Healing Through Culture: Intersections of Turkish Cinema, Theater, Literature, Music, and Traditional Arts with Medicine and Health

Abstract

Turkish culture has long held a dynamic relationship between the arts and healing. From the melancholic resonance of classical Turkish music in mental health therapy during the Ottoman era to the modern depictions of illness, trauma, and recovery in cinema and literature, Turkish artistic traditions continue to serve as both mirrors and mediators of human suffering. This paper explores how Turkish cinema, theater, literature, music, and traditional arts reflect, engage with, and influence perceptions of medicine, health, and healing. Drawing on historical practices, contemporary narratives, and interdisciplinary approaches, the study reveals how the arts function not only as cultural expressions but also as tools for psychological, emotional, and even physical healing.

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Introduction: Culture as a Mirror and Mechanism of Healing

In Turkish history and contemporary life, the boundaries between artistic expression and healing are fluid. The arts have served as instruments of medical treatment, conduits for expressing illness narratives, and tools for collective memory and social awareness around health issues. This multifaceted interaction is not unique to Turkey but finds in the country a rich and specific manifestation shaped by its unique cultural, religious, and historical fabric.

This paper traces the connections between five major domains of Turkish artistic expression—cinema, theater, literature, music, and traditional arts—and their intersections with medicine and health. It shows how these mediums illuminate the subjective experience of illness, reflect cultural attitudes toward the body and mind, and contribute to community and personal healing.

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1. Turkish Cinema and Medical Humanities: A Mirror to Society’s Wounds

Turkish cinema has become an increasingly vital platform for portraying health-related themes, offering insight into both physical and psychological suffering. From the post-Yeşilçam period to the modern era, Turkish films have grappled with topics ranging from disability and mental illness to terminal disease and systemic healthcare challenges.

One powerful example is Reha Erdem’s Kosmos (2010), in which a mystical, speech-impaired man performs miraculous healings in a remote Anatolian town. The film blurs the boundaries between spiritual and medical healing, invoking Sufi traditions while also questioning the village’s moral and social health. Here, healing is symbolic, physical, and spiritual—an embodiment of Turkey’s layered approaches to wellness.

Another poignant film is Çağan Irmak’s Babam ve Oğlum (2005), which, while primarily a family drama, engages deeply with trauma and grief following the 1980 military coup. Illness, both literal and metaphorical, becomes a way to process political violence. The child’s terminal condition stands for generational rupture, while reconciliation offers emotional closure and peace.

In more recent works, mental health has come to the fore. Films like Tolga Karaçelik’s Kelebekler (2018) subtly address depression and familial dysfunction, using dark humor and surreal elements. Meanwhile, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep (2014) contemplates moral and emotional alienation—a kind of spiritual sickness—in the life of a retired actor living in provincial Cappadocia.

These films do more than depict illness—they generate public discourse, validate hidden experiences, and offer aesthetic space for societal healing.

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2. Theater as Embodied Healing: Performance and Catharsis

In Turkish theater, themes of illness and health have also been prominent—often tied to broader societal struggles. The concept of catharsis, rooted in Aristotelian drama and known to Ottoman theater via both Islamic mysticism and Western influence, is central to understanding the therapeutic potential of performance.

One key historical example is Karagöz and Hacivat, the traditional Ottoman shadow play. Though often comical, these performances included themes of bodily health, aging, and quack medicine, parodying folk remedies and street physicians. They served not only as entertainment but also as social commentary on health practices and class-based access to care.

In modern Turkish theater, plays by Ferhan Şensoy, Genco Erkal, and Turgut Özakman often use illness and vulnerability as metaphors for social decay and personal reckoning. For instance, Şensoy’s satirical works critique bureaucratic indifference and emotional numbness—ailments of a different kind.

Therapeutic theater practices have also taken root in contemporary Turkey. Drama therapy is used in some rehabilitation centers and educational contexts, especially with children experiencing trauma or developmental challenges. Community theater projects have worked with refugees and earthquake survivors, using the stage as a place to process collective pain and envision resilience.

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3. Literature and the Inner Body: Illness in Turkish Fiction and Poetry

Turkish literature provides an expansive record of the interior experiences of illness and healing. From the Sufi-influenced metaphors of the Divan poets to modern psychological realism, Turkish writing reflects both metaphysical and medical understandings of health.

In Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s Huzur (A Mind at Peace), physical illness intertwines with existential malaise. The protagonist Mümtaz suffers from a mysterious ailment that mirrors his inner torment and anxiety about modernity, identity, and cultural rupture in Republican Istanbul. His body becomes a site where civilizational trauma is inscribed.

Latife Tekin’s Sevgili Arsız Ölüm (Dear Shameless Death) blends magical realism and folk medicine. The novel’s protagonist, Dirmit, grows up in a rural Anatolian village where sickness is treated through rituals, herbs, and spirits. Her urban migration introduces her to biomedical systems, yet she remains caught between two paradigms of health.

Poetry, too, bears witness to pain. Didem Madak’s confessional style often dwells on sickness, loss, and emotional recovery. In poems like Ah’lar Ağacı, the female body is both a battlefield and a shrine—a deeply personal yet universal metaphor for suffering and rebirth.

Literature thus becomes a diagnostic space, not only describing illness but also examining its social and spiritual dimensions.

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4. Music and the Soul: From Ottoman Music Therapy to Contemporary Soundscapes

Perhaps the most historically direct link between art and medicine in Turkey is found in music. During the Ottoman Empire, especially under Sultan Bayezid II, hospitals in Edirne and Manisa used classical Turkish music as therapy for mental illness. Music was believed to rebalance the humors, soothe the soul, and restore harmony between body and mind. Each makam (mode) was associated with different emotional and physiological effects.

For instance, rast makam was thought to strengthen the mind and heart; hüzzam invoked melancholy useful for patients needing emotional release. Instruments like the ney and kanun were central to this practice. Physicians and musicians worked together, reflecting a holistic understanding of health.

Today, this tradition has been revived in academic and therapeutic settings. The work of Dr. Nevzat Tarhan at Üsküdar University includes studies on music’s effects on the brain and emotional regulation. Music therapy is increasingly integrated into mental health care, elder care, and even oncology.

In contemporary Turkish music, themes of emotional distress, resilience, and identity are prominent. Artists like Sezen Aksu, Teoman, and Mabel Matiz channel personal and collective wounds—grief, heartbreak, existential questioning—into powerful lyrical forms. This is not merely entertainment but emotional processing on a national scale.

Moreover, communal music-making—through weddings, funerals, religious ceremonies—continues to serve a therapeutic role in Turkish life, reinforcing social bonds and alleviating individual pain.

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5. Traditional Arts and Holistic Health: Calligraphy, Ebru, and Healing Rituals

Beyond performance and narrative arts, traditional Turkish visual arts also engage with concepts of healing and inner balance. The meditative practices of ebru (paper marbling) and hat (Islamic calligraphy) have long been understood as spiritually cleansing and emotionally centering.

Ebru, in particular, emphasizes surrender, patience, and flow. Its unpredictability requires the artist to release control, mirroring therapeutic strategies in psychology. Practicing ebru has been introduced in some psychiatric and geriatric clinics in Turkey as a method for improving focus, reducing anxiety, and promoting sensory integration.

Calligraphy, meanwhile, often involves the repetition of sacred texts or divine names, creating a form of spiritual alignment. For some, the act of writing becomes a meditative ritual, akin to mindfulness practices now widely used in Western psychological therapy.

Other ritual arts—such as Sufi whirling (sema)—combine movement, breath, music, and prayer. While primarily religious, these practices have clear physiological effects: enhancing oxygenation, emotional regulation, and bodily awareness.

Together, these traditional forms promote a vision of health that is not merely biomedical but deeply interconnected with the soul, the community, and the divine.

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Conclusion: Reintegrating the Arts into Modern Healthcare

The rich interplay between Turkish art forms and health reveals a profound truth: healing is not only the domain of doctors and hospitals. It is also found in stories, songs, images, movements, and communal rituals. As Turkey modernizes its healthcare systems, there is an opportunity—not to abandon its cultural past—but to integrate these artistic modalities into contemporary care.

Arts-based interventions are now supported by growing empirical research and are being gradually introduced in Turkish medical schools, mental health centers, and elder care programs. Projects such as art therapy for earthquake survivors, music therapy in oncology wards, and bibliotherapy for youth mental health demonstrate the ongoing relevance of cultural healing practices.

In the end, Turkish cinema, theater, literature, music, and traditional arts do more than document illness—they offer language, rhythm, and space for healing. They remind us that medicine is not only about curing disease, but about restoring dignity, connection, and meaning.