Adrienne Haan - Yiğidim Aslanım

Today we published a beautiful song in Turkish, Yiğidim Aslanım, by talented singer/songwriter, author, film director, public speaker and former parliamentarian Zülfü Livaneli whom I had the pleasure to meet during my performance on Europe Day in Istanbul last year. The lyrics were written by the poet and painter Eyüboglu in the 1940s as an elegy for Turkey’s greatest poet Nazim Hikmet who was in prison at that time. Zülfü Livaneli composed the music in 1983. Since then this song has become a hymn for all secular and democratic heroes and martyrs who fell during the struggle. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey’s first president from 1923 until his death in 1938, was among them. He once modernized Turkey into a secular, industrial nation and was the symbol of secularism and female rights against the fundamentalists. These days Yiğidim Aslanım is sung especially for political prisoners, journalists and writers who illegitimately imprisoned. With warm r