Ultimate Turkish delight: Standup comedy club bridges cultural gaps

ISTANBUL — A Russian, a Syrian and a Penn State student walk into a bar.

This wasn’t just any Turkish bar — it was the first standup comedy club in Istanbul. The club, called TuzBiber Stand Up, has hosted shows in the city’s Kadıköy neighborhood for nearly a decade.

“I saw that there was this need in Istanbul for this kind of scene,” said Enes Uysal, founder of TuzBiber.

The club hosts Turkish lineup shows, with major names performing as headliners, and open mics in Turkish and English — so naturally, I had to go.

The sets take place in Aylak Bar, a dark two-floor Turkish bar that smelled of cigarettes and lost souls of open mic artists who bombed. Nick Stonesifer, Sophia Montanye and I made the ghastly mistake of sitting in the front row of the English open mic show, flashing our bulky camera and confused American attitudes.

“Hello, babes,” Berkin Kırbıyık, the third-year university student and host for the night, said to the crowd while throwing up a peace sign.

Kırbıyık attempted to warm up an icy crowd of 30 people with jokes so raunchy that I am self-censoring to protect my COMM 402 grade. In fact, the jokes throughout the night made me squirm in my seat. The more mundane topics incorporated dating stories and vegans.

“I wanted to taste the cow’s hopes and dreams,” one comedian said after saying he likes his steak blue rare.

An allegedly Turkish comedian with a British-English accent spoke for an excessive amount of time about his narcissism — the audience cheered as he was booted off. A Russian comedian made crass jokes about people in the audience.

Others talked about how the word for cannibalism in Turkish is pronounced “yum-yum-lick” and of course, the “sus” students from Pennsylvania sitting in the front row.

After one comedian opened a Pandora's box of American jokes, the rest came flooding out — and rightfully so. Every moment since being in Turkey has unveiled an intense realization of my own American ignorance — from subconsciously expecting everyone to speak English to not being able to adapt to an extroverted culture.

It wasn’t until that night that I realized I wasn’t alone.

“I’ll go up,” Stonesifer said. It took several moments before Montanye and I could pick our jaws up off the ground.

Stonesifer unraveled the struggles of being immediately perceived as American. He riffed so hard he received third place in the open mic competition. The rest of his ad-libbed set will forever remain a secret shared by those who were in TuzBiber.

Yet from that moment on, the comedians and crowd began to laugh with us, not at us. By acknowledging our ignorance through comedy, we seemed to gain some sliver of respect from others.

In fact, after the show, we were invited to grab drinks with two of the comedians and their friends. After talking to them for hours, we gained a much-needed perspective on Turkish culture that we may not have received otherwise.

Who would’ve thought a hint of self-awareness and standup comedy could turn cultural faux pas into respect?