Since 2013, Turkey’s cultural landscape has been heavily influenced by its more and more right-wing political reality, in particular the policies established under the rule of President Erdogan and his political party, the AKP. Istanbul, as the arguably most influential city within this country, has always been considered a stronghold for counter-movements and a spirit of sustained freedom within Turkey. Yet, after the Gezi movement in 2013 and the coup following shortly thereafter, even this city has seen significant changes due to censorship, political prosecutions, and restrictive policies being implemented in the cultural sector by the government. Yet, at the same time, the city being under the rule of the opposition, there remains a strong sense of resilience and call for change, especially among the younger generation.

In an attempt to portray the status quo , Mary Lilith Fischer interviewed people active in the cultural field to gain a better understanding of the complexities that underlie the art world of Istanbul. The interviews took place in various locations across Istanbul and with Kaya Genc, author and critic; Derya Yücel, curator, writer, and member of AICA Turkey; Ulas Parkan, founder and director of Ambidexter Gallery in Istanbul; and the artist duo Aysegül Yapar and Begum Celik.

Mary Lilith Fischer: What drives you to dedicate yourself to cultural work?

Derya Yücel: Ever since my student years, I have been driven by the liberating potential of art, beyond aesthetics and creativity, the interaction of art within the social context and its messages for the future. Beral Madra, who influenced me to study art management at university, has always been influential on me. I was following her exhibitions when I was in my twenties. I admired her curatorial approach revealing the connection between visual art production and its socio-political and cultural structures, and the efforts of female artists to maintain their presence in a male-dominated local art scene. During my education, I realised that curatorial perspectives can follow wholesome and sincere facilitation practices. There were individual and unique methods that were valid for the curator, just like the artists. In addition, curators have guidance in creating new ideas and interpretations within the art world. And this potential of the profession became my main motivation to devote myself to this field. I have always tried to write and develop my own curatorial language independently, staying away from the institutional sphere.

It is a field that includes the constant involvement of artistic and social science processes in many aspects such as intellectual knowledge, accumulation, endless research and development, communication transfer... But unfortunately, it is a system that expects you to be resilient, strong, and ambitious in addition to the things you do.

Kaya Genc: I studied literature. I did a PhD in English literature—my area of expertise was 19th-century English literature. In 2013, I started writing about politics in Turkey when the Gezi uprisings began. At the time, I was receiving commissions to write about current affairs in Turkey, in English. I started writing in a kind of literary way about Turkish politics. I began to gravitate towards the artistic community. So, I started to write about their lives. With time, I became interested in the financing of the art scene here in Istanbul and how artists survive, how they're funded. And I found myself moving away from the institutions in Turkey because, as I mainly wrote for foreign publications, I was not dependent on them. But people need critical voices, and since I looked into the institutions and the art scene for so long, I wouldn't be culturally insensitive in my reflections and critique.

I started diagnosing this kind of demand for institutional critique, especially among peak millennials, and the Gen Z. The people I meet at forums, people in their twenties there, they do not wish to be part of the institutions anymore or rely on their support. This fascinates me.

My background as a reporter helps me in analysing the institutions and the cultural landscape. I mean, maybe you cannot report, for example, on Erdogan or his cronies as boldly and as openly as I do with the cultural institutions because we cannot access that information. But cultural institutions actually are more open and also are beginning to demand critical voices.

And as we saw with IKSV (Istanbul Kültür Sanat Vakfi), they of course didn't like the coverage that I provided at the British magazine ArtReview. But at the end of day, they changed their director and they also cancelled the biennial, so it feels like they read our coverage. And now they seem open to the idea of talking to anyone who has been critical of their opaque structure.

So, in a nutshell, that's my story from a literary scholar to someone covering the art scene. And I think what drives me is a kind of desire to tell the truth. It's a very old-fashioned and even Catholic desire. The desire to just articulate what is existent. An editor once told me, you don't have to use metaphors or need to ornament your stories. You just tell the story of what's going on, and that suffices. It's mostly so absurd what is going on inside institutions here, so just describing what is happening makes good copy.

