UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Eurimages and Turkish cinema: history, identity, culture Yilmazok, L. Link to publication

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1 UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Eurimages and Turkish cinema: history, identity, culture Yilmazok, L. Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Ylmazok, L. (2012). Eurimages and Turkish cinema: history, identity, culture General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam ( Download date: 18 Feb 2018

2 Hi s t or y, I dent i t y, Cul t ur e L eventyı l maz ok L ev entyı l maz ok Eur i magesandt ur ki s hci nema: Hi s t or y, I dent i t y, Cul t ur e Eur i magesand Tur ki s hci nema

3 Eurimages and Turkish Cinema: History, Identity, Culture

4 Copyright 2012 by Levent Yılmazok All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. ISBN:

5 Eurimages and Turkish Cinema: History, Identity, Culture ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. dr. D.C. van den Boom ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Agnietenkapel op donderdag 31 mei 2012, te 12:00 uur door Levent Yılmazok geboren te Adana, Turkije

6 Promotiecommissie Promotor: Prof. dr. P.P.R.W. Pisters Overige Leden: Prof. dr. T.P. Elsaesser Prof. dr. I.M. van der Poel Dr. A.B. Schneider Prof. dr. F.P.I.M. van Vree Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen

7 Table of Contents Acknowledgements xi Introduction 1 National Identity and Cinema 4 Overview of Chapters 8 Part I: Eurimages as a New Concept in Turkish Cinema Chapter 1 - A Short History of Turkish Cinema: Early Years: Films Shaped by the Mass Audience: Survival: Conclusion 45 Chapter 2 The State of Turkish Cinema in the Post-1990 Period and Eurimages as a New Source of Support 47 Films, Movie Theatres, Film Admission 47 The Change of the Movie-goers Profile 50 The Penetration of American Distributors 54 New Financial Sources for Filmmaking 55 Eurimages: Philosophy, History, Mechanism 57 Philosophy 57 History 60 Mechanism 63 Co-production Support 64 Exhibition Support 73 v

8 Distribution Support 75 Digitisation Support 77 Conclusion 78 Chapter 3 The Case of Turkey: The Story after Twenty Years Experience in Eurimages 81 Co-production, Partners, Contribution 81 National Representative and Blockage 87 Nationalness versus Europeanness of the Films 89 Speaking Statistics 98 Exhibition and Distribution Support 102 Criticisms 103 Conclusion 106 Part II: Representation of Identities Chapter 4 - Ethnic Identities 111 Historical Background 111 Nationalism and Film 120 Implicit Representation: Banal Forms of Nationalism 122 Contrastive Representations of Nationalism 124 Big Man, Little Love 127 Diverse Ethnic Identities 130 Kurdish Identity 130 Kurds and Films 133 Journey to the Sun 136 (Non-Muslim) Minorities 139 vi

9 Greek Identity 140 Greeks and Films 143 Armenian Identity 146 Other Ethnic Identities 148 Conclusion 149 Chapter 5 - Religious Identities 153 Historical Background 153 Sunni Islam 160 Sunni Islam and Films 163 Takva: A Man s Fear of God 165 Istanbul beneath My Wings 170 Alevism 173 Summer Love 177 Christianity 179 Judaism 181 Conclusion 183 Chapter 6 - Gender Identities 187 Women in the Ottoman Period 188 Women in the Republican Period 192 The Second Wave of Feminism 198 Women and Films 201 Graduate of Insanity 205 Bliss 209 LGBT Identities 215 vii

10 LGBT Identities and Films 222 Steam: The Turkish Bath 226 Toss Up 228 Conclusion 230 Conclusion 233 Appendix A Interview Questions 243 B Number of Released Turkish Feature Films 249 C Eurimages Co-production Support in Years 251 D - Co-production Support Amounts for Turkish-initiative Projects and Audience Figures of Those Films 253 E Eurimages-backed Projects: Turkish Co-producers were the Minority Party 255 F - Exhibition Support Figures for the Movie Theatres of Turkey 259 G 1) Turkish Films Distributed in Europe through Eurimages Distribution Support 261 G 2) European films Distributed in Turkey through Eurimages Distribution Support 264 H - Annual Fees Turkey has Paid to Eurimages and the Support Received 275 I - The Signs, Acts and Expressions That Represent Diverse Identities in Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative Films 277 J - Cast, Credits and Synopses of Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative Films 307 viii

11 References 331 Summary 349 Nederlandse Samenvatting 353 ix

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13 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply grateful to a number of important individuals who have provided much welcome support throughout the whole process of this research. Without their help, it would not have been possible to reach this final and climactic point. I would like to express special thanks to Patricia Pisters, for accepting me as a PhD candidate and for supervising my dissertation in an earnestly helpful and sincerely dedicated manner. She has not only enriched my vision of cinema and academic research, but has also been readily accessible and supportive in the utmost whenever I have needed her assistance. I would thank to Thomas Elsaesser, Ieme van der Poel, Ryclef Rienstra, Alexandra Schneider and Frank van Vree for kindly accepting to take part in my committee despite their busy schedules. Mr. Rienstra, besides being involved as an advisory member in the committee, has contributed hugely to the construction of this research paper, which was massively aided by the interview he participated in and the sources he happily provided. The other cinema professionals who have contributed to the content of this work by partaking in valuable interviews include: Semir Aslanyürek, Ahmet Boyacıoğlu, Reis Çelik, Murat Çiçek, Mehmet Demirhan, Zeki Demirkubuz, Adalet Dinamit, Faruk Günaltay, Semih Kaplanoğlu, Temel Kerimoğlu, Özer Kızıltan, Hetty Naaijkens, Roberto Olla, Ali Özgentürk, Dorien van de Pas, Ömer Uğur, Yeşim Ustaoğlu and Seçkin Yasar. I am indebted to each of them individually. Mustafa Turaç and Alev Yılmaz from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey provided the most essential and vital numerical data needed for this research. Their contribution should not be underestimated. Sami Şekeroğlu has supported me consistently and reliably, from the very first day I decided to be a film scholar. He and other scholars from the Turkish Film & TV Institute, namely Alev İdrisoğlu, Asiye Korkmaz, Cem Odman, Yüksel Aktaş, Esra Berk Eren, Feray Türkan from Show TV and Berna Uçarol, have willingly supplied the films and/or printed sources I needed. They were of inestimable importance in helping me to xi

14 make contact with the filmmakers for the interviews. Their support was unequivocally beneficent and I am most grateful to them. I also want to thank to Uğur Erhan Güven, Özgür Nemutlu, Dora Şahintürk, Özsel Tortop and Emine Yıldırım for mediating between me and the filmmakers when arranging the interviews. The Lambdaistanbul Association supplied several sources relating to LGBT issues; the last chapter would be incomplete without their support and I greatly appreciate their help. David Clough has edited and proofed my written English. Amy Kenyon and Susan Stocker also supported me with my formal English at various stages of the research process. Aydın Özgül helped me to transform my initial research idea into a comprehensive and succinct proposal and Serkan Seçer gave much needed feedback regarding the final version of the text. I am grateful to all of them individually. Eloe Kingma, Ania Dalecki and Jantine van Gogh were ready to help in the ASCA office whenever I had any query or concern. I would like to express my thanks to them as well as to my office mates and other friends who I met during the Film Philosophy and Theory seminars; they always provided me with genuine moral support, often just by their reassuring presence and warm smiles. Among them, I want to give my special thanks to Lara Mazurski and Irina Souch for willingly accepting to support me during the ceremony and to organise the concomitant events. Finally I would like to convey my love for and gratitude to my whole family. Handan Aloğlu Yılmazok has had to be tolerant in the extreme and has had to bear all the inevitable negative side effects of the writing process. She has given me moral support in abundance. She has cheered me up with her sweet words and with delicious dishes of all kinds. Our son and sunshine, Ozan Güneş, joined us in the final phase of the PhD and has accompanied us day and night with his soft cries and joyful smiles. My parents have supported me throughout the research process, and, more significantly, have guided, loved and provided for me all my life. Without them, this PhD would be nothing. xii

