Since the founding of the Turkish republic, music has been viewed and used as a nation-building tool by the state. Respectively, music has also been considered an instrument of opposition from the very beginning. This opposing character has expanded and diversified its vocabulary with a socialist and leftist tone over time, especially in the 1960s. During the end of the decade, we also see the emergence of Kurdish political music. During the early 1970s, Turkey witnessed the burgeoning of the ultranationalist music called Ülkücü music. While the 1980 military coup silenced all the dissident voices and music, musicians who received asylum from European countries continued creating music in exile. Leftist music after the military coup witnessed a popularization in the band music influenced by the Latin American musical genre Nueva canción, and solo musician Ahmet Kaya pioneered the leftist protest song scene. Kurdish political music bands called koms emerged by the end of the 1980s and became more prevalent during the 1990s. The 2000s saw the deradicalization, individualization, and depoliticization of overtly political musics in general. However, with the overpoliticization of the country during the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi regime, the dissident elements of protest music have also become dispersed into a wide variety of genres with a more moderate tone.