Ulas Parkan: I started working as a gallery assistant in 2013 and 2014 for Kerimcan Güleryüz. Back then, the gallery was called The Empire Project. He saw my potential and gave me the fourth floor of the gallery space to build a project space. I got to pick my own artists, build my own portfolio. This was like my third university degree, really. So, after 2018, I opened my own gallery. I work with young artists, I want to see them grow and develop their work, even if they might one day not work with me anymore. I want to see them in a good place where they keep producing art. It makes me proud and happy. Also, all the galleries are kind of gatekeepers to the market because as an independent artist, it is extremely difficult to become a part of the art ecosystem. You have to be backed up by a gallerist or a curator, you see. So, this is part of our profession, I think. That's a satisfaction that I…that's my main drive basically, to see my artist and myself in a better place in the world, like in a dark world. And yeah, this is like we say, commercial in a way.

Begum Celik: During my MA, I studied in Helsinki for six months. When I came back, I met with Ayşegül, and we had a really long chat after months of silence and loneliness. Ayşegül had also just returned from London, where she had done an internship. We both felt that our experiences abroad, as well as in Istanbul, were shaped by the lack of inclusive spaces. We shared the feeling of being outsiders wherever we were. Somehow, we never fully fit into a framework that had never been explicitly defined. Thus, we decided that we wanted to create our own independent space—one where we could feel welcomed anywhere, anytime.

Aysegül Yapar: When faced with limited exhibition opportunities in our hometown of Istanbul, where local artists constantly struggle to find spaces to show their work, we developed an innovative solution: transforming a moving truck into a mobile exhibition space. We secured EU funding for the project and we had our first iteration; we plan on having three more—also involving more artworkers through open calls.

MLF: How would you describe your basic artistic/curatorial/cultural concepts?

DY: The curator's responsibility is to establish communication between groups with different functions within the culture industry, such as artist–institution–audience. The role of the curator is to search for and evaluate the parallels and contrasts between aesthetic, artistic, political, economic, social, and scientific changes and the thoughts and productions of artists, and to create exhibitions/content that explain these and share them with audiences with different profiles. In this context, in my understanding of curation, I adopt a more active role as a creator or creative partner within visual art practices. My basic concepts: space, memory, identity, gender, digital culture. Instead of producing 'big' ideas in the form of an exhibition, my projects develop to suggest different ways to reach ideas, to create a perceptible atmosphere, and to record a memory that has been ignored, overlooked, or newly blossomed outside the existing main artery.

AY: I think the metr.cube project (the truck curatorial - art project moving around Istanbul) is really all about accessibility and visibility. By bringing art directly to the streets, we break down the intimidating barriers often associated with conventional galleries and museums. Both the artists and their work and the ever-changing outside environment become part of the exhibition. Through live-streaming our journey, we extend our reach beyond physical boundaries.The truck is usually used to transport artworks, but here it becomes a stage. While the truck navigates between Istanbul's European and Asian sides, our digital presence allows artworks to "travel" internationally through anyone that wants to support and be with us.

MLF: How important are international connections for you and your work? Have you lived in another country for some time?

KG: I studied in Amsterdam for my MA. Now I’m dividing time between Istanbul and Santa Cruz, California, where my wife is pursuing a PhD. I also visit London frequently for work. My life depends on my writing in English. But since last summer, I’ve returned to writing in Turkish after a long time. My fellow editors in Anglophone publications were young when I started, and editing smaller publications where I contributed. And they got promoted and began editing bigger publications. These connections were important in allowing me to lead a life as a professional author. They built up trust: if I pitch something, if I say there's this important story about the art world or politics, they trust me. And when I pitch to write a review of a particular show, the editor should trust that I really want to write about this show. In Turkish journalism, galleries pay people to write about their shows, which is horrific. Sadly, it’s also very common. I have no connection to any institution here, and I owe my freedom to that simple fact. This freedom is important in terms of establishing the trust relationship, a relationship important for the editor and the writer.

AY: During my internship in London, I worked with a curator who became an invaluable mentor. After I returned to Istanbul, she continued to support my professional development. Later, she began organizing talks that brought together art workers from various backgrounds, creating a platform for open dialogue and shared experiences. These conversations became a safe ground for addressing complex issues in the art world. Despite being the youngest participant, I was surprised to discover that established galleries and artists were grappling with the same fundamental challenges I faced as an emerging artist. In a vibrant city like Istanbul, there's an inherent sense of isolation when working independently in arts and culture.   

