[6] She continued her high school education in Washington DC, and was taught by the abstract-expressionist Leon Berkowitz.
In 1970, she came first in the National Ministry of Education examinations and was sent to Paris on a scholarship to study painting at École des Beaux-Arts in the studio of Jean Bertholle.
After studying French advertisements and their representation of the female body, she became particularly interested in the photo-realism movement and created her first series of paintings entitled Fetishist Objects/Woman as an Object to explore how mass media uses fetish objects and objectifies female images.
[5] She further developed her style in a following series, Pictures of Happiness, where she moved from painting and began to use recycled images into art pieces.
[1] The exhibit covered Koçak's work from the 1960s and 2010s including selections of early drawings and photographs,[1] and explored representations of women in popular culture and the impact on Turkey.