Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to explore how immigrant stand-up comedians claim visibility and carve themselves alternative spaces on Istanbul's stages, where comedy becomes an important aspect of signaling inclusion/exclusion and marking group identities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to explore how stand-up comedians claim visibility and carve themselves alternative spaces on stages in the highly censored public space of Istanbul and within the broader political context of Turkey’s authoritarian rule. Comedians on these stages hail predominantly from underrepresented communities, a considerable percentage of whom are immigrants. This project focuses on the entitlement that makes an identity joke possible; the punitive/legal, social, and professional consequences of these jokes; and the boundary-crossing/boundary-making practices of stand-up comedy. While comedians are trying to resist systematic silencing and assimilation by subverting pejorative jokes of othering and turning them into “jokes of identity”, the realm of comedy complicates the power relations between Istanbul’s comedians and their audience members, who are also from diverse backgrounds. Immigrant comedians have to navigate through changing frames of references since a joke depends heavily on shared knowledge and doing comedy requires a special familiarity and nuanced linguistic/cultural skills. Comedy, in this sense, becomes an important aspect of signaling inclusion/exclusion and marking group identities. Although immigrant comedians are heavily burdened with proving themselves to be funny within new frames of reference; local comedians are also haunted by the question of migration, contemplating on the possibility of migrating while touring Europe and performing their shows to the Turkish diaspora in Europe. Eventually the question of “what if I’m not funny there?” demands a more nuanced discussion of migration, citizenship, claiming authority over identity representation, and belonging on both sides.