Turkish pop culture takes over Halloween abroad

Dilara Özer – ISTANBUL

One person is dressed as a Turkish pop diva. Another has resurrected a character from a sitcom they watched growing up. Somewhere in the crowd, a decades-old celebrity scandal is turned into a costume. At Turkish Halloween, the dress code is Turkish pop culture’s hall of fame.

The brainchild of Emre Onar, a London-based event organizer who has lived in the U.K. for around a decade, Turkish Halloween started in 2023 with a simple question: Why should Halloween pop culture references stop at Britney Spears and Paris Hilton when Türkiye has its own treasure trove of iconic characters, outrageous celebrity moments and internet memes?

The idea had been brewing since 2017, when Onar attended a Halloween party in London where a friend showed up dressed as Turkish socialite Şeyma Subaşı and television producer Acun Ilıcalı. The costume stuck with him. Years later, after joking with friends about dressing up as singers Seda Sayan and Sibel Can, he decided to make it happen.

The first party drew around 80 people in London. This year, Turkish Halloween has expanded to Berlin and Amsterdam alongside London.

The pop culture that binds a generation

The parties recreate a shared cultural memory, particularly for millenials who grew up in Türkiye and moved abroad in the past decade, making the night one dominated by nostalgia from the 90s and 2000s.

“I think every generation experiences nostalgia for the period in which it grew up,” Onar said.

“But the 1990s and 2000s also had a distinctive aesthetic, music culture, television landscape and understanding of celebrity. We are talking about a period when television in Türkiye created a very strong shared culture. We all watched similar TV series, listened to the same songs and talked about the same celebrity gossip. So these references are not only sources of entertainment; they are also parts of our collective memory.”

Living abroad can give those seemingly ordinary memories a new significance, he points out. “The people who attend our parties are predominantly young expatriates who moved from Türkiye within roughly the past 10–15 years. Many of them feel a strong sense of nostalgia for Türkiye, particularly the Türkiye they remember from the past.”

Yeşilçam, the golden age of Turkish cinema, remains a major source of inspiration. Onar says he has seen six or seven different costumes based on legendary actress Türkan Şoray alone. Characters from sitcom Avrupa Yakası and the cult sci-fi comedy G.O.R.A. also make regular appearances.

Then there’s the internet’s seemingly endless ability to resurrect the past. Scenes from older series such as Yabancı Damat (The Foreign Groom) and Asmalı Konak (The Mansion with Vines) have found new audiences through social media, while long-forgotten celebrity outbursts continue to circulate as memes.

“Some moments that happened on television years ago, and were perhaps discussed for only a few days, are now circulating again online,” Onar says. “Some have become humorous references completely detached from their original context.”

More than a trip down memory lane

But the parties are not simply about recreating the past. As Turkish Halloween has grown, it has also begun to reflect how pop culture evolves. At this year’s Berlin party, songs by contemporary girl group Manifest had the crowd just as excited as established favorites such as
Tarkan.

“The biggest surprise at this year’s party in Berlin was Manifest. The group’s songs resonated incredibly strongly with the crowd. We played around six Manifest songs throughout the night, and we saw the same level of enthusiasm with each one. I think the impact Manifest has had is a pop culture phenomenon in its own right that deserves to be examined,” Onar said. “This also shows that the party is not solely about looking back at the past. Contemporary Turkish popular culture is gradually becoming part of this shared memory as well.”

More than simply wanting to have fun, Onar says, people want to be part of a culture that feels familiar to them, with a shared sense of humor and collective memory. Perhaps the most telling sign of its appeal is how far people are willing to travel. Attendees have come from Dublin and Istanbul to London in previous editions, and from Geneva, Prague, Amsterdam and other European cities to this year’s first stop in Berlin.

There is also the social aspect of the events. Attendees meet one another, chat and form friendships. Therefore, Onar says one thing matters as Turkish Halloween grows: Keeping the atmosphere intimate.

At last year’s 250-person London party, and again in Berlin, attendees told him how welcoming the events felt. People arrived as strangers and left having made friends. “I think this is very valuable for the diaspora. When you live abroad, you also want to spend time with people from your own culture. But when you bring people together through a shared sense of humor or outlook on life, I think the effect is much stronger.”