15 INTRODUCTION Located on the south eastern corner of the continent, the relations of Turkey with Europe have always been contentious. It was through the loss of territories incurred by the Ottomans that Europe and its Ottoman neighbours began for the first time to establish inter-cultural relations, and the Ottoman regime had admitted some limited Westernisation as early as the beginning of the 18 th century. After the republican revolution adopted wholesale Westernised policies, Turkey became part of many Western/European-based economic, political, military, sporting and cultural transnational organisations in the 20 th century. Nevertheless, Turkey has remained as the cultural other of Europe. The position of the country has pitched it at the pivotal centre of arguments over the East-West dichotomy with regard to cultural identity. This has been the case perhaps more than ever since the negotiations over Turkish accession to the European Union began in Whether Turkey is culturally European, or indeed Eastern, is fiercely debated in EU circles today. Europe - as a concept, a neighbour, a union and a cultural other - has been no less contentious a bloc for Turkey. While the pro-western approach in Turkey sees the West in general and Europe in particular as a reference point for reforms or improvements made in various arenas of social and political life, a more conservative stance perceives it as foreign, moreover a threat to domestic culture. European organisations such as the Council of Europe and the EU have from time to time been perceived to adopt an insolent attitude which gives Turkey a disdainful name. Due to the burning fire of ongoing debate, the cultural identities of Europe and Turkey continue to be critical points of argument in the international agenda. Cinema, arguably the most popular of the arts, might well be thought to be an appropriate space to be explored as a medium that both reflects and contributes to the construction of cultural and national identities. Furthermore, when we think of the cultural relations between Turkey and Europe and the current debates, Eurimages - the cinema support fund of the Council of Europe - arises as a vastly significant phenomenon. Out of four new sources of financial support for Turkish cinema that emerged in the post

16 period, Eurimages is the only non-domestic one wherein decisions are taken with the agreement of the various national representatives of the member states. Turkish-initiative co-productions - those directed by Turkish filmmakers, the themes and milieu of which belong to Turkey - that are approved for financial support by the delegates of a supranational European organisation have the potential to provide interesting data on the perceptions of Turkey in the West. The Council of Europe on the other hand, and naturally its correlate organs, stake a claim to a series of prized values such as democracy, human rights and the promotion of Europe s cultural identity and diversity. In this context, the objective of this research is to explore the contribution of Eurimages to the Turkish cinema industry, to discern the various relevant facts derived from a study of Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films, and to analyse the representation of diverse identities in these films. With an experience of twenty years of membership, Turkey s case, I contend, is valuable in terms of being posited as an example of the impact and contribution that a European supranational fund can have on a national cinematic tradition, and tracing recent Turkish national cinema in this respect will uncover a variety of vital and deeply resonant cultural signifiers of Turkey. As written materials on this quite new phenomenon are limited in number, my work is a field-based research - in addition to providing a historical background and theoretical references. I have studied all of the Turkish-initiative films that have received Eurimages co-production support in the first twenty years of Turkey s membership in the organisation ( ), except one that has not been released yet; which makes a total amount of fifty-nine films out of sixty. In addition I have examined relevant Eurimages documents (those that are accessible). I have also conducted interviews with relevant professionals. This study thus provides primary data on a large scale about Turkish cinema in relation to Eurimages. The sixty films falling within the scope of this research are those whose majority co-producers were from Turkey and/or those in which the content represents Turkey even where the Turkish producer is the minority party in the co-production setup of the project. The year of the decision to support a film with Eurimages funds and the year a film is released are often not the same. The thesis covers the first twenty years of membership, so 2

17 the films covered are those that have been supported between 1990 and However, the first of these films was released a year later - in and the last one was released in The films will be addressed with regard to their themes and thematic content rather than their technical and aesthetical aspects; i.e. I will not provide any value judgments as to the films directors talent or lack thereof. Eurimages documents were accessable via the official web site of the organisation. Due to the changing conditions and various demands from the film industry, the Fund has often updated its regulations. The references in this research are the latest regulations but the earlier ones are also recalled in the footnotes to inform the reader and where it is necessary. In addition to the open public documents, I have also examined Eurimages documents that Ryclef Rienstra the first executive director of Eurimages - donated to the library of Eye Filminstituut Nederland, thanks to his permission. The interviews have contributed greatly to my conceptualisation of the phenomenon. My sample of interviewees consisted of nineteen professionals who have first-hand experience of Eurimages to varying degrees at various times and in various stages of the process. They included: two executive directors of Eurimages; three national representatives of Turkey; one national representative of the Netherlands; nine filmmakers from Turkey; one filmmaker (a co-producer of a Turkish-initiative film) from the Netherlands; and three managers of movie theatres in Turkey. 1 These numbers thus made up one-third of the executive directors of the Fund throughout its history, one-third of the Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films (filmmakers), all of the national representatives of Turkey throughout Eurimages history and four movie theatres that have received exhibition support from the Fund. As for the filmmakers I could not access, I have compiled a body of literature on them and have cited some of those who have appeared in the media. Thus a general picture of the Eurimages narrative, its mechanisms of practice, its philosophy and the relation between Eurimages and Turkish cinema, has been achieved. The data which I believe to be important but which could not be placed in the text for the sake of fluency can be found in the appendices. These are, respectively: The 1 A list of the interviewed professionals and the questions asked to them can be seen in Appendix-A. 3

18 Questions Asked to the Interviewees; the Number of Released Turkish Feature Films between 1896 and 2011; Eurimages Co-production Support in Years; Co-production Support Amounts for Turkish-initiative Projects and Audience Figures of Those Films; A List of Eurimages-backed Projects where Turkish Co-producers were the Minority Party; Exhibition Support Figures for the Movie Theatres of Turkey; Turkish Films Distributed in Europe through Eurimages Distribution Support and European Films Distributed in Turkey through Eurimages Distribution Support; Annual Fees Turkey has Paid to Eurimages and the Support Received; The Signs, Acts and Expressions that Represent Diverse Identities in Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative Films; and Cast, Credits and Synopses of Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative Films. Since a substantial part of the research covers the representation of identities in the films concerned and those identities are components of Turkish national identity, I will briefly explain the term national identity as used in this work and its relation to cinema, before proceeding to an overview of the chapters. National Identity and Cinema Anthony D. Smith (1991) suggests that, as the main form of collective identification in modernity, the national is the most fundamental and pervasive identity in that it provides a powerful means of defining and locating individuals in the world. Covering the whole population in a limited geographical territory, national identity stresses common characteristics and a shared culture, and it aims to integrate the inhabitants into the nationstate and the national system. Smith lists the five fundamental features of national identity as: a historic territory or homeland; common myths and historical memories; a common, mass public culture; common legal rights and duties for all members; and a common economy with territorial mobility for members (14). In this sense he defines the nation as a named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members (14). An individual who is member of a nation and thus defined by a national identity is constituted of multiple other identities at the same time. Smith classifies these as being chiefly familial, territorial, class-based, religious, ethnic and gender-based. I will return to multiple identities later. 4

