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The profile · researched 23 October 2026
Grup Abdal: the folk band that had to go to court for its own name
A Turkish folk group formed in 2011 that lost its first lead singer and nearly its name, Grup Abdal is back on the road this autumn with a ten-city run and its first new recording in over two years.
A band, then a lawsuit over its own name
Grup Abdal began in 2011, when Ali Ekber Kayış and Haluk Tolga İlhan put the group together under a motto they have quoted ever since — an effort and a search for a new musical existence. The first album, Ervah-ı Ezelde, came out the same year. The group then came apart almost immediately after it: İlhan, who sang lead, left following a disagreement between the two founders.
What followed was unusual even by the standards of band break-ups. İlhan registered Grup Abdal as a trademark in his own name without telling the other members, and added the word Abdal to his own identity documents. The remaining members took the matter to court, and a ruling in November 2016 went against İlhan's commercial use of the group's name. The band kept it.
Interviewed by Cumhuriyet on 3 November 2017, Kayış put his objection flatly: he had come up with the name, and members who leave Pink Floyd do not go away and add Pink Floyd to themselves. İlhan's reply was that the judgment had not been settled on appeal, and that he had taken the word after the group became known under it rather than in order to take it from anyone. The dispute is the single most documented episode in the band's history — more written about, in the Turkish press, than any of their records.
A charango, a santur, and no bağlama at the front
The group that came out of that period is a four-piece with three singers. Kerem Kekeç sings and plays guitar; Kayış, the surviving founder, sings and plays guitar and charango; Burcu Sarak sings and plays bass guitar; Özge Ünkap plays santur and percussion.
That instrument list is the whole argument of the band. Turkish folk performance is normally organised around the bağlama, and Grup Abdal's arrangements are not. Two guitars carry the harmonic weight, an Andean charango sits where a small long-necked lute would sit, the santur supplies the ringing sustain, and the bass lines are sung as well as played. The traditional melodies stay recognisable; the frame around them is borrowed from somewhere else entirely. It is the reason the group reaches listeners who would not otherwise sit through an evening of türkü, and the reason some purists have never taken to them.
Apple Music files them alongside Ahmet Aslan, Selda Bağcan and Erkan Oğur — the wing of Turkish music that treats the folk repertoire as a living score to be re-set rather than a museum holding to be reproduced. Their label, Kalan Müzik, is the same house that has spent three decades issuing regional and minority-language recordings from across Anatolia, and that placement says as much about the band's intentions as any of their own statements do.
Three albums, then a single source singer
The recorded work is small and spaced far apart. Ervah-ı Ezelde (2011) remains the most-played thing they have made; its title track and Pınar Başından Bulanır are still among their most-streamed songs fifteen years on, which is an awkward fact for a band that has released two albums since. Ozanca followed in 2013 and produced Altın Yüzüğüm Kırıldı, the other song that has never left their streaming top three.
Revan, the third album, arrived in February 2019 on Kalan and is the most ambitious of the three. It draws traditional melodies from several regions of Anatolia and opens the door wider than the earlier records did: Ahmet Aslan guests on Mahsus Mahal, and Ay Dilbere sets words by the seventeenth-century Kurdish poet Feqîye Teyran to music by Aram Tigran, the Armenian-Kurdish singer who died in 2009. Sor Bilir is the band's own composition. Writing about the album on 15 February 2019, the culture site Cafrande placed the group in a line running back through Pir Sultan and Karacaoğlan — custodians rather than innovators, which is not quite how the band describes itself.
Then the album releases stopped. The next thing to appear was a single, in April 2024: Bu Yıl Bu Dağların Karı Erimez, subtitled Feyzullah Çınar Eserleri 1 — the first instalment of a series devoted to the works of one source singer, the Sivas-born âşık who died in 1983 and whose recordings are a primary document for the Alevi repertoire. Numbering a release as volume one is a promise. As of October 2026, no second instalment has appeared.
