Anatolian folk (türkü, halk müziği, 'people's music') is the body of village folk song orally transmitted across the vast Anatolian plateau. The core instrument is baglama (saz, seven-string long-necked lute), which varies in size and tuning by region. Alongside: davul (frame drum) plus zurna (double reed), kemençe (bowed), sipsi (end-blown), double sipsi, and unaccompanied solo and group vocal. Styles diverge by region: 'uzun hava' (free-metre) and 'kırık hava' (metrical), halay (line dance), bozlak (highland herder song). Central Anatolia leans uzun hava; the east has bozlak; the southeast merges with Kurdish traditions; the Black Sea has its own horon dance; the Aegean around İzmir carries elements shared with Greece.

Distinct from Ottoman court classical, Anatolian folk descended from the regional âşık ('the one in love,' i.e. wandering poet-musician) tradition and Anatolian Alevi religious practice. The Republican period (from 1923) institutionalised it as 'folk music': in 1937 Ankara Radio established a folk-music department to collect the national repertoire, and in 1953 the Ankara Radyosu Yurttan Sesler Korosu ('Voices from the Homeland Chorus') was formed. The state programme preserved the tradition while also standardising away regional dialect features. The century's canonical âşıklar are Aşık Veysel (1894-1973, the blind saz-player poet), Neşet Ertaş (1938-2012, 'Bozkırın Tezenesi,' 'the plectrum of the steppe,' central Anatolian master), Muhlis Akarsu (1948-1993, Alevi), and Ruhi Su (1912-1985, opera-trained experimentalist). Aynur Doğan (born 1975, Kurdish) is a 21st-century inheritor.

Aşık Veysel's 'Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayım' (1965, already in DB) is the archetypal âşık vocal drama: a blind poet strumming the saz and comparing life to a long thin road, with minimal ornament and straight, near-spoken delivery. Neşet Ertaş's 'Ah Neyleyim Neyleyim' (1978) is central Anatolian bozlak style, with the saz's rhythmic strumming holding a drone beneath a floating high vocal — a two-layer structure. Ruhi Su's 'Halimi Bilir Misin' (1974) applies opera vocal projection to folk material — his imprisonment and socialist politics show in the skeleton of the voice. Aynur Doğan's 'Keçe Kurdan' (2004) sings in Kurdish Kurmanji — a track briefly banned in Turkey, and that fact by itself points to the multilingual, multiethnic reality of Anatolia the state category papers over.

The DB baseline: Aşık Veysel's 'Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayım' (1965), Neşet Ertaş's 'Gönül Dağı' (1976). Add Neşet Ertaş's 'Ah Neyleyim Neyleyim' (1978), Ruhi Su's 'Halimi Bilir Misin' (1974), and Aynur Doğan's 'Keçe Kurdan' (2004) for a fuller cross-section. Kalan Music's 2000s reissues of the 1970s TRT folk-department compilations are a treasure trove of regional recordings. Late-night solo listening.

The âşık tradition is directly connected to Central Asian Turkic bardic traditions (baxşi, ashug) and shares roots with Azerbaijani aşıq and Armenian ashugh. Religiously it spans Sunni Islam, Alevi Islam, and even some Christian-Armenian âşık lineages — 'Turkish' as a label undersells the polyphony. Neşet Ertaş's father Muharrem Ertaş was also an âşık poet, from the Abdal ethnoreligious minority of central Anatolia's Kırşehir. Aşık Veysel was born in Sivas in 1894, went blind from smallpox at seven, and lived seventy years with the saz before his 1973 death; in 1965 the Turkish parliament granted him a lifetime pension. The deyiş sung at Alevi cem ceremonies is a distinct religious repertoire (rather than ordinary halk), carried by âşıklar including Muhlis Akarsu, Arif Sağ, and Sabahat Akkiraz. Muhlis Akarsu was killed in the 2 July 1993 Sivas massacre, when 37 Alevi intellectuals were burned to death in a hotel arson by Sunni extremists; the event remains a touchstone for the political vulnerability of Anatolian folk culture.