UP: We are a fairly a young gallery. We are doing more and more international art fairs. We did five last year. And I don't know, it's not about me personally, but coming from Islam, coming from Turkey, even though we are somewhat in Europe, we are not in Europe. So, when we do a fair in Paris or Vienna, I see all fellow galleries coming from countries close by, just jumping on a train, or driving for eight hours, let’s say. Easy, no customs, no borders. When we come from Turkey, Istanbul, you have to go through customs, you have to go apply and fill out a ton of paperwork. There are so many taxes and application fees to pay. It makes it really hard for us as a small gallery. But still, we want to be there and we have to be there to be in the international market. Because that international recognition brings you somewhat of a respected position in your homeland. So, we have to keep doing it. But it is tremendously hard.
I don't know if it's for political reasons, there are many other things people do not understand. Such as the exchange rate. I have to make prices in Euros, because if I made them in Turkish Lira, two months later it would be worth nothing.

MLF: What do you understand as a right-wing space and possible counter-movements?

DY: Art cannot be considered independently of the social balances created by global capitalism, and if art makes concessions, it is a compromise in the face of the institutional system and its boundaries and system-dependent relationships. It will always be urgent to show that these boundaries created by the system are a faulty fiction and to introduce the possibilities that will deconstruct this fiction. The curator's responsibility should be to overtake the banalising effects of the culture industry and to contribute to the creation of an intellectual, pluralistic, and critical art environment by keeping one’s distance from entertainment and popular culture.

Therefore, we encounter censorship and self-censorship in the art scene, as in every area of life. Therefore, the responsibility of us curators, like artists today, is to make visible their artistic practices that involve resistance and activism. This can be achieved by analysing counter-movements correctly, evaluating the demands of these movements within the scope of fundamental rights and freedoms, and reflecting them in the public sphere through art. Artists such as the queer movement, women's movements, right to the city movements, and ecology movements continue to create experiences that reveal new political subjectivities.

UP: Turkey was a right-wing country for country as far as I remember; during the Sixties, you had a strong left wing. But then cultivating the fear of communism, as the US did especially and to some extent Europe as well, Turkey was pushed toward becoming more right-wing, because the US especially was scared it would fall under communism. So, they actually did everything that they could do for that not to happen, especially in the last twenty years. Erdogan does not have an upper-class background. He doesn’t come from money, he comes from the streets. Actually, his education is questionable. There were debates about him while he was running for president. I think there's a law that you can't do this if you don't have a university degree.

I have a protest soul, but my gallery is my business and what I do. Maybe sometimes I do provocative shows, but I don't like to show what has been seen already. So, you have to come up with a different sentence. Of course, there is a protest attitude in the Ambidexter stance. But to me, in my humble opinion, even how you choose to live is already part of the protest. And especially if you are an artist in Istanbul doing nothing else and trying to survive without doing anything else. I think that is already enough.

AY/BC: For our upcoming exhibition, we're planning an open call for artists' rejected works. We'll transform the truck into a museum gift shop, printing these artworks onto typical museum merchandise. The aim is to explore how institutional systems categorize and value art. By reimagining these rejected pieces as gift shop items, we're creating a playful yet critical commentary on artistic validation and visibility.

The third exhibition will take this critique further by transforming the truck into a precise white cube. We will meticulously measure the distance between artworks in galleries. We'll then apply these exact institutional spacing rules to our truck—potentially resulting in just one or two works, or perhaps nothing at all.

We've also dreamed of more ambitious interventions, like reimagining election campaign aesthetics. The recent Istanbul elections were a sea of flags, and we wondered: What if artists designed these flags? What if the massive campaign budgets were redirected into artistic projects? While our truck is too small and vulnerable for such a direct statement, we've speculated about using those large, mobile advertisement trucks with screens.

But what truly matters is the street-level interaction. Our most memorable moments came from unexpected encounters—particularly with women between forty and sixty. They'd approach us curiously: Are you planning a wedding? A birthday party? Why not add more lighting? These genuine, spontaneous engagements are what distinguish our project. This is the magic that never happens in a gallery or museum—this is what occurs when art moves through the streets.

BC: I believe my work is intrusive in a way that lingers beneath the surface, unsettling not those who seek disruption in the obvious, but those who unknowingly absorb its quiet weight. It is not that my work lacks political intent—rather, it operates in a realm where its message goes unnoticed, camouflaged in familiarity.

One of my recent works reflects this idea. It is an interactive installation featuring forty-one dice, scattered like disconnected pieces of a larger puzzle. When a participant rolls a die, a hidden camera captures the numbers on all forty-one. Then, an algorithm I designed interprets this randomness and assigns it meaning. It selects headlines from six pre-chosen Turkish news portals, analyzes their core messages, and reconstructs them into something new—something that feels real but is entirely fabricated.

