The novelist Elif Shafak was tried in 2006 and later acquitted of criminal charges of “insulting Turkishness” for a novel, “The Bastard of Istanbul,” that explored the killings of Ottoman Armenians by Turks in 1915, which Turkey does not recognize as genocide. “Every writer, journalist or poet in Turkey knows deep within that words can get you in trouble,” Ms. Shafak said. The Turkish Nobel laureate novelist Orhan Pamuk has also been tried and acquitted on the same charges.

“This was always the case in Turkey but it has become worse,” Ms. Shafak added. “Critical thought is clearly unwelcome. Media diversity and media freedom have visibly shrunk. As a result, there is a lot of self-censorship.”

Last year, the government proposed a new law that would create an 11-person council appointed directly by the cabinet to fund the arts, project by project. Now, the government allocates money to cultural institutions that are free to use it as they wish. Although the law is still in draft form, cultural figures are concerned that the new council would be driven more by politics than by art.

After the Turkish republic was established in 1923, its founder and first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, looked to the West for cultural references, and age-old Turkish traditions were repressed. In 1999, Mr. Erdogan was jailed for reciting a poem with the line “our minarets are our bayonets” during the time when he was mayor of Istanbul. Since coming to national power in 2002, Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party has cast itself as the defender of observant Muslims and Turkey’s rural heartland and has recently been depicting state-sponsored theater, ballet and opera as vestiges of the secular past. After consolidating power in consecutive elections, Mr. Erdogan has begun transforming state institutions. In a speech in 2012, he criticized the secular elites for their previous hold on culture.

“Is theater in this country your monopoly?” he said. “Are you the only people allowed to speak about arts in this country? Those days are over.”

He also said: “With privatization, go ahead and stage your theater as you desire. If funding is needed, we, as the government, will sponsor and support the plays we want.”