With biting humour and the street as canvas, artist exposes Turkiye’s ills

Turkish street artist Hikmeti Tabiyeci's subversive works of art symbolize grassroots protest against President Erdogan's rule.

A mock tombstone in the park designating the death of Turkish democracy. A poster on a lamppost suggesting people eat cake in the face of the national currency’s collapse.

The works of a Turkish street artist have become emblematic of the subversive forms of grassroots protest emerging against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s two-decade rule.

The 34-year-old Hikmeti Tabiyeci — a pseudonym meaning “physicist” in Ottoman-era Turkish — draws inevitable comparisons to the British superstar Banksy.

But the Turkish artist operates in a far more ominous landscape.

Turkish musicians, filmmakers and authors have been prosecuted for rebelling against the policies of Mr. Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted party, whose expanding influence covers much of the media, the education system and the courts.

“Even the most democratic gatherings are often prohibited,” Hikmeti Tabiyeci remarked in an interview in the capital Ankara.

A former political activist, Hikmeti Tabiyeci shot to fame after leaving his career in advertising and devoting himself to art four years ago.