19 It was Benedict Anderson who termed the nation as an imagined community, formed in 18 th century Europe via the contribution of novels and newspapers, for these forms provided the technical means for re-presenting the kind of imagined community that is the nation (2006, 25). This representation is still undertaken today. That is to say, the nation and national identity need to be tirelessly buttressed and reassured, not only through printed media but also by means of audiovisual media and a variety of state apparatuses. Therefore, the role of cinema in the construction and re-construction of the nation is crucial. National identity, nevertheless, much like the concept of identity in and of itself, is not a fixed entity but is flexible in the face of changing internal and international conditions. It is an uncompleted process of construction. National identity is indeed complex, impure, heterogeneous and culturally hybrid. It is multi-dimensional and intrinsically involves plurality, conflicts and differences. Those differences generate negligence and the exclusion of some groups (and their respective identities) which are therein subordinated to the dominant one(s). The deviant or other identities are often culturally or coercively oppressed. Homi K. Bhabha states that difference is the central problem of the nation: Once the liminality of the nation-space is established, and its difference is turned from the boundary outside to its finitude within, the threat of cultural difference is no longer a problem of other people. It becomes a question of the otherness of the people-as-one (2006, 301). Counter-narratives that evoke and erase the totalising boundaries of the nation, however, disturb the ideological manoeuvres through which imagined communities are given essentialist identities (300). The argument of Bhabha is important for this study, for film often turns into one of the counter-narratives that question the essentialism of the nation by exhibiting cultural differences and diverse identities, as I will explain in the following paragraphs. National cinema is a feature of the cultural milieu of the nation. It is one of several and by all accounts often a crucial facet of the propagation and discussion of the nation and its identity. Andrew Higson (1997) notes four uses of the concept of nationality with reference to national cinema. These are: economic terms; exhibition and consumption; particular film movements or directors; and representation, i.e. what the films refer to and re-present. It is the representational dimension which we can use to 5

20 evaluate the existence or absence of certain identities in films. In terms of representation, Higson argues that either national films reflect the status-quo of the nation, or national identity is constructed in and through representation. In other words, to recall and extend the definition given by Anderson and apply it to cinema, films re-present the imagined community to their spectators. Stuart Hall (2003), on the other hand, notes three theories of representation: reflective, intentional and constructionist. According to the reflective approach, language functions like a mirror and it reflects meaning as it exists in the object, person, idea or event. The intentional approach, the opposite of the reflective, accepts that the speaker or author imposes his or her meanings on the world through language. Thus the meaning is what is intended by the one who uses the language. It makes meaning fully relative to the intentions of the speaker. The third one, the constructionist approach, addresses the social dimension of language. Accordingly, meaning is not fixed in language but is constructed by us using representational systems, concepts and signs in concert. Referring to those three theories of representation that are remarked upon by Hall, I contend that the intentionality dimension can be added to the notion of representation in films outlined by Higson. Basically, how the filmmaker imposes his or her meaning via a film, i.e. expressing his/her vision (in relation to national identity), is crucial. We can safely say that films reflect or narrate the nation and its culture, but at the same time they serve to construct and reconstruct the nation by representing it, and the intention of the filmmaker becomes a critical factor. Therefore national films not only underpin and support the conventional national identity but may pose questions about the internal conflicts within the imagined community through counter-representations, such as by representing the differences, the diverse identities, the schisms and tensions etc. Moreover, Hall (1994) reminds us that no representation could occur without relations of difference. What has not been shown before, what is absent in films, should be considered to be significant; national cinema, like national identity, is not fixed anymore, and this is especially so in our era of transnationalism and multiculturalism. The Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films in this research piece might reflect the society, or intentionally impose their messages upon the viewer, or they might 6

21 act as artistic works which serve to construct identities. Whether the films either reflect the imagined community of Turkey or are critical about it and whether we think that the meanings that films transmit are constructed or not, what has constant prime significance in this research is what is represented in the films. Regarding identity as constructed within discourse, difference and representation processes, making identities problematic and representing diversity within the nation-state will, I argue, enrich our perception and understanding of identities by making us ask critical and crucial questions. If I turn to the classification of Smith for the multiple identities an individual is constituted of (namely familial, territorial, class, ethnic, religious and gender), this research will put special emphasis on, and open separate headings for, the last three of these for their significance in the founding ideology of Turkey as a nation-state and thus of Turkish national identity. Ethnic, religious and gender identities had crucial roles in the transition from empire to republic which came with the 1923 revolution, and they have remained problematic hitherto a historical background and detailed information regarding this will be provided in the second part of the research. Hence, compared to others, ethnic, religious and gender identities are represented or problematised much more in the films in our scope. As for the other three multiple identities, I will treat territorial identity with respect to national territory and it will be thereby be covered where the nationalness of the Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films is discussed (Chapter 3). Smith (1991) argues that class identity is inherently difficult in terms of our treating it as a basis for an enduring collective identity and community, as categories of economic interest are likely to subdivide people and economic factors are subject to rapid fluctuations. Class is thus beyond the scope of this research. Moreover, class identity is not sufficiently focused on or represented in Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films to justify a separate chapter. Nonetheless, I believe that class and its representation in Turkish cinema deserves to be researched on its own. Familial identity is not covered separately for the same reason representations of the family and family dynamics are not as comprehensively covered in the Eurimages-backed films. Hence, familial identity is treated as a part of the gender relations in these films (Chapter 6). 7

22 Overview of Chapters The research is composed of two essential blocs. Part I (chapters 1, 2 and 3) is more descriptive, aiming to provide a backdrop so as to inform the reader as to the general phenomena concerned. It presents a short history of Turkish cinema, links this with Turkey's early acquaintance with Eurimages, and explores the results that have come of the co-production, exhibition and distribution support provided by the Fund to Turkish cinema. The cultural objective of the Council of Europe (2009) is to promote awareness and encourage the development of Europe s cultural identity and diversity. Its cinema support fund, Eurimages (2003), hence encourages filmmakers to reflect and promote the contribution of diverse national components to Europe s cultural identity. Part II explores this principle of reflecting and promoting Europe's diverse identity in the imagined community of Turkey by addressing the problematic aspects of national identity therein and by looking at the representation of the intrinsically complex diversity of the Turkish nation in films, with specific regard to ethnicity, religion and gender. Besides providing a historical background, chapters 4, 5 and 6 in Part II are more analytical. In other words, Part II examines how Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films reflect and promote the contributions of ethnic, religious and gender minorities/components to Turkey s national and overall cultural identity. Chapter 1 provides a short history of Turkish cinema up until the 1990s, the time when Eurimages came onto the scene. It is impossible to name Turkish cinema as an industry during the period between 1896 and 1950, the early years, but rather this was an era when a series of factors that influenced the filmmaking practices of the later periods emerged. The following period, between 1950 and 1975, saw cinema attain a distinctive economy in which films were shaped by mass audience demand. This led to a high number of films being produced, such that Turkey was among the top producers of the world. The pervasiveness of TVs, the heated political atmosphere and the invasion of cinemas by sex comedies brought about the withdrawal of families, the mass audience, from movie theatres, and Turkish cinema sought to merely survive from the mid-1970s on. Chapter 1 depicts the film history of Turkey in relation to the economic and political conditions of the country tout court and the cinema industry specifically. 8

23 Chapter 2 describes the post-1990 period of Turkish cinema and its acquaintance with Eurimages. Compared to the preceding periods, the cinema environment of Turkey was then experiencing a series of novelties, such as changes in the movie-goers profile, the penetration of American distributors into the film market, and the emergence of new financial sources for filmmaking. Out of the key new financial sources, the only nondomestic one was Eurimages. The second part of Chapter 2 outlines the philosophy and rationale behind the establishment of such a film fund in the Council of Europe, and looks at its history and mechanisms, i.e. how the system works in terms of co-production, exhibition, distribution and digitisation support. Chapter 3 examines the effects and contributions of Eurimages, a supra-national cinema support fund which demands a series of extra-domestic criteria to be met, on Turkish national cinema after its experience of twenty years of being left behind in terms of membership. The co-producer country preferences of Turkish producers, the contributions of Eurimages support to filmmaking practices in Turkey, and to the exhibition and distribution of films, are put forth in this chapter. The experiential history of the past twenty years is accompanied by relevant statistical data and numerical graphs. The nationalness of Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films is an interesting topic for they are co-productions supported by supranational funding and this is discussed in terms of both style and content. The debates over whether Eurimages supports certain films that throw dirt at Turkey or not will be addressed in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 explores the question of ethnic identities and their representation in Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films. Historical background regarding the Ottoman state is provided - this was an empire composed of diverse ethnicities. This is followed by a description of the establishment of the Republic of Turkey as a modern and centralist nation-state that adopted a unified cultural identity. Although it was rather more a territorial nationalism than an ethnic one in theory, the actual practices of the state could not escape from excluding, oppressing or neglecting diverse other identities and a homogenisation process was an intrinsic element of the state-building endeavours of the republic. This rendered the nation-state open to the criticism of engendering Turkish ethnocentrism. As Smith writes, the context, if not the form, of Turkish national identity, proved elusive (1991, 104). Chapter 4 thus looks at the representation of Turkish 9

