Turkey Off The Radar

This year’s Rock’n Coke and Radar festivals have both been scrapped and Efes Pilsen One Love Festival – the country’s other major outdoor – has changed its focus to adjust to a struggling market.

Cem Yegül of Pozitif Productions, which runs Rock’n Coke and Efes Pilsen One Love, says average ticket sales in Turkey were down 20 percent in 2007, but that isn’t the reason Rock’n Coke has been canceled.

"Unfortunately, as a result of the fact that this year the artists we set our sights on were either unavailable on our dates or not touring in our geographic region, we were forced to make the very difficult decision not to do the festival this year," he explained.

"Although it saddens us to take a break this year, we are already working full speed ahead for Rock’n Coke 2009, which we hope will be the best Rock’n Coke yet."

He says part of the reason for the downturn in the market is the "heavy influx of events."

Metallica, Kylie Minogue, Enrique Iglesias, Lenny Kravitz, Mark Knopfler, Bjork and Judas Priest are all due to play Turkey this year.

This year Efes Pilsen One Love Festival (June 21-22) has dropped from three days to two, is moving from the 10,000-capacity Istanbul Parkoman to a similar-sized site at the local university and changed its booking policy.

"Rather than focusing our energies on attracting big ‘star’ names, we decided to work on establishing the culture of attending festivals in our country," said Yegül.

"The first day features acts that are disco-lectro dance-tastic. The second day features acts that are balka-lectro, punk-o-tastic. Festivalgoers can choose to either dine a la carte by purchasing single-day tickets, or enjoy the entire smorgasbord by purchasing double-day passes."

Pozitif has changed the site for the festival’s seventh edition because the campus grounds have become a "hot venue" since the university took it over.

The site is known as Santralistanbul and was the first power plant constructed in the city. Bilgi University has converted it into a centre for culture and arts and it has the advantage of being much nearer to the city centre than Parkoman.

Radar started as a free festival in 2006 but Dinamo 103.8 radio station took over and turned it into a bigger event with international acts.

About 5,000 per day turned up last year for the three-dayer at Solar Beach, a strip of land on the Black Sea coast about a 40-minute drive from the centre of Istanbul, but Dinamo took such a loss that it’s decided not to stage it again this year.