Ali faces harassment from a sexually unsatisfied wife during the day. At night he drowns his problems with drugs and visits to gay call boys.

Ali’s story, the focus of the Turkish play, “No Way Out,” would make even the most liberal, adventurous audience uncomfortable— and not just because the theater in which it is performed cannot afford chairs or air conditioning. In Istanbul, a cosmopolitan city with both modern Western influences and traditional roots, any discussion of homosexuality is taboo.

For Serkan Öz, the play’s director and the founder of the Global Arts Federation (GAF) in Istanbul, art is the best way to address subjects Turkish society generally ignores. Through the GAF, Öz aims to create a space where people are free to explore the types of issues not usually discussed around the Turkish dinner table, whether through theatrical performances in the GAF’s cramped rooms or through art hanging on the walls. The GAF apartment is a growing center for performing and visual artists and writers, currently housing almost 30 from Europe, the United States, and Asia.

Öz’s gritty scripts may be shocking to some, but they come from his own experience: the character Ali is based on a friend and his struggles to confront his sexuality in a repressed society. “In Turkey, there is the sense that gays don’t exist,” Öz explained. At least that’s what people pretend. Öz reported that of all the clubs surrounding the apartment, only the gay bar on the corner is packed every night of the week. “People know there are gays but don’t want to see it. Families will know, but if you say it they will put you out the door,” he remarked.

While Turkey’s government has become more conservative in the past few years, liberal-minded artists like Öz have increasingly challenged what they see as restrictive cultural norms. Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues,” once considered far too radical, has now been translated into Turkish and performed in most of Turkey’s major cities. So has the “The Veiled Monologues,” a play based on the stories of Muslim women from different countries that was performed by three Turkish actresses. But when it comes to certain issues, artists remain fearful of speaking out. “There are of course things that I can’t write about,” Öz said. “If I write about Atatürk, they can kill me, for sure.”

Basak Otus, SY ‘10, a Turkish national, explained that the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, is a “kind of worship figure” in her country, where his portrait hangs on the wall of every classroom and office. In Turkey, questioning Atatürk is more than just a social taboo—it is illegal. In January, Atilla Yayla, a Turkish academic, was sentenced to 15 months in jail for allegedly insulting the nation’s hero. In Turkey, many laws limit freedom of expression. Article 301 of the Turkish Constitution, which threatens imprisonment for insulting “Turkishness,” gained notoriety when it was used in 2005 against Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk for a comment criticizing the government’s failure to recognize the planned extermination of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population after World War I—widely referred to as the “Armenian Genocide.” While the author was eventually acquitted and went on to win the Nobel Prize in literature, the government had made its point.

Turkish citizens have shown a willingness to speak out against the status quo on some political topics: Parliament’s February decision to lift the 80-year-old ban on wearing headscarves in universities attracted tens of thousands of protestors against the perceived violation of the secularism of the Turkish Republic. Öz’s plays, by comparison, reach an audience of only 20 or 30 people a night. Yet Öz and other likeminded progressive artists are using their art to push Turkish society toward a more accepting future. Öz himself hopes eventually to found a worldwide network of artists to confront the silenced tensions of global society. For now, he is focusing on uncomfortable social issues right next door. It remains to be seen, however, whether his theater will reach beyond the GAF’s walls to build momentum for change or persist only as an undercurrent in the back streets of Istanbul.

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