24 nationalism as the official ideology of the nation-state and of diverse ethnicities in the films addressed herein. The focus of Chapter 5 is religious identities, which have easily recognisable signs such as customs, theistic symbols and rituals. Like a common language, religion seems to be a very important component of national identity. However, since certain subethnic groups adopt other religions and religious forms of identification and practice, religion can also have a divisive function. This can occur even within the same ethnic grouping. The Sunni majority and the Alevi community are the two biggest Muslim communities in Turkey, and are unrelated to ethnic membership. The approval of the former as a state religion and the exclusion and negligence of the latter during both imperial rule and the republican period necessitates these two beliefs being treated under separate headings. The groups which are officially named minority refer to the Christian and Jewish communities. Chapter 5 puts forth the founding ideology of the republic with respect to religion and secularism, the influence of religion in politics, and the representation of diverse religious beliefs in Eurimages films. Gender identities are the concern of Chapter 6. Encompassing all economic classes as do ethnic and religious identities - and yet holding a more universal character, gender in recent years has been included in the scholarly works that focus on national identity. While roles based on sexuality (biologically defined) have benefitted nationbuilding processes, discourses on gender (those that divorce gender from sex) often challenge the unity that a national identity presumes. Women were substantially secluded from social life until the republican revolution which attributed central importance to their emancipation. The identities that fall outside heterosexuality were neglected and excluded by the state, society and family but they have become more visible in the post period thanks to their own political struggles for rights. The cases of womanhood and LGBT identities gender identities that remain outside manliness (a term of George L. Mosse) - are still problematic and they merit separate headings in terms of their representations. Chapter 6 covers these two. Overall, moving through the inter-disciplinary realms of cinema, history and cultural representations, this research aims to achieve valid and helpful findings, 10

25 establishing the key links between Turkish film history, Eurimages and the diverse components of the Turkish national identity. The study explores these interrelations, and it demonstrates both how Turkish history, identity and culture (in their myriad multiple senses) have shaped the content of the films, and conversely how the themes embedded in the films have challenged, questioned, criticised and vocalised Turkey s history-cumculture-cum-identity - again, in a quintessentially conflictive and multifarious way. 11

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27 PART I

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29 Chapter 1 A SHORT HISTORY OF TURKISH CINEMA: The history of Turkish cinema exhibits similar traits to other national cinemas, but it also has a number of distinctive characteristics. 2 The economic and political conditions affecting the country had an inevitable impact on the film industry. Moreover, audience preferences played an important role in shaping the national cinema. Regarding the marked characteristics, it is possible to divide the history of Turkish cinema in three distinct periods up to 1990 that I will address in this chapter. The early years cover a relatively long time frame, from the introduction of cinematograph to the country until 1950 a period in which the figures for cinema were not bright in terms of film production and the content of films. Those were the growing years of Turkish cinema. The section on the early years is followed by the period between 1950 and 1975, when the cinema turned into a distinct economy and films were shaped by the mass audience. Then the final section of this chapter, the survival period of Turkish cinema, comes, which covers the years between 1975 and Early Years: The cinematograph was introduced to the Ottomans at the end of 1896 or early 1897, approximately a year after the first public screening on 28 th December 1895 in France. 3 The palace circle (the sultan, his family, and senior bureaucrats) was able to view this seemingly magic invention earlier than the public. The first few movie theatres operated in Istanbul, Izmir, and Salonika. The second declaration of a constitutional monarchy in 1908 (the first was in 1876) had a positive impact on the increase in the number of movie theatres throughout the country. Previous resistance to film entertainment, which took its roots at least in part from Islam, diminished somewhat with this fundamental act in favour 2 The history of Turkish cinema sections are largely based on my MFA thesis (Yılmazok 2007), and they refer to various sources, among them Özön (1968), Şekeroğlu (1988) and Scognamillo (2003). 3 The exact date of the first film screening in the Ottoman Empire has not yet been clarified by historians. 15

30 of democracy and freedom. In addition, the partial take over of the sultan s authority by the parliament gave way to a more relaxed atmosphere in social and cultural life. Unlike most European countries and the United States of America in which film industries were created and developed by entrepreneurs, the first cinema institution in the Ottoman Empire was established by the state, by order of Enver Pasha, the top commander of the army and the Minister of War. The Central Military Office of Cinema (CMOC / Merkez Ordu Sinema Dairesi) came into being in The CMOC had no fixed objectives related to film culture, cinema politics or strategy, but had instead an entirely military mission of shooting and screening troop movements at the front, the operations of military plants, the deployment of new weapons given by allied forces, military training, and other noteworthy events. Sigmund Weinberg, acting as an agent for Pathé Frères and screening films for the public, had already made an important contribution to the growth of cinematic entertainment in the country. He was then appointed director of the newly established CMOC. Weinberg prompted the CMOC to produce two feature films. However, those projects were interrupted after shooting started: Horhor the Roasted Chickpea Seller (Leblebici Horhor) was ended due to the death of a leading actor and The Marriage of Lord Himmet (Himmet Ağa nın İzdivacı) after a call for actors to do military service in the ongoing World War I. In 1916, following Romania s entry into the War against the Ottoman Empire, Weinberg was removed from his position in the CMOC because of his Romanian origin. The Marriage of Lord Himmet was completed by his assistant, Fuat Uzkınay, in Thus Sedat Simavi, a young journalist, though starting to shoot after Weinberg, became the director of the first publicly screened domestic feature films in 1917, The Claw (Pençe) and The Spy (Casus). 4 In addition to the CMOC, some nongovernmental organisations whose main mission was to support the later War of 4 It is generally accepted that the first Turkish film was the documentary entitled The Demolition of the Russian Monument at St. Stephen (Ayastefanos taki Rus Abidesi nin Yıkılışı), said to be shot by Fuat Uzkınay in However, dozens of documentaries had already been produced after the introduction of the cinematograph to the country by non-muslim citizens of the empire and by foreigners. Referring to Uzkınay s Turkish-Muslim identity, 1914 is cited by historians as the starting point of Turkish cinema. It is arguable that the first feature films of 1917 mark a more reasonable starting point insofar as feature films may reflect characteristic themes and style that might be considered more obviously specific to national cinemas. 16

