Turgay Doğan, born in 1974 in Gelsenkirchen, decided to become a freelance artist after an “incomplete” degree in physics. Since then he has been commuting between the Ruhr area and Istanbul and working as an actor, director and playwright. In Istanbul he founded the acting collective Gnlev, was its artistic director and staged his own texts. Doğan’s writing activities include numerous translations from German (Richter, Brecht, Schimmelpfennig) into Turkish. In 2015 he was voted Best Playwright by the Turkish magazine Yeni Tiyatro, and he can be seen as an actor in various cinema and film productions (including the ARD series Mordkommission Istanbul). He also works regularly as a lecturer for the Goethe-Institut Istanbul. Doğan has received many international short film awards for his work as a screenwriter. His production of Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children was shown at the Gera/Landestheater Altenburg (Theater and Philharmonic Thuringia) in the 2016/17 season in the main house.
 
Turgay Doğan was a resident at Tarabya Cultural Academy from October 2020 to January 2021.