Turgay’s people

Author: Başak Akgün Akil

Some people live quietly. They pass by you every day; some are friends from the neighborhood, others you work with, going in the same direction as you every day, but just like raindrops blending together on a rainy day, they live with their souls soaked through without saying a word to anyone; moreover, they don't even know their own stories themselves…

Theater strips away the magic cloak of the unseen and tells us about humanity in all its reality. Published in the spring of 2025 by Mitos Boyut, Turgay Korkmaz’s book “Toplu Oyunları 1” (Collected Plays 1) brings the simple value of humanity to its readers.

This book, which contains the sections “Misket”, “M. Ali (Muhammed Ali)”, “İstifra (Çıkrıkçılar Yokuşu)” and “Küçük Bir Rica (İstememe Hakkı)”, consists of the author’s plays of the same name. Let us read this pen, whose name the Istanbul audience has heard frequently in recent years, through the eyes of a spectator.

A winter night in Istanbul… December, 2021. We are watching “Misket” for the first time at Kadıköy BOA Sahne. Turgay Korkmaz and Orkun Can İzan are on stage. Kayhan Berkin is in the director’s chair. The first lights of the dark curtain ignite with an Ankara folk dance tune. It reminds us once again that a song only touches the emotion that exists within a person. Applause, applause, laughter… How it gives way to tears over time…

I quietly take notes in my notebook in the dark: “The world that rolls and falls to our feet like a colorful marble is neither greater than the bleeding heart of a bird, nor smaller than the learned nature of fear. Misket, which delicately touches the cold scars of the hearts in this country that have never been embraced; this play, which I watched while digging my nails into my palms, is the author, the actors, and the director using their palms to help birds with dying hearts reach the sky, and this sky is Kadıköy Boa Sahne. It is not my right, nor yours, nor theirs to love; under the sky, all hearts are equal like stars that twinkle and fade that night.” A hall full of people, we remember that our hearts are not cold metal brooches pinned to our lapels. Moreover, this is not our first acquaintance with this author…

Misket took a break from the stage after its 130th performance, produced by Faraza Tiyatro.

“Years ago in Ankara, I said that Turgay’s people exist. I have always looked for those people in his texts… People I have known for a long time, people I was going to meet that day… Sometimes someone we know very well in their eyes, their wounds, their joy, their ambition, their loneliness, and their love…

Here are Turgay’s other people… Each one has met in this book, waiting to meet you.

There are Turgay’s people who are not seen in the mirror or on the street, whose names have not been the subject of a love story or a heroic epic; whose lives are stuck in the gears of the system, who have not received a flower from anyone but have “become a flower” over time, who have tied their hands… Moreover, in this uphill life, they are all on our street, among us! How many times have we bumped shoulders and passed by… A person is a soul; the person no one sees sits on a stone and tells their troubles sometimes. No one hears, but the stone hears them. Like the heart of a stone, this book comes and sits on your chest.

Their stories are so great, in the social wound where Deniz and Ersin teach humanity to love in “Misket”…

In “İstifra”, where the value of one’s life is stuck in the count of banknotes; in a life questioning, in one’s own “nothingness”, in a human loneliness, between the economy and dreams, in the dream of the “family” concept, which is the foundation of society…

In “Küçük Bir Rica”, in a geranium that a fragile, naive woman looks at with compassion, in her inability to see the same care in society that she shows it; in loving, in loving too much; in fighting, in losing; in the madness of life…

In “M. Ali”, you will hear all these people deep in your heart, in the heroism/or guilt of a cause he never knew, with the timid, curious, small steps of a man whose name was given as a hero at birth, whom no one knows, like an insect, in the ordinariness of all coincidences in this country.

When you read this book, you will not be able to bump into a stranger’s shoulder so easily on those roads you pass by so casually again. This book, which makes our hearts tremble in each separate play, is a gift to society from its actors, directors, and everyone who contributed.

A human wound, a kaleidoscope…

As for the plays born from this book after Misket…

“İstifra” had its premiere in November 2021, produced by Boa Sahne, directed by Serkan Üstüner, with an unforgettable performance by Murat Eken at Kadıköy BOA Sahne. The same stage opened its curtains in December 2022 with the author’s play titled “Küçük Bir Rica”, this time directed by Turgay Korkmaz, produced by Sahne 367, and performed by Dila Yağcı. Both plays said goodbye to their audiences, leaving a great impact on the spectators in the inner journey of the human being and the screams of society where silence transforms.

M.Ali, which premiered in November 2024 by Yolcu Tiyatro at Baba Sahne, again directed by Turgay Korkmaz, is still being performed with the performance of Erdem Kaynarca.

With many feelings left in our hearts, a lump in our throats, and thousands of exclamation marks!

Turgay’s people are waiting to meet their readers and viewers.

Photo: Emre Yunusoğlu