31 Independence also produced films in order to generate funding. However, by 1921, the total number of Turkish feature films still amounted to just six. 5 Although the popularity of cinema had grown in terms of screenings soon after the invention of the medium and through numerous well-produced documentaries, the emergence of the first domestic feature films came late compared to Europe and the US. The underlying reason for this gap can be assessed by considering the economic and political conditions of the state in the first place. The empire was in a state of collapse during this period, not only because of the independence movements among its constitutive nations, but also as a result of its participation (and defeat) in military action. Furthermore, the economic situation (and specifically the failure to accumulate capital) did not create an environment hospitable to the production of feature films. It should be noted that there was almost nothing one could call a national film industry in this period. The years between 1922 and 1938 are known as the Muhsin Ertuğrul period since he was the sole director shooting feature films during these seventeen years. This period corresponds approximately to the establishment stage of the Republic of Turkey. 6 After his visit to France and Germany where he had gained experience as both an actor and a director, Ertuğrul returned to Istanbul in With his encouragement (and that same year), Kemal Seden founded Kemal Film, the first film production company in the country. Following the box-office success of its initial movie, and again with the encouragement of Ertuğrul, Kemal Film founded the first laboratory and studio of Turkish film history, despite the primitive and meagre conditions. Ertuğrul had shot six feature films by 1924, the last two of which were box-office failures, thus forcing Kemal Film to withdraw from the film production business. Ertuğrul went to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics for a few years. An important point about these years is that while only non-muslim women were acting in movies until 1923, The Shirt of Fire (Ateşten Gömlek) became the first film in which Turkish Muslim women (Bedia Muvahhit and Neyyire Neyyir) acted. 5 The Turkish War of Independence against the occupying powers started in 1919, following the defeat of World War I, and ended in Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and victory in the War of Independence, the Republic of Turkey was declared in

32 Returning from the USSR, Ertuğrul encouraged the İpekçi Family (previously dealers in textiles, film exhibition and photography) to enter the film production business. Thus, in 1928, İpek Film was founded as the second film production company. As Ertuğrul was the director of the Istanbul Municipal Theatre at the same time, the schedule of film production was arranged according to the theatre seasons. In general, the plays which won audience recognition during the season were filmed in the summer, after the theatre had closed its doors for the holiday. İpek Film was the sole producer of feature films until The first Turkish talkie - a co-production with Greece and Egypt - was produced in 1931, three years after the introduction of sound to cinema; the name of the film was On Istanbul Streets (İstanbul Sokaklarında). The studio shooting and the dubbing of this film were completed in France. Having observed great audience interest in this first talkie, Ertuğrul convinced İpek Film to build a film studio. Unlike Kemal Film s, this studio was equipped with the latest technology of the day. Although Ertuğrul possessed the advanced film technology, his film language is known to be theatrical rather than cinematic. Since he regarded himself principally as a stage artist (indeed he is the founder of contemporary Turkish theatre), cinema was a secondary profession for him, more like a spare time activity to take place when the theatre was closed. Moreover, what he demanded from actors on the film set was the theatrical truth. Therefore, the theatre-rooted future film artists who were trained in his crews sustained the influence of theatre on Turkish cinema throughout the 1940s and 1950s, as scriptwriters, art directors, actors, and directors. However, despite his negative influence, it should be noted that Ertuğrul remains one of the outstanding figures in Turkish film history; he brought his theatrical discipline to cinema, encouraged entrepreneurs (Kemal Film and İpek Film) to invest in film production where the state evaded it, and trained many people who continued to work in the film industry for many years after his resignation. Additionally, the appearance of Muslim Turkish actresses, the first talkie, the first co-production and, later, one of the first colour films (in 1953) were all introduced to Turkish cinema by Ertuğrul. Before proceeding further, it is important to take note of the relations between the state and Turkish cinema. With the intention of modernising society and holding a place among Western nations, the new republic took a series of important and wide-ranging 18

33 actions in the areas of economy, law, education, sports, civil life, and the arts. While some institutions inherited from the Ottoman period were developed and reformed (and some were abolished), totally new and additional ones were formed where needed. In the arts, in addition to the restoration of institutions and the establishment of new ones, many talented students were sponsored by the state to be educated abroad in music, fine art, theatre, and opera. In addition, European experts were invited to Turkey as instructors. However, the state did not sponsor or support Turkish cinema for years - except to reduce taxes in favour of domestic films - but rather seemed to treat cinema as a taxable entertainment facility. Given that it is known that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the republic and its president from 1923 until his death in 1938, was fond of films, it is unclear why the state did not invest in cinema. The young republic was surely in need of propaganda like any other emerging revolutionary state. In fact, Atatürk encouraged the few people actively working in film to make a movie of the War of Independence in which he volunteered to take part as a surviving witness. Indeed, there exists further evidence to suggest his positive interest in cinema. For instance, when it was noticed that some parts of his speech in the parliament had been underexposed, he didn t hesitate to play those parts of the speech for the re-shooting. During the American ambassador s visit to the farm that was newly founded by his order, he himself guided the camera as a director. Nevertheless, compared to the other arts, there was almost no investment in filmmaking in the early years of the republic. 7 What the state did for other arts was to add to an existing experience; probably to Atatürk and to other senior bureaucrats, there was not a glimmer of hope for Turkish cinema. This was one side of the matter; the thorny side was the censorship mechanisms. The Regulation Regarding Control of Films and Film Scripts 8 unofficially known as the Censorship Code (Sansür Tüzüğü) - came into force in Given the threat of a European war at the time, the government needed the regulatory power to control films in relation to political propaganda. The Central Film Control Commission (Merkez Film Kontrol Komisyonu) was formed to inspect and release (appropriate) films 7 For instance, a documentary entitled Ankara, Heart of Turkey (Türkiye`nin Kalbi Ankara) for the 10 th anniversary of the Republic was commissioned to Soviet filmmakers. 8 Filmlerin ve Film Senaryolarının Kontrolüne Dair Nizamname 19

34 with respect to this censorship code, the imperious articles of which confined the filmmakers to a very limited discursive space. Members of the commission were appointed by the Ministry of the Interior, Directorate General of Security, Military General Staff, Ministry of Media and Tourism, and the Ministry of Education. State security was the primary concern of the code. Making political propaganda on behalf of any state was forbidden. In parallel, making propaganda for any political, economic, and social ideology that opposed the national regime and producing films which might be dangerous for the discipline and security of the country could not be permitted. It was impermissible for a film to contain scenes that might be a means of propaganda against Turkey. To support the new secular republic, the inclusion of religious propaganda in a film was also not permitted. On the other hand, it was impermissible to offend the feelings of friendly states and nations or to ridicule any race or nation. The army was protected with a specific article: to depreciate military honour and dignity or make propaganda against the military was forbidden. The most ambiguous ban concerned films which were contrary to common manner, morality, and national emotions. The majority of the problems confronting films and film scripts stemmed from this abstracted article, which was extensively invoked by the Commission against filmmakers. Finally, films were not allowed to incite criminality (Özgüç 1976, 12-13). The censorship code was derived from a Mussolini-governed Italy s penal code. In fact, Ertuğrul was the sole director in Turkey at that time and the themes of his films were far from having any unfavourable content. Moreover, Ertuğrul s annual average production was as low as 1.4 films. The ostensible reason for the regulation was to control and monitor foreign films at that particular time. Nevertheless, the code remained unchanged and in force after the war, and until 1986, it hung over Turkish filmmakers like the sword of Damocles. Even the military regimes following the coups did not need to modify or tighten the censorship code. The abovementioned siege against filmmakers is described by Kevin Robins and Asu Aksoy (2000) as the pressure of deep nation on cinema. They point out the function of censorship as a protector of the induced Turkish national identity. In the Turkish nation-state that replaced the Ottoman Empire (which was composed of many different ethnicities) the obscure and unconscious mechanisms that Robins and Aksoy call the 20

