On 16th July 2016 I received a message from my parents telling me first not to worry before breaking the news that a military coup had been taking place in my homeland, Turkey. Hearing the terrified voices of friends and family with the sounds of gunshots and helicopters in the background, and following the news on television and social media that night was like witnessing a bloody tragedy. And, as happens in political tragedies in theatre and in life, people suffer due to the power games of their rulers, or as we often say in Turkey: when elephants fight, grass is crushed. Historically in Turkey—yet never this intensely and unlawfully before—it has often been intellectuals, academics, artists and journalists who have faced the most ruinous measures. Since the failed military coup thousands of academics, journalists, politicians and civil servants have been dismissed from their positions, prosecuted, or jailed.

When I received news of the attempted coup and started witnessing what was to become a deeply disquieting period in the already alarming recent history of Turkey, I had been living in the UK for almost a decade—working as a theatre academic. Living abroad often puts one in a liminal state with a strange kind of double vision—the vision of one eye can be radically different from that of the other when perceiving the differing realities of one’s home and one’s adopted country. I have watched the tragedy unfold between worlds while simultaneously experiencing rising populism and right-wing politics in the UK. Meanwhile, I had been having conversations with academics and artists in Turkey who were eager to talk about their experience, and how the political changes have been shaping the performance scene in Turkey. As a result, I thought it was crucial to write about this topic and provide scholars and artists with a platform to initiate a conversation about it.

In order to expose parts of this complicated picture I gathered a group of theatre and performance artists, researchers and teachers, and asked them to reflect on their own practice and/or performing arts in Turkey from their individual perspectives. In this process, I was aware that writing about theatre could be difficult in the current context of Turkey, where censorship has haunted professional and private lives, and freedom of speech has increasingly become a risky option rather than an unquestionable right. The politics of fear have undeniably traumatized all of us in or from Turkey, and has made critical expression a deeply challenging act. Even though the majority of the artists and academics I approached during the initial phase of this article stated that the venture had been a crucial one, some of them were apologetically hesitant to contribute and chose not to participate.

The challenge for me was therefore to find authors who were willing to write their unfiltered opinions (as much as possible), whilst also being representative of the breadth of cultural and political perspectives across Turkey. This is why this collectively-produced dossier piece, displaying an eclectic snapshot into theatre and performance in contemporary Turkey, is not only informative and timely, but also meaningful.

Calling for resistance and solidarity with relentless hope in the darkest hours, the great Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet Ran wrote:

If I don’t burn,
If you don’t burn,
If we don’t burn
how will
the darkness
change
into
light?¹

Drawing on his lines, I hope our words will shine a small yet timely light on some aspects of performance, society and culture in Turkey, and will open critical spaces for further hopeful discussion.

As I am writing the final words for this blog I receive a call from Turkey; my father on the line breaks the hopeful news: ‘Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that the judiciary had violated academics’ right to freedom of expression by wrongfully charging them with terror propaganda for signing a petition for peace’…

Read ‘Reflections on Turkish Theatre’, curated and introduced by Seda Ilter in the latest issue of Theatre Research International.