The traditional instruments of Turkey are more than objects: they are the archive of a culture, carrying centuries of song, dance, and ritual in their wood and skin. This deep dive goes inside that world. You will learn how the instruments are made, how their unusual tunings and scales work, how they served poets, soldiers, and mystics, and how they survive in the digital age. By the end, you will hear them differently, and you will understand what the musicians are doing with their hands.
The Luthier’s Craft: Wood, Skin, and String
Every traditional instrument begins in the workshop of a maker called a yapımcı. The wood is chosen with the ear as much as the eye: mulberry for warmth, walnut for depth, juniper for resonance, and spruce for sounding boards, and it is seasoned for years before it is worked.
The bodies are shaped by carving, not bending. A saz bowl is hollowed from a single block of wood, which is why the instruments are heavy and each one has its own voice. The soundboard is a separate thin board, glued on and tuned by thickness, and the skins of the drums are stretched and tightened until they ring.
The string has its own history: old strings were made of gut, replaced by metal in the twentieth century for volume and durability, and older recordings preserve the softer voice of the gut-string era.
The Saz in Depth: Construction and Voice
The saz is the masterpiece of Turkish instrument making: its bowl is carved from a single piece of wood, its soundboard pierced with patterned holes, and its long neck carries movable frets that can be shifted to change the tuning, which is essential to the modal system.
The strings run in three courses: a lower pair, a middle pair, and a single high string, tuned in a pattern that supports both melody and drone. The right hand strikes with a plectrum in a rolling, circular motion, and the left hand stops the strings with a light touch, producing the characteristic slides and bends.
With movable frets and drone strings, a skilled player can produce the full microtonal vocabulary of Turkish music from a single instrument. This is why the saz is not just popular but central to the whole musical culture of the country.
The Aşık Tradition: Instrument and Poetry
The saz found its highest calling in the hands of the aşık, the folk poet-singer of Anatolia. The aşık tradition combines music, poetry, and improvisation: the singer composes verses on the spot, to a melody played on the saz, in public competition with rival poets. The instrument is not accompaniment; it is part of the poetry itself.
The tradition reaches back to the wandering bards of Central Asia and flourished in Ottoman Anatolia. Aşık singers traveled from town to town, carrying news, satire, and love songs, and the best became legends.
The twentieth century’s greatest aşık was Aşık Veysel, blind from childhood, whose songs of loss and love made him the voice of Anatolia and set the standard for the instrument. His tradition continues in festivals and competitions today.
Makam, Frets, and Microtones
Turkish music is organized by makam, a system of melodic modes far richer than the Western major and minor scales. A makam defines not only the notes but the way the melody moves and the mood it produces; the same notes can carry joy in one makam and grief in another.
The system depends on microtones: intervals smaller than the Western half step, some of them a ninth of a whole tone. The frets of the saz and the positions on the ney must reproduce these intervals exactly, which is why the frets are movable and why the ney has no fixed fingerings.
For the player, makam is a discipline of the ear. The microtonal positions are not written down; they are learned by listening and corrected by the teacher. This is why Turkish musicians are trained by ear from the first lesson, and why the music sounds so different from the tuned, even world of Western music.
The Percussion of Ritual and Festival
Turkish rhythm instruments carry the music’s physical power. The davul, a large drum beaten with a stick and a switch, is the oldest, descending from the shamanic drum of Central Asia, and its deep beat organizes weddings and festivals.
The darbuka, the goblet drum, brings the sophisticated rhythms of the cities: sharp slaps, deep tones, and rolls that drive the dance. The def, a frame drum with jingles, accompanies singing and religious music, and the kudüm, a pair of small kettle drums, marks the ritual of the Mevlevi.
The rhythms themselves are the tradition’s skeleton. The uneven meters, such as the nine-beat aksak, are ancient and precise, and the drummer is not a timekeeper but a composer shaping the music’s energy.
The Mehter: Music of the Army
The mehter was the military band of the Ottoman army: thundering drums, blaring zurnas, and great kettledrums, played before battle and at state ceremonies to terrify the enemy and hearten the troops.
The band’s core was percussion and wind: davuls, kettledrums, cymbals, and zurnas, organized in a fixed order and directed by a leader. The music was loud and rhythmic, and the band’s formation was copied by European armies, which imitated its sound for centuries.