35 deep nation worked towards the normalisation of cultural homogeneity and against cultural diversity and change. Silence and the positive valorisation of the group fixed the ties of national belonging and cohesion. The imagined community of the New Turks had its origins in cultural repression which was followed by the silence of a cover up. The ideological viewpoint of the state stipulated a homogenous nation that was devoid of class conflict within a Westernised notion of ideal citizens. Robins and Aksoy argue that, as a domain of cultural production, Turkish cinema provides an interesting illustration of their general argument. The censorship mechanism was a very effective tool of the deep nation and members of the commission saw themselves as the guardians of Turkish national identity. The authors also point out the existence of cinematic works acting out the logic of the deep nation after I will turn to this point in Chapter 4. The Muhsin Ertuğrul monopoly ended in 1939 with the arrival of Faruk Kenç and his first film, Piece of Stone (Taş Parçası). He was followed by a dozen new directors. After shooting his first three films for Ha-Ka Film (which was established in 1934 and produced documentaries exclusively until Piece of Stone), Kenç broke with this company and looked for a new producer. The only alternative, İpek Film, was co-operating solely with Ertuğrul. Having received a negative response, Kenç was obliged to shoot his fourth film, The Sorrowful Spring (Dertli Pınar-1943), without sound, and had to dub it in a studio afterwards. This was the method employed for imported films before inland distribution. This dubbing method was widely used by other directors after Kenç s launch and continued to influence Turkish cinema until the 1990s. This influence manifested itself in several ways. First of all, the shooting schedule of films was shortened and thus production costs declined. This decline in production costs became one of the reasons for an increase in the number of producers. However, the technical quality of the films suffered in turn. Some films were shot outside the studios, on location. Physical appearance began to be considered more important to the professional screen actor, allowing in new actors who did not necessarily possess standard voices or pronunciation. Accordingly, stage actors were used to dub the voice work; thus increasingly, beautiful faces were united with beautiful voices. As the lines were prompted to the actor without intonation and repeated after these prompts, visual acting (body language, gesture, and facial expressions) became increasingly artificial. The dubbing of actors by the same 21

36 voices gave way to clichés and limited the actor s range such that performances from one film to the next began to resemble one another. Another factor that had a controversial influence on Turkish cinema was Egyptian film. The impact of the Second World War was such that the European film market stagnated during the first half of the 1940s. In addition, the Turkish government s attitude towards European cinema was cautious, for fear of finding fascist or communist propaganda in films emanating from Europe. Therefore, distributors of foreign films in Turkey had to focus on American productions. However, due to the War, American films were imported, not via the shortest route over Europe, but through Egypt. Some Egyptian films were added to the packages along the way. In addition, the cost of importing and dubbing an Egyptian film in the Turkish language was less than producing a domestic one. Moreover, there was a clear market for these productions, especially after the great success of the Egyptian film Love s Tears (Aşkın Gözyaşları) by Mohammed Karim in In films from Egypt, a Muslim-majority country and an ex-province of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish spectators were seeing people similar to themselves, hearing Arabic music, and recalling their pain and joy through these oriental melodramas. The audience for these films was largely composed of people who were not fond of Western productions. Egyptian films regularly presented famous singers and impressive scenery to the viewers. Initially, only the dialogues were translated into Turkish. However, the screening of films containing Arabic language was prohibited by the government in The reason for this prohibition derived mainly from the policy of Westernisation being pursued by the new republic; anything associated with Ottoman and Arab cultures was deemed to have an unfavourable effect on the revolutionary measures enacted just some fifteen years earlier. Thus, in addition to the dialogues, the songs of Egyptian films began to be dubbed in Turkish and in this way, the films were increasingly indigenised. Observing that Turkish-dubbed Arab melodramas were attracting large audiences to movie theatres, filmmakers started to produce domestic equivalents. Those melodramas brought box-office successes and played a very important role in the expansion of the film industry. Throughout the early 1940s, despite not participating, Turkey suffered the adverse effects of World War II like any other country. Economic and human resources 22

37 were made ready, while the army was put on alert. Basic survival needs were met by rationing. Electricity was in short supply and residential areas were often blacked out at night against possible sudden air attacks. The end of the War opened up the possibility of greater democracy, along with economic recovery. The first multi-party election was held in 1946 and the second one in The import of generators brought about a much needed increase in electricity supplies, thereby making film projection possible even in villages and rural areas. The second half of the 1940s saw an increase in the numbers of producers, directors, and films. While the annual average feature film production in the country was 1.2 during the period , and 1.4 during the period , it rose to 7.0 during the period (Özgüç , vol. 1). Indeed, the general growth statistics related to cinema continued to rise markedly throughout the fifties and sixties. The number of annually released feature films on average and the distribution of released feature films throughout Turkish film history can be found in Appendix-B. New directors who entered the cinema and made their first films in the 1940s were composed of two groups: those who came from Ertuğrul s Municipal Theatre and those who were educated abroad in photography and cinema. Film language remained largely theatrical, but cinematic codes were increasingly present. Unlike Ertuğrul s mostly Western originated and orientated productions, their stories, locations, characters and other elements were domestic; they were narrating Turkish people and landscapes. Şadan Kamil, who was one of the emerging directors of the 1940s, stated: We were at the same level as our audience. Therefore, they enjoyed us and we enjoyed them. We walked together (quoted in Şekeroğlu , Episode 6). 9 His comment signals how the relation between filmmakers and the audience was set to constitute a national film narrative in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1948, the state took an important step toward the creation of a domestic film culture when the regulation of municipal revenues was restructured. Accordingly, the tax imposed on film exhibition was set at 25% for domestic productions, and 70% for foreign films. With an approximately 50% decrease in tax imposed on domestic films, this constituted the first positive act of the state in support of Turkish cinema. Thus, ticket prices for domestic films decreased, leading exhibition and filmmaking to become 9 Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. 23

38 profitable business opportunities. In particular, exhibitors outside Istanbul started to demand more domestic films from the producers. Potential filmmakers were attracted to the art of cinema on the one hand, and business-minded producers to profit on the other, and both caught sight of a rare opportunity. Filmmakers in the 1950s were composed of these two groups of people. In summary, from the early years until 1950, Turkish cinema suffered the adverse effects of wars and economic insufficiency. Specific factors that emerged during the 1930s and 1940s influenced Turkish national cinema for those and consecutive decades: these were censorship, the dubbing process, Egyptian melodramas, and, finally, tax reductions made in favour of domestic films in Films Shaped by the Mass Audience: In 1950, the second multi-party elections resulted in a change of government. After twenty-seven years in power, the Republican People s Party (CHP), the founding party of the Republic, was replaced by the Democratic Party (DP). The DP was socially conservative, but liberal in terms of the economy. Contrary to the independent foreign policy of the CHP, the DP attempted to build close relations with the US. For instance, Turkish troops were sent to Korea as an allied force of the US to fight against the North Koreans. The reason behind this decision was a desire to join NATO against the perceived threat from the neighbouring USSR. An open economic policy helped to accelerate growth and development in Turkey. Transportation facilities were improved through a network of highways, electricity supplies were extended to reach the villages, and migration to industrialising cities, particularly to Istanbul, gathered pace. As a result of US Marshall Aid to assist the recovery of the capitalist bloc in Europe, American commodities came onto the market. The migration of Turkish workers to European countries also started during these years. The other side of the coin was that liberal economic policies were accompanied by censorship of the media and the suppression of government opponents. Cinema reached the population in rural areas thanks to the provision of electricity and improved transportation facilities. Besides, migrants were introduced to 24

