What Happened at the Tepebaşı Theater?

A Tale of the Cold War on the Periphery

Abstract

In 1956, a group of young Turkish poets and writers staged a public protest at Istanbul’s Tepebaşı Drama Theater. The protest against the literary establishment was later portrayed as a communist insurgence by the mainstream press. This article discusses the significance of the protest and its aftermath, and explores the importance of the Cold War context in understanding its long-term consequences regarding Turkish cultural and political history. While the cultural Cold War studies mostly focus on the centre, the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, and tend to reduce the Cold War’s cultural impact on the periphery to propaganda wars, this article argues that the Cold War’s repercussions on peripheral cultures are more nuanced than the conventional narratives. The public reception of the Tepebaşı Drama Theater protest is an illustrious example of the tensions between culture and ideology on the periphery during the Cold War era.