Sufle

A cover, a campus, and a name chosen for its sound

Sufle started in Ankara in 2012 as a partnership between two students: Göksu Taşçeviren, who sings and plays piano, and Mustafa Kemal Atik, who handles guitar, piano, keyboards and synthesiser. They were studying different subjects — economics and civil engineering — and found each other over music rather than coursework. Taşçeviren has described the meeting as the turning point she had been looking for, having spent some time searching for someone to write with. She had picked up an instrument young, around nine or ten, beginning on bass before moving to acoustic guitar and singing; Atik came to the guitar later, at sixteen or seventeen.

The band name was Atik's suggestion and the reasoning behind it was not elaborate. Asked about it, he has said simply that it sounds good to the ear. Taşçeviren has added that in the group's early acoustic period the softness of the word matched the softness of the music, which is a more honest account of band-naming than most acts offer.

What moved them out of Ankara practice rooms was a cover. In 2013 a cover recording circulated on social media and reached an audience far larger than two students playing to friends, and the YouTube channel became the band's front door. That origin still shapes how promoters introduce them abroad: as a group that built a following through covers before anyone paid much attention to the original material.

Pus, and the long run of records that followed

The first substantial release under their own name was Pus in 2017, after roughly five years of playing without a record to sell. Singles followed at a steady rate — Kayboldum in 2018, Senden Önce Senden Sonra in 2019 — before the first full-length studio album, Geri Geri Maraton Koştum, arrived in 2020. Tahtına Veda came the same year. The band records for Avrupa Müzik and writes its own material, with Taşçeviren and Atik credited together on words and music.

A collaboration with Teoman, Nasıl Güzel, landed in 2021 and connected Sufle to one of the better-known names in Turkish rock. The Lotus EP followed in 2022, and the second studio album, Karanlık Pop, in 2023. The title is a fair description of the register the band had settled into by then: pop structures with the lights down, guitars that lean indie rather than heavy, and lyrics that stay melancholic without tipping into misery. Ne Söz Ne Saz, from that 2023 run, remains one of the group's most-played tracks on streaming services.

The line-up thinned along the way. Oğuzhan Eren played bass from 2014 until 2020, after which Sufle reverted to a studio core of Taşçeviren and Atik, assembling a rhythm section for live work. One older song found a second life in 2024, when Pus was used in the film Aşk Mevsimi — the sort of placement that quietly refreshes a catalogue track's streaming numbers years after release.

An acoustic detour and a singles habit

Since 2024 Sufle has largely stopped saving material for albums. Lakin and Yorulunca appeared in 2024; Neyleyim, Dönme and Geçici Heves in 2025; Yok Olalım, Çölde Çiçek, Uyuyan Dev and No Te Vayas Hoy across 2026, the last of these a Spanish-titled song in a catalogue that already moves between Turkish and English. A remix of Sultanlara Su Verdim by Berkay Duman also surfaced in 2026, with Duman credited as a featured artist.

Between those runs came the most interesting swerve of the band's recent work: Udlu Canlı Akustik, released in 2025. It is a live acoustic record built around the oud, which rearranges songs written for electric guitars and synthesisers into something closer to a Turkish folk setting. For a band whose first audience arrived via stripped-back covers, recording a live acoustic album more than a decade later reads less as a novelty than as a return to the format that worked in the first place.

Playing outside Turkey

Sufle's touring base is domestic — Istanbul most often, then Ankara, with Mersin and Antalya recurring — but the band has been exporting steadily. Gig records show two appearances in Hamburg, and the pattern of recent years has been a handful of overseas dates bolted onto an otherwise Turkish calendar.

On Friday 28 February 2025 the band played Drom in New York's East Village, an acoustic show with doors at 7pm and music at 8pm, billed to a 21-and-over room at thirty dollars in advance. On Sunday 23 November 2025 they played De Centrale in Ghent as part of Istanbul Ekspres, a programming strand run jointly by Ha Concerts and the venue: an 800-capacity standing show, doors at 7pm, on stage at 8pm. The Ghent billing listed a four-piece touring line-up — Taşçeviren on vocals, Atik on guitar, Çağdaş Topal on drums and Gökhan Çakıcı on bass — and reached for Mor ve Ötesi, Cigarettes After Sex and Beach House as reference points, which places the live sound somewhere between Turkish alternative rock and slow, reverbed indie.

Where they stand in October 2026

Fourteen years in, Sufle have played at least 51 documented shows, with the heaviest year being 2023 at eighteen dates and a quieter 2024 at eleven. The most recent confirmed performance was 14 October 2026 at Dorock XL in Istanbul. Before that came an 23 August 2026 date at the Swissôtel The Bosphorus, also in Istanbul — a hotel booking rather than a club night, and a reminder that a mid-sized Turkish band's calendar mixes rock venues with corporate and festival work.

As of mid-October 2026 the band is off tour with no dates on sale. That is a normal gap rather than a hiatus signal: Sufle have released four singles and a remix in 2026 alone, and the recent pattern has been clusters of domestic shows announced at short notice through Turkish ticketing platforms. Co-billings with Zeyn'el and Can Ozan recur often enough in the gig history to be a fixture rather than a coincidence.

The band's own account of what keeps the thing running is unglamorous. Taşçeviren has said that music feels like an up-and-down business, and then a message arrives on Instagram and it becomes clear that people are following along and waiting for the next thing. After three studio albums, an acoustic record and well over a decade of singles, that is still roughly the size of the feedback loop.