The Turkish def is a frame drum closely related to the Persian daf and the Arabic bendir, used across both secular folk dance music and Alevi-Bektashi devotional contexts. Some sources use def and tef interchangeably; others distinguish a smaller, more tambourine-like tef from a larger, deeper def — naming conventions shift by region the same way they do across the entire daf/dayereh/doira family this site documents.

In Alevi-Bektashi communities, music isn’t a backdrop to ritual — it’s structurally part of it. The cem, the community’s central religious gathering, includes a genre of devotional song called deyiş and a turning ritual dance called semah, in which men and women dance together, a notable departure from many other Islamic devotional traditions. The def supports this music alongside the bağlama (the long-necked lute that carries the melody), reinforcing rhythm during both the slower devotional sections and the faster turning dances.