39 movie theatres in their new hometowns. Cinema proved to be a hugely important source of entertainment for these two groups. This new audience demanded films in which they could see themselves and identify with the stories. Producers responded to these demands as both films and movie theatres increased in number. Indeed, average annual film production rose to 54 in the period between 1950 and 1959 (Özgüç , vol. 1). At the same time, the Istanbul intelligentsia was unaware of, or uninterested in, the growing popularity of domestic films. Their preference was for foreign productions as the central theatres of Istanbul continued to refuse the exhibition of Turkish films. There was a wide thematic range in the films produced: pastoral stories, historical epics, the heroism of Turkish troops sent to Korea, the Turkish War of Independence, adaptations of best-seller novels, religious narratives, musicals and comedies filled the film market. The characteristic shared by the majority of these films was their melodramatic mode. The remarkable Memduh Ün, who entered the film business as an actor at the end of the 1940s, and continued in the 1950s as both producer and director, defined the principal trait of cinema in these years as follows: The formula for commercial success was to bring together the grave, the lyric, the song, and the fight. Therefore, all those factors existed in all my films until I felt ready: graves, songs, Islamic memorial services, belly dances, awful melodramas... (quoted in Şekeroğlu , Episode 18). To assume that the success of melodramas depended solely on ready-made formulae might be misleading. It can be argued that, in addition to commercial concerns, the director, the crew, and the actors of any given film also believed in what they were doing; they were living in the film, feeling it. The name Yeşilçam (meaning Green Pine ) emerged in the 1950s as a designation for Turkish Hollywood. The name originated in Yeşilçam Street in Beyoğlu, the cultural centre of Istanbul where most of the producers were located. More than 120 new production companies emerged in the fifties, some of which went bankrupt. However, there were few studios to meet the production needs of an average of 70 existing producers. This deficit pushed filmmakers to shoot on location. Since the issues related to sound recording had been resolved by the dubbing process in the 1940s, the main problem was to find an appropriate place for the story to be shot, not to build a set. Other infrastructural elements (cameras, laboratories, and crew) of film production were also 25

40 seriously lacking. For anyone wishing to enter the film industry as an employee, there was no need for technical qualifications. In some of the small producer-director companies, each employee, perhaps even the employer, might hold more than one responsibility. For instance, a producer might take charge of the lighting and still photography in addition to his other duties. While these adverse conditions were a given for most filmmakers, a few of them saw the situation as an opportunity to produce films quickly and in a somewhat slipshod manner. Nonetheless, the first super-production of Turkish cinema was made in Casting more than one thousand soldiers supplied by the army, an orchestra of forty-five musicians, and contributions from professors and students from the Academy of Fine Arts, this film was The Conquest of Istanbul (İstanbul un Fethi) directed by Aydın Arakon. In a context in which the numbers of films, spectators and producers all increased, new directors - namely Lütfi Akad, Atıf Yılmaz, Metin Erksan, Memduh Ün and Osman Seden emerged; they made more qualified films than the sector average. The emergence of so many new names in the fifties should not be seen as a mere coincidence. Considering the absence of a substantive, national cinematic heritage, the question of how they developed a film language and aesthetic style arises. The answer may be found in their own commentaries: they were viewing the works of foreign masters, especially Hollywood movies, and adjusting their productions according to audience reactions. İlhan Arakon, one of the outstanding cinematographers, recalls, We were viewing the films of Muhsin Ertuğrul, but also the masterpieces of world cinema in the next movie theatres directed by John Ford, Frank Capra, Lubitsch, Pabst, and René Clair (quoted in Şekeroğlu , Episode 3). According to Atıf Yılmaz, We learned by doing, again and again. It didn t come suddenly. We didn t have much knowledge of cinema back then. We were estimating and saying we haven t been able to do that part properly, let s do it better next time. That was all (quoted in Özcan 2001, 15). Lütfi Akad s words support Yılmaz: There was an experience but it was irrelevant to film art. It was an experience of filming the theatre. That is to say, shooting a theatre scene and making a film are totally different things. I don t know if it was because of instinct or foresight, but we found it shouldn t be that way and tried to develop a cinematic language (quoted in Şekeroğlu , Episode 7). Taken together, these three quotes suggest how various factors came together and combined with audience preferences to form a national film culture. 26

41 Audience preferences for foreign films tended mostly toward Hollywood productions. Halit Refiğ, a critic who became one of the outstanding directors of the 1960s, provides the following insight: This language, under the influence of Hollywood (the foreign cinema most often viewed by Turkish audiences) film language, was formed by the production particularities of Turkish cinema. A language that is plain, less pretentious, and which seeks to reach its goals via shortcuts... (1971, 22). Thomas Elsaesser s analysis of the relation between national cinemas and Hollywood verifies the case of Turkish cinema: Hollywood can hardly be conceived, in the context of a national cinema, as totally other, since so much of any nation s film culture is implicitly Hollywood (1987, 166). In the 1950s, filmmakers began to innovate in two particular areas of cinematic narration. One was in camera movement. In films made by directors still under the influence of theatre, the camera was stationary, its position and angle unchanged. The subjective and objective camera angles with different consecutive shooting scales were not only new, but fostered greater spectator engagement with the film. Secondly, filmmakers started to benefit from more creative editing techniques. In addition to these changes, acting entered a new phase. Because stage actors were insufficient in number for the growth in film production, actors began to be cast according to the type required by the script. The new actors, who did not have stage training, were instructed by directors as to how to act. Notable films from these years include: Akad s In the Name of the Law (Kanun Namına-1952), The White Handkerchief (Beyaz Mendil-1955), and The Lonely Ones Quay (Yalnızlar Rıhtımı-1959); Yılmaz s The Dream of the Bride (Gelinin Muradı-1957) and The Fallow Deer (Alageyik-1958); Erksan s The Lord of Nine Mountains (Dokuz Dağın Efesi-1958); Ün s Three Friends (Üç Arkadaş-1958); and Seden s The Enemy Has Blocked the Road (Düşman Yolları Kesti-1959). In In the Name of the Law, the camera was out on the streets for the chase scenes, bringing a new feeling of excitement to audiences. The visual aesthetics and narration of The Lonely Ones Quay remain noteworthy although it was a box-office failure due to the characteristics of its story, its heroes, and its milieu which were unfamiliar to the audience. The Dark World (Karanlık Dünya-1953), Erksan s first film, was censored for its representation of rural poverty and 27

42 the shortage of wheat. Unfavourable scenes were cut and replaced by scenes from an American documentary in which modern agricultural machines were mowing wheat in abundance. Three Friends was highly significant as an example of a successful fifties melodrama. It treated the daily lives of three friends living in a deserted, ruined mansion and struggling to survive: one has a rabbit that draws papers on which the customers fortunes are written; the second friend is a photographer who takes pictures of people on the streets with his portable camera; and the third one is a bootblack. They exert their best efforts and sacrifice their interests to help a young blind girl obtain a surgical operation. Although it deploys the melodramatic form without questioning the reasons for social inequality, Three Friends does not overtly dramatise poverty. With its genuine depiction of types and experiences familiar to spectators, the film provides a powerful representation of friendship, solidarity and hope. Three Friends marked a milestone in Turkish film history, most particularly because its success made the intelligentsia in Istanbul more aware of domestic films. Fig. 1. Dir. Memduh Ün, Three Friends (Üç Arkadaş), The first of three military coups in the history of the Republic of Turkey took place on 27 th May 1960, ending ten years of DP rule. The new constitution that came into effect in 1961 was more liberal than the previous one (Constitution of 1924). The democratic rights of individuals were widened and some institutions (for example, 28