The mehter was abolished with the modernization of the army in the nineteenth century, but it has been revived as a ceremonial band. You can hear it today at the Military Museum in Istanbul and at state festivals, still in historical costume and still playing the ancient marches, and it remains the loudest chapter in the history of Turkish instruments.
The Sufi Sound: Ney and Kudüm
The ney is the instrument of Turkish spirituality: an end-blown reed flute, without a mouthpiece, whose breathy tone Sufis call the sound of the soul’s longing. In the Mevlevi ceremony, the ney opens the ritual with a long, unaccompanied improvisation, and its sound defines the whole experience.
The instrument is demanding beyond belief. Because there are no keys, each note comes from breath, lip position, and the angle of the reed, and a clean tone alone can take months. The best reeds are aged for years.
The ney’s partner is the kudüm, the small paired kettle drums of the Mevlevi, which mark the ritual’s rhythm. The combination of breathy melody and deep percussion creates a sound world unlike any other, and for many listeners the ney is the voice of Turkish music.
Regional Instruments and Their Worlds
Anatolia’s regions each developed their instruments and their styles. The Black Sea coast belongs to the kemençe, a small three-stringed fiddle whose fast, driving music accompanies the horon dance of the fishermen.
The east and central Anatolia belong to the saz and the kaval, the instruments of the aşık and the shepherd, with their long, meditative songs. The west belongs to the zeybek’s slow rhythm, played on the saz with a proud, measured gait. Thrace carries the fast wedding music of the Balkans, with clarinet and davul.
These styles are living traditions tied to dance and memory: a Black Sea fisherman hears his childhood in the kemençe, and a shepherd hears his valleys in the kaval.
Masters and Their Recordings
The twentieth century’s history is preserved in recordings: the radio carried village music to the cities, the great players became national figures, and their records became the textbooks of the tradition.
The list of masters is long: the saz has its aşık tradition, the ud had Udi Hrant, whose virtuosity was famous across the Middle East, and the ney had Niyazi Sayın, who set the standard for the modern generation.
Because the music is oral, the archive is everything, and digitization has made the old records available to the whole world, ensuring that the sound of the masters will not be lost. A student in Tokyo can now study a master who played in Istanbul a century ago.
The Instrument Today: Revival and Fusion
Traditional instruments are in a golden age of visibility. Conservatories teach them, festivals celebrate them, and young players bring them into pop, jazz, and world music. The saz has appeared in rock bands, the ney in film scores, and the kemençe in electronic music, and the results have reached audiences far beyond Turkey.
The revival has raised the instruments’ status: makers are busier than ever, a new generation treats the tradition as a living resource, and the instruments are played by more people than in decades.
The fusion has its critics, who fear the tradition will dissolve into generic world music, but the instruments are resilient: their tunings and techniques are too specific to absorb easily. The tradition is changing, and it has always changed, and the instruments are still singing.
Frequently asked questions
How is the bowl of a saz made?
The bowl is carved from a single block of wood, traditionally mulberry or walnut. The maker hollows the block by hand or with a lathe, shapes the outside, and fits a thin soundboard on top. The carving is one piece, not glued segments, which gives the instrument its resonance and makes each saz unique.
What is the mehter?
The mehter was the Ottoman military band, a loud ensemble of davul drums, zurna shawms, cymbals, and great kettledrums that played before battle and at state ceremonies. Its music was designed to intimidate enemies and inspire troops. Abolished in the nineteenth century, it has been revived as a ceremonial band and can be heard today in Istanbul.
Why do Turkish instruments use microtonal frets?
Turkish music is built on makam, melodic modes that use intervals smaller than the Western half step, including ninth-tone intervals. The saz’s movable frets and the ney’s open fingerings exist to produce these microtones exactly. Because the positions are learned by ear, Turkish musicians train from the first lesson by listening and copying rather than reading notation.
All Over Information
The All Over Information editorial team researches and writes practical English-language guides to Turkey. Facts are checked against official and local sources before publication, prices are published as dated ranges rather than quotes, and guides are revised when things change. We accept no sponsored posts, paid placements or paid links.
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