Where they stand in October 2026
The group's current activity is almost entirely on stage rather than on record. On 18 September 2026 they issued a single titled Altın Yüzüğüm Kırıldı — the same title that first appeared on Ozanca in 2013 — which is their first new release in nearly two and a half years. Two days later, on 20 September, they played the Cemil Candaş Kent Kültür Merkezi in Şişli, Istanbul.
The autumn run proper opened on 9 October 2026 at the Manavgat Atatürk Kültür Merkezi in Antalya and plays a second Antalya night the following evening at the Aspendos Salonu. From there it moved through the Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu Kültür Merkezi in Sivas on 15 October, the Kayseri İl Kültür Merkezi on 16 October, the Somuncu Baba Kültür Merkezi in Aksaray on 18 October and the Bostanlı Suat Taşer Tiyatrosu in İzmir on 22 October. Four dates remain: Avcılar Barış Manço Kültür Merkezi in Istanbul on 30 October, the Çankaya Belediyesi Atatürk Sanat Merkezi in Ankara on 15 November, the Tayyare Kültür Merkezi in Bursa on 18 November, and the Türkan Saylan Kültür Merkezi in Istanbul on 29 November.
Songkick logs around ninety past performances for the group and about 5,700 users tracking them for alerts — the profile of a band that works steadily inside Turkey, at municipal scale, without an international circuit. There are no announced dates outside Turkey.
What the evening actually is
Almost every venue on this tour is a belediye culture centre or a municipal theatre: fixed seating, a proscenium, a few hundred to a thousand capacity, and no bar at the back of the room. That choice shapes the performance more than any staging decision would. The Şişli show in September started at 20:00 with tickets from 1,096 Turkish lira, which is roughly where the rest of the run sits — mid-market, not festival pricing.
The honest position on the live reviews is that there are very few. Setlist.fm carries no logged setlists for the group at all, and the descriptive copy circulating on Turkish ticketing sites — stage performances described as magnificent, Anatolian melodies carried to the stage — is promoter language rather than criticism. What can be said from the itinerary is that the band plays seated halls to seated audiences, back-to-back nights in the same city when demand supports it, and in towns such as Aksaray and Manavgat that most touring acts skip.
The repertoire an audience is most likely to hear is the one the streaming numbers point to: the Ervah-ı Ezelde material that made the group's name, Altın Yüzüğüm Kırıldı in whatever its current arrangement is after September's single, the wider Anatolian and Kurdish-language selections from Revan, and the Feyzullah Çınar song from 2024. With three singers in a four-piece, the vocal trading is the show's main dynamic device, and with no drum kit the percussion stays light enough for the santur and the charango to be heard.
The show, now
The current show runs through municipal culture centres rather than clubs — seated halls such as the Bostanlı Suat Taşer Tiyatrosu in İzmir (22 October 2026) and the Tayyare Kültür Merkezi in Bursa (18 November 2026) — with a 20:00 start and tickets from about 1,096 Turkish lira, the price at the Şişli date on 20 September 2026. It is a four-piece with three singers and no drum kit: two guitars, a charango, bass and a santur, so the volume stays low enough for vocal trading between Kerem Kekeç, Ali Ekber Kayış and Burcu Sarak to be the evening's main dynamic. The likely repertoire tracks the streaming data and the recent releases: the Ervah-ı Ezelde material from 2011, Altın Yüzüğüm Kırıldı after September's single, the Anatolian and Kurdish-language selections from Revan including Ay Dilbere, and the Feyzullah Çınar song issued in April 2024. Setlist.fm holds no logged setlists for the group, so song order and running time are not on public record, and the superlatives on Turkish ticketing pages are promoter copy rather than reviews. What the schedule does show is a band willing to play two consecutive nights in Antalya (9 and 10 October 2026) and to take the show to Aksaray and Manavgat, and about 5,700 Songkick users tracking it for alerts.
Researched from tr.wikipedia.org · songkick.com · cumhuriyet.com.tr · music.apple.com · music.apple.com · cafrande.org · konserlist.com