It’s 11pm at a rooftop restaurant overlooking Istanbul and the patrons are ready to party. In a corner, neon lights illuminate a DJ pumping Turkish pop music to long tables of patrons increasingly loose on raki, Turkey’s aniseed-flavoured national drink. Some have already got out of their chairs to dance, when suddenly the music shifts: the bellydancers have arrived.
A male bellydancer in a pink crop top dances, followed by a blond bellydancer in a rhinestone bra, and then Aslı Can, who enters the room in a storm of high kicks and hair flips.
It’s a typical meyhane night – the name for a traditional restaurant where people spend hours drinking listening to music and watching bellydancing, a staple of Turkish social life for centuries.
As the trio move between the different tables, jostling and wiggling with patrons, they begin their tricks – Can at one point does a full backbend over a table as she dances. Within half an hour, her top is stuffed full of 100 lira notes.
But while the notes look like a lot of money, they are declining in value even as Can dances. Turkey’s currency is hitting daily historic lows amid an economic crisis that continues to batter Istanbul’s nightlife industry. In 2021, the lira lost half its value against the dollar, and it has slid to previously unseen levels in the weeks after the re-election of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Erdoğan’s economic reforms have made life perilous for small businesses and have devalued wages, despite his decision to raise the minimum monthly wage for public sector workers to 15,000 lira (£450). But those wage rises don’t extend to the waiters, DJs, dancers, club promotors and bar owners who make up Istanbul’s vibrant nightlife scene.
“There used to be times where people would tip me $100 per person,” sighs Can, who has been dancing for 30 years. Now, she says, most customers tip 100 lira for a dance – £3. Before the economic crisis began in 2018, 100 lira was worth about £22.
The crisis could spell a slow death for an industry that provides not just a vital financial lifeline to Turkey’s most populous and lively city, but also an essential slice of its character, one that has long been neglected by the municipal administration and the government.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s cost-of-living crisis is affecting everyone from patrons to performers and club owners. The official inflation rate is close to 40%, but the Inflation Research Group (ENAGrup) estimates it is actually more than 100%. Price rises in hospitality are keenly felt. In May alone, ENAGrup tracked a 7% increase in food prices and 9% in cafes and restaurants. A night out has become an indulgence that many are struggling to afford.
“Everyone at the restaurant complains about the prices,” says Aslı. “Every day the prices change. It’s expensive to go to a meyhane, so instead people are drinking at home. More often now, I’m going to people’s houses to perform.”
An achingly slow recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic included a widely unpopular ban on music after 1am that lasted until the end of June, years after all other regulations were lifted. One MP from the opposition Republican People’s party (CHP) was so enraged that he demanded a parliamentary inquiry, explaining that the nightlife industry had been hugely damaged by the pandemic. “Due to the indefinite restrictions, musicians had to sell their instruments and shut down their businesses,” he said, claiming that some musicians had killed themselves as a result.
But even with the removal of the ban, those who work in the nightlife economy fear there is too much working against them. “For people out to party, there’s no second one or third drink. You can’t, it’s impossible,” says Tuna Öztürk, known professionally as Tuna Oz, a DJ and bartender who has worked in Istanbul’s nightlife scene for decades. “Things used to be more enjoyable for me, as I used to play two or three times a week. Now if I can play once a month I’m happy,” he says. “The situation during the pandemic put a dent in the industry; there was a massive loss of clubs and bars afterwards. Now there are just a few clubs. The music ban made everything more difficult.”
Öztürk has grown used to working multiple jobs to survive, spending his days at a bar tucked into an Istanbul backstreet and his nights at neighbouring Club Banger. The minimum fee he expects from any of the backstreet nightclubs he plays at is 1,000 lira (£30), sometimes rising to 2,500 lira for bigger clubs. “It should be much more,” he says. Sometimes, the clubs are so empty that he feels guilty demanding a fee.
Both Can and Öztürk say the housing crisis and other effects of the economic downturn has made their living costs almost unbearable. Inside Can’s apartment, stuffed with sparkling costumes alongside her many cats and dogs, she pulls out a collection of battery-powered camping lamps – her electricity and gas have been cut off for two years, as she can’t cover the arrears that built up during the pandemic. She estimates that turning on her electricity would cost her at least 11,000 lira, money she simply doesn’t have.
A really good week bellydancing will get her 5,000 lira, but those weeks are rare. She has taken to fortune-telling as a side gig, but it still isn’t enough.
Öztürk, meanwhile, spends his days playing soothing classical music in the bar and cafe where he works before the nights get hectic. Unlike in other cities where nightlife is a valued part of culture, complaints from the police about the noise or patrons outside the bar are common.
“If the police want to fine you, they’ll fine you – they’ll find something,” he says. “We’ve never seen any support from the government or municipality – instead all we get from them is stress, pressure.”
While Istanbul has a nominally liberal mayor from the opposition CHP, protecting nightlife has not been part of his priorities. In addition, the Beyoğlu district that forms the hub of the city’s bars and nightclubs is controlled by Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party, which has long seen nightlife as an anathema to more traditional Turkish culture, despite its long history in Istanbul.
Öztürk leans back in his chair, sighing in frustration. “I think their mentality is to be against the nightlife scene,” he says. “They’re against how people choose to enjoy their lives.”