The generated text is printed as if it were the original, blurring the line between fact and fiction. It reflects the deep skepticism the public has toward journalism in Turkey—though many are unaware of their own distrust. Yet, in a time when AI-generated content fascinates people, the accuracy of the information becomes secondary; the process itself is enough to engage them.

The project was funded by the Ministry of Culture to be exhibited for the second time in İzmir, following its first exhibition at Akbank Sanat.

MLF: How has the situation changed in the recent years?

UP: I studied musicology for two years in France after high school, but realised it was not the right field for me, though studying in France was a great experience for me. I came back to Turkey to finish my studies and did a BA in communication and visual design. That was the peak of the cultural industry in Turkey, around 2006, 2005 I would say. Because in 2010 Istanbul was the capital of culture. Everything prior to 2013, those were the key times. At our university, faculty and students were like friends. We would dream up  late-night conversations with staff, academic staff, students, all that. That was really exceptional, I would say.

But things started changing after 2013. As I told you, I was working for The Empire Project. I will tell you this as an example: I contacted an Australian artist, and then we decided to have him as a resident. So, he would produce in Istanbul for two weeks and then we would have a show. We planned everything. We actually got funded by the Australian cultural office. We had a full opening night. We were having drinks, cocktails, and then around 11pm or so people were all checking their phones: something is happening. And then everyone understood—there is a coup happening in Istanbul right now. Or you plan an opening, and then there is a terrorist attack. Of course, that affected us.

DY: Making art is mediated and determined by social institutions. This shows that certain parameters are still functioning, that is, unrepresented, "unseen" identities and memories still exist. Nevertheless, the possibilities of deconstructing the dominant forms that represent difference in the social order and are used to legitimise obedience began to be reflected in the field of art in Turkey from the 1990s. In the field of art, each identity has produced a position through their individual, group and organised struggle against marginalisation, oppression, exclusion, and violence. Women, queer, Kurdish, Armenian, minority, subculture, etc. When we look at the productions in the field of art, the writing of art history, and the institutional system, we can see the results of a struggle carried out over identities (which has progressed, albeit partially).

Censorship and self-censorship reflexes cannot be considered independently of the social balances created by phenomena such as cultural industries, capitalism, and political conjuncture. In Turkey, the issue of censorship and self-censorship changes in different periods of history around different ideologies. But it is a phenomenon that sharply settled into the political culture, state apparatus, and public spaces in the period following the 2010s. But conditions are getting worse. The dominant ideology and government policies increase the pressure mechanisms against identities, thoughts, and demands that are seen as "different."

KG: I mean, a lot changed in the last decade. The gallery scene was very different in the mid-2000s and early 2010s. Galleries were founded by young professionals like Azra Tüzünoğlu of Pilot, or Derya Demir of NON. They were kind of activist figures who cultivated wide networks of artistic friends, and we shared similar political views, and they were all living around Cihangir.  So, unlike many of the galleries operating today, theirs weren't professional money-laundering schemes. It was more friends showing each other’s work. Galleries were meeting places for like-minded people. People were very excited about these galleries. And they were helping Istanbul to turn into a kind of Berlin. During those years, my dream project was to write a book about the art world in Cihangir, where I lived. A “ten days in the art world of Istanbul” book, where I’d talk to these pioneering gallerists and iconoclast artists. After a time, editors in newspapers and magazines decided to instrumentalise these galleries and artists. Their work made it possible to talk about taboo subjects in Turkey. They made an impact on the society: they had limitless optimism. At the same time, the artists were mostly looking at the future and the past, but not the present, and there was this blindness about the present time that was couched in an optimism about the future.

