this album” for the album Arkadas.
He was imprisoned in August 1997. He was imprisoned for 9 months due to a commercial case he could not get rid of for about ten years. While in prison, he cut off his long hair and sent it to Akkuyu to protest the planned nuclear power plant project. He released the album “Mektup” with the recordings he made before entering the prison. The letter was written from the inside out and hundreds of thousands of people from the outside read this “Letter”. He did not sit idle inside, he wrote his first book, Çat Bridge. He fled the blinding lights and received a hundred thousand letters, until it was all up to him. This “spontaneity” was embodied in a book.
After his release from prison, he had very little time left to prepare his new album. Because he was waiting for military service for 18 months. Under these circumstances, he released the album “Yigin Ayrılık” in September 1998 and went to the military. While he was in the military, he gave concerts in Turkey where he had never been before. He gave concerts all over Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia. He worked and set up tents in tent cities established in Izmit after the 1999 earthquake. He gave concerts for the benefit of earthquake victims. While in the military, he spent all his free days in the studio. At the beginning of 2000, he launched www.leyla.com. He was talking about the digitization of emotions in an increasingly digital world, and he was referring to Susurluk with the song “The Trucker’s Song”.
At the same time, the artist, who stands out with his sensitivity to Environmental Issues, has included songs in almost every album to instill environmental awareness. He filed lawsuits against projects claimed to be harmful to the environment in different regions of Turkey and became involved in the lawsuits. He took action to prevent the extinction of Caretta Caretta Turtles in the Kazanlı district of Mersin. Haluk Levent has a daughter named Ela.
Twelve albums, a thousand concerts, two books, hundreds of awards, charity concerts, two record concerts (twelve hours), and dozens of environmental lawsuits were filed against his short artistic life. He released the Hacivat Karagöz album in the last months of 2010. It broke viewership records in the virtual world, but this rate was not seen in cassette-cd sales. He released his album Dostane in February 2014.
The website of the Ahbap Association, founded by Haluk Levent: https://ahbap.org/
