With his band approaching the end of their second decade, and his “Love, Chuck” campaign alongside Charli xcx, Tyler, the Creator proving his global impact, Turkey’s Bartu Küçükçağlayan’s creative web wraps wider with each passing incentive.

A pioneer, a disruptor, a creative chameleon, Istanbul’s musical heavyweight Bartu Küçükçağlayan is a master at finding uniqueness in sonic pockets and expression in his identity. Fronting the formidable Turkish group Büyük Ev Ablukada since 2008, the band have put together a series of excellent, eclectic bodies of music, most recently and impressively the stylistically-sprawling 2023 record, Defansif Dizayn.

Küçükçağlayan’s impact has traversed only music in the last few years, increasing his cultural pull with his involvement in campaigns like the 2023 iPhone 14 Pro campaign film, “The Great Escape”, shot in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, and “Love, Chuck” in 2025, a campaign he fronted alongside global icons like Charli xcx and Tyler, the Creator.

Speaking exclusively to Wonderland, Küçükçağlayan reflects on his shining career, discusses his band’s progression, and talks about future ambitions.

Listen to Defansif Dizayn…

Hey Bartu! What inspires you? 

I’m inspired by the place where the past and the future blur into each other. Usually it starts with whatever’s passing through my head, unfinished thoughts, old memories, strange fixations. And honestly, I’m also inspired by people I’m willing to admit I envy. That feeling doesn’t bother me. It usually shows me something I still want to reach for.

Since Büyük Ev Ablukada formed in 2008, how has your attitude to musical creation and being in a band changed? 

When we started Büyük Ev Ablukada in 2008, everything felt a bit more impulsive, in a good way. We were led by instinct, curiosity, and the excitement of building something that felt entirely our own. Back then, being in a band meant creating a small world with your friends and protecting its peculiar internal logic. Over the years, my attitude has become less about proving anything and more about going further inwards. I trust silence more now, I trust simplicity more, and I care far more about whether something carries a genuine emotional weight than whether it appears clever on the surface. Being in a band has also taught me patience. A group develops its own character, its own pace, and sometimes the best thing you can do is listen carefully to what the music is asking for rather than trying to control it.

The band’s latest record, Defansif Dizayn, from 2023, is a sharp and stylistically varied piece of work. How do you reflect on its release? 

I still think of Defansif Dizayn as a very alive record. I wrote most of the songs during the pandemic, when everything felt tense, restricted and slightly oppressive. Even the title comes from the idea of hostile design, so from the beginning the record carried a sense of pushing back against something that tries to shape how you move, think and live. What I still like about it is that it shifts between different moods without losing its core. That felt important because life in Istanbul, and in Turkey more broadly, never moves in just one emotional tone. I didn’t want the album to feel too tidy or too resolved. It’s anxious, playful, defensive, emotional, and sometimes almost confrontational. That mix still feels true to us.

How do you find the creative scene in Istanbul? How has it progressed and changed throughout the years? 

Istanbul remains one of the most creatively intense places I know. It has always had this odd energy where chaos and imagination sit very close together. When I was younger, the scene felt more hidden, more reliant on word of mouth, more physical somehow. You had to go out, be present, meet people, catch things as they were happening. Now it feels more fragmented, but also more visible. There are more tools, more platforms, more ways for artists to be heard, but there is also more noise and more pressure to package yourself quickly. What hasn’t changed is the hunger. People still make things here because they feel compelled to, not because it is easy or comfortable. That urgency is still what gives the city its real character.

As an artist leading an alternative scene in a city that is perhaps not known for such, what are the main challenges that you’ve had to face? 

The greatest challenge is probably sustainability. It isn’t only about making the work, it’s about continuing to make it without losing your spirit in the process. Economic pressure, instability, limited infrastructure, shrinking spaces, political pressure, audience fatigue, all of that becomes part of the artistic process whether you like it or not. Another challenge is being misunderstood. If you make something that doesn’t sit neatly within a commercial category, people often don’t know quite where to place it. But I’ve never seen that as a reason to simplify. Sometimes your job is simply to insist on the space your work requires before anyone else fully understands it.

What advice would you give to rising musicians and creatives who want to make an impact in their city and lead forward a new wave movement? 

Don’t spend too much time trying to appear important. Build something real with the people around you. Protect your taste. Protect your oddness. Try to make work that could only have come from your city, your friendships, your frustrations, your language, your timing. Scenes aren’t built by trends, they’re built by people who keep turning up for one another. And be patient. A movement doesn’t begin on the day everyone notices it. It begins much earlier, when a small number of people decide to take their own voice seriously.

How did you become involved in the “Love, Chuck” campaign alongside Charli xcx, Tyler, the Creator and more?

It meant a lot to be included, because this campaign has consistently featured artists who feel distinctive and independent, people who haven’t let go of their own voice. So the fact that they found me felt genuinely flattering. And Tyler, Charli and me? I still have moments where I think, wow, really? It’s a bit surreal. That’s probably what made it so lovely to be part of.

What’s the next big ambition for you? What do you want to achieve?

Just to keep surprising myself.

Words – Ben Tibbits