Derya Yücel is a curator, art writer and member of AICA Turkey. She obtained degrees in art management at YTU (BA, 2006), museology at YTU (MA, 2010), and art history at Istanbul University (PhD, 2022). She works as a lecturer at Istanbul Bilgi University (private) and Yıldız Technical University (state) in the Art Management Department. She has been working as the Exhibition Projects director of Sabancı University KASA Gallery since January 2015. Some of the many curatorial projects since 2004 include Korea-Turkey Contemporary Art Exchange exhibitions, Incheon/Seoul/Istanbul (2006-2007); Save As, Milan Triennale, Bovisa, Italy (2008), Nil Yalter, Vienna Galerie Hubert Winter (2011), “Reunion” Sabancı Museum Istanbul (2015), “Formless”, Istanbul-Belgrade (2014-2015); All the Lights We Cannot See, Galerist, Istanbul (2017); Love and Semiha Berksoy, O'Art  (2017); HOME, Museum Evliyagil, Ankara (2017); Oeuvre and Grace, Erimtan Archeology and Art Museum, Ankara (2022); Everything Will Be Like Now, Just A Little Different, Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn&Taxis, Bregenz, Austria (2023). Yücel was one of the curators of the 4th Mardin Biennial held in May 2018. Her books are New Media Art and New Museology (2012); artist monographs on Nil Yalter (2013) and İrfan Önürmen (2015), Semiha Berksoy: Catalogue Raisonné (2017), and artist books for Ali Alışır (2019) and Nadide Akdeniz (2020), and Fırat Engin (2023), and she has contributed to  many artist and exhibition catalogues, anthologies, and articles on art that have been published in printed/digital media.

Ambidexter was founded in 2016 by Ulas Parkan, a.k.a. Situs İnversus Totalis, and christened in 2018 with the intention to reflect and question the current art ecosystem by means of its programme and with the help of represented national and international artists.The gallery has a strong focus on contemporary painterly practices but also presents artists working in different media such as sculpture and photography.
At its core is the will to empower and develop artists and accompany them during their artistic careers. This is achieved not only by solo and group exhibitions in the gallery, but also by versatile projects and cooperation with other galleries and institutions abroad and in Turkey. Each exhibition is its own world, as Ambidexter seeks to push boundaries and expand the vision of what an art gallery can and should be.

Kaya Genç, a European Press Prize finalist, is the author of four books: The Lion and the Nightingale (I.B. Tauris, 2019), Under the Shadow (I.B. Tauris, 2016), An Istanbul Anthology (American University in Cairo Press, 2015) and Macera (YKY, 2008).  Kaya has contributed to the world’s leading journals and newspapers, including two front-page stories in The New York Times, cover stories in The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Foreign Affairs, The Believer, and The Times Literary Supplement, and essays and articles in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The New Statesman, The Lancet, The Jewish Quarterly, The New Republic, Time, Newsweek, Apollo, Sight and Sound, Aperture, and The London Review of Books. In 2022, his investigation about the environmental collapse in the Bosphorus was shortlisted for The European Press Prize (the European Pulitzer).

Ayşegül Yapar (b. 1996, Istanbul) is a multi-disciplinary artist and an emerging curator between Istanbul and Bologna. She is pursuing an MA in Arts, Museology, and Curatorship at the University of Bologna seamlessly blending academic research with art-making practice. At the core of her work lies a dual focus - an examination of gender power dynamics and their intersection with broader issues of identity politics as well as a critique of institutional structures within the art industry. By blurring the boundaries between private and public space, Yapar's practice challenges conventional notions of what constitutes art and how cultural narratives are shaped and valorized. Her investigations examine how traditional art institutions, perpetuate hierarchies and exclusions, particularly along the lines of gender and cultural identity.

Begüm Celik is a multi-disciplinary artist pursuing her master’s degree in the visual arts and visual communication design programme under the supervision of Selçuk Artut at Sabancı University, where she completed her B.Sc. in computer science and engineering in 2021. Her master’s thesis, titled “Conserving Multimedia Art from Artistic, Curatorial, and Historicist Perspectives: Case Study on Teoman Madra Archive,” focuses on both the media art history in Turkey and archival strategies. Her artistic production is fed by her interdisciplinary journey in combining technology and performance in accordance with her engagement with various theatre practices. Çelik’s academic research focuses on the preservation of technological artworks in continuation with her projects titled Photometric Approach to Surface Reconstruction of Oil Paintings and Testing Method for Software-based Artworks, which were completed in collaboration with the Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Istanbul. Recently, she completed a conservation project of Stephan von Huene’s artwork called What’s Wrong with Art? at ZKM Karlsruhe under the supervision of Daniel Heiss and Morgane Stricot.

Mary Lilith Fischer has been living and working between Istanbul and Berlin since April 2023. Prior to that, she spent two years in Sicily doing independent research and studying, after she had left Berlin during the pandemic in 2020. She founded and ran the independent project space “The Workshop on Forster” between 2017 and 2020, hosting numerous exhibitions, weekly workshops, and intensive weekend seminars, as well as offering open studio days for the visual arts, music, and writing. Fischer holds a BA in creative writing from Oberlin College (USA) and an MAS Curating from Zurich University of the Arts.