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Yüksek Sadakat: We duly performed our task in Eurovision
Members of the five-piece band, speaking at a press conference Sunday night at İstanbul’s Atatürk Airport upon returning from Germany’s Düsseldorf, which hosted this year’s contest, said they were “comfortable,” despite the unexpected result.
Kutlu Özmakinacı, the band’s founder and bass guitarist, told reporters during Sunday’s news conference that they left behind a highly exhausting and intense five months since they were chosen by the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) to represent Turkey in the 56th contest. “Looking back at those five months, it was a period in which we believe we have duly performed our task. For us, it has been a very interesting and fun experience,” Özmakinacı told the Anatolia news agency.
Noting that everything that happened during the run-up to the was public, Özmakinacı said: “You all know about our performance at the contest. … We did not want to pay too much attention to what was being said [about us in the media] in Turkey, because that kind of [magazine talk] is not among our areas of expertise. We are only interested in making music.”
He added: “Although we are not warm to the idea of music in competitions, running [in Eurovision] was a great opportunity for us to be able to pay our country back for what has given each of us.”
Noting that Sunday’s press conference marked the end of the entire Eurovision discussion for the band, Özmakinacı said they were going to proceed with work on their third studio album, which they originally planned to release in January, but had to postpone it due to the band’s Eurovision stint.
Also speaking at Sunday’s press conference, the band’s vocalist Kenan Vural, said Eurovision was “not limited to the three-minute stage performance.” Noting that they took every occasion to speak to the European press in the run-up to the competition, Vural said: “I suppose our manners and our modesty were enough to convey [to European audiences] how much we love what we are doing, in addition to helping break certain preconceptions [in Europe] about Turkey and Turkish people.
“On the night we were eliminated they played our song, in [a café] we went to. The minute they spotted us, all of the press members nearby came up and told us how surprised they were with the result, which they said was ‘unjust.’ The impression we got was that our music, our band and our country are liked by many.”
Vural, who joined Yüksek Sadakat in 2008 to replace founding lead vocalist Cemil Demirbakan following his departure in October 2007, said Eurovision was notorious for fixed patterns of voting among the participating countries, but “we do not want to use this as an excuse to defend the result.” “We do not consider ourselves defeated. We do not measure our success with the points we earn,” Vural said.
Özmakinacı agreed. There is a misconception about Eurovision in the Turkish public, he said. “There’s a false impression that a good score in Eurovision would wipe away the inferiority complex in our collective psyche. However, winning Eurovision is not a means to raise a country’s standard of living. This can be measured by the conditions of human rights, democracy, the number of patent applications and numerous other criteria, not with a Eurovision win,” Özmakinacı added. İstanbul Today’s Zaman with wires
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