43 universities and the State Planning Organisation) gained an autonomous structure. A Constitutional Court was established to ensure that governmental acts did not violate the constitution, which had been the case during the 1950s and the main declared reason for the military coup. In accordance with the principle of a social state embedded in the constitution, workers gained the rights to strike and form unions. However, the censorship of cinema remained in effect and unchanged. Moreover, the post-coup liberal atmosphere deteriorated in the second half of the 1960s. By 1968, in keeping with the tumultuous political climate elsewhere, a student movement emerged, but a second intervention from the army - not a direct coup but a memorandum to government - came on 12 th March There was another change of government, followed by the suppression of opposition in the following years. Economic growth and industrialisation had accelerated in the 1950s and continued to do so in the 1960s, causing an increase in migration from towns and villages to metropolises, especially to Istanbul. The official figures indicate that between 1950 and 1970, the population of Istanbul nearly tripled. 10 In the early 1970s, squatter settlements emerged around industrialising cities and gave voice to Arabesk music and culture. 11 Worker migration to European countries, mostly to Germany, also accelerated in the 1960s. The increase in the number of film spectators is proportionally greater than the increase in the overall population. According to data based again on Istanbul, while the average number of films viewed by an individual was 11.8 in 1950, it rose to 22.3 by Official figures show that by 1970, for the whole of Turkey, there were 2,424 movie theatres providing 1,164,769 seats (DİE 1973, 7). However, the actual number of movie theatres is thought to be more than three thousand, if you include the unregistered ones. Approximately half of these were open-air theatres operating during the summer season. As two examples, Bartın (a town at the Black Sea coast with an approximate ten thousand population) was hosting four indoor and six outdoor cinemas in the 1960s, and Eskişehir 10 According to census data, the population of Istanbul was 1,166,477 in 1950, 1,882,092 in 1960, and 3,019,032 in 1970 (State Institute of Statistics Turkey 1973, 2-3). 11 The kind of music named Arabesk emerged first as the voice of migrants living in the suburbs of metropolises. Its sound was derived from Arabic tones, while (pessimistic) lyrics addressed the dreadful and unfair conditions of life. It has never been seen as genuine Turkish music and is disdained by the elite. This music attracted young males first and then became more widespread, eventually creating its own culture. 29

44 (a city with a 209,000 population in central Anatolia) hosted fifteen indoor and sixteen outdoor cinemas in this period (Büker 2002). Given that the population of Turkey was about 36 million in 1970, it is indeed indisputable that cinema was the top entertainment facility. It was a cheap and familial activity. Pierre Sorlin (1996) describes how cinema became part of daily life in 1960s Italy, so much so that people were cycling miles to see films and were evidently eager to talk about them. Numerous examples of film enthusiasm in 1960s and 70s Turkey also exist. The majority of this mass audience came from the lower and middle income classes. Film production reached its highest level in the 1960s and 1970s. The annual average reached in the period between 1960 and 1974 (Özgüç , vol. 1-2) and more than 370 new production companies were established (Scognamillo 2001). Turkey became a mass-production plant of movies. However, in an economy where a lack of capital - not only in the film industry but in every realm of production - was the leading problem, the achievement of such a high rate of film production might seem surprising. It is certainly the case that producers were hardly meeting the costs of their films. If a film was unsuccessful at the box-office, it was nearly impossible to shoot the next one. There was no support from outside the industry, nor were the banks willing to issue loans for such a risky business. However, there was a demand for new films. Thus, a system whereby regional operators played a central role in film financing emerged by the end of the 1950s and continued into the 1960s, and this became a major factor in the industry. In the system of regional operators (bölge işletmeleri), the country excluding Istanbul - was divided into the following six regions: Adana, İzmir, Ankara, Zonguldak, Erzurum, and the Black Sea. Before starting a film, regional operators would lend producers a certain amount (in some instances up to 80%) of the total cost, in advance as cash or as a bond. Those were funds accumulated by exhibitors through ticket sales from earlier films. Thanks to this financial support, the producer was able to pay the cast and crew, and meet some other costs as well. In exchange, the operators were given the distribution rights for the film in their region for a certain period, or they were granted a percentage of the film s box-office revenue so as to have their loan repaid. This mechanism greatly contributed to the growth of the film industry. It also provided filmmakers with very significant information about audience preferences insofar as the 30

45 producers in Istanbul became aware of the reactions, demands and tastes of audiences via regional operators. The most important preferential criteria concerned the starring actor and actress, followed by the themes. Moreover, topics for discussion between the regional operators and the producer might extend to whether a given film would be shot in colour, part colour, or black-and-white, and might even stipulate the duration of the film. The various regional audiences were not always consistent or in agreement as to their preferences. In such cases, the producers would aim to strike a balance between them or give priority to those regions supplying the greatest support for a particular film. This system is very similar to the one practiced in India, then and now, as the filmmaker Shaji Karun (2002) suggests. The mechanism offered a good deal both to producers and regional operators, ensuring box-office successes. However, for directors in search of innovation or independence from the mainstream, this was a restrictive system. Conditions were different in Istanbul where films and movie theatres were divided into three categories in what was called the combined system. Films in the first category were screened in first class theatres, second and third category films in second and third class theatres respectively. The first category theatres were mainly in the city centre. Classification of the films and exhibition dates were determined before the season. There was no capital support for the producer in this system, but screenings of the films were guaranteed. A domestic film had little chance of being screened in a first category theatre. The 1960s saw prolific numbers of films being produced, but conditions were as poor as in the 1950s. For instance, in 1966, a year in which 238 films were released, the sum of studios, sets and laboratories was as low as thirteen. This figure climbed to seventeen by 1972, the top production year with 300 films (Özgüç , vol. 1). Printing machines and montage sets were out of date and there was a shortage of trained personnel who could use these devices. With negative film stock in short supply, a black market emerged. On average, 6,000 meters of negative and 18,000 meters of positive film stock were used for each movie. Given the fact that 3,000 meters yield approximately 109 minutes (35mm film, 24 frames per second), Turkish cinema was limited to an average of two repetitions for each shot, and six exhibition copies to travel the entire country. These quantitative constraints, which were substantially more severe than anything faced by 31

46 Hollywood and European producers, forced Turkish filmmakers to expend the minimum amount of stock at every phase. Shots were kept as short as possible, while rehearsals were numerous. Scenes from other movies might be added where needed. Indeed, there were some movies for which the consumed negative film stock was less than the length of the printed positive copy. The increase in the number of films forced the directors, crew, and actors to work overtime. Some directors had to shoot two films at the same time, while others were obliged to start a new film before the post-production process of the former had ended. Scriptwriters regularly played catch up with shooting schedules: while the film was being shot, they were busily writing the next (to-be-shot) scenes. Some scripts were written in a few days, even overnight. Similarly, some films were shot in a few days. While the industry was surviving, thanks to the sacrifices of its labour force, the result was a decline in technical and aesthetic quality. If one reason for producers not investing in film technology was a lack of capital, the other was a lack of audience engagement in technical deficiencies, in favour of a focus on stars and themes. The first colour films of Turkish cinema had been produced in 1953: Epidemic (Salgın) by Ali İpar and The Carpetmaker Girl (Halıcı Kız) by Muhsin Ertuğrul. The audience showed little interest in these two films and in the few that followed. Given the high cost of this new technology, colour production was postponed until the second half of the 1960s. However, neither the technical infrastructure of the industry nor the knowledge of its personnel was sufficient to make colour films in the 1950s and 1960s, and even in the 1970s. Nevertheless, the ratio of colour films to total production gradually increased after 1966 and all of the 225 films released in 1975 were in colour. 12 Filmmakers gradually found ways to meet the increased costs incurred by the introduction of colour. These included: replacing the expensive colour negative stock with a cheaper brand; shooting the film on a higher quality brand and printing it on a cheaper one; printing black-and-white shot films on colour strips to obtain sepia tones; and even shooting on photographic negatives. Problems related to lighting, make-up, and artistic designs were more noticeable on colour film. Since the directors and the cinematographers did not have detailed knowledge of this new technology, the picture quality of colour film was poor in 12 It should be emphasised that some of the films classified as colour were not totally, but only partially, in colour. 32

47 comparison to the earlier black-and-white productions. By the 1960s, Turkish cinema had developed a star system. The relative importance of stars gradually increased so that films came to be known and marketed by the stars names. The regional operators, while communicating with the producers about audience preferences, were emphasising the star names. Increasingly, film themes were decided upon according to the stars who were to be cast. Scriptwriters likely felt the eye of the spectator looking over their shoulders as they penned screenplays and adaptations. As Susan Hayward (1993) notes, spectators imposed their own expectations on the stars; stars were the mediators between the real and the imaginary. Thus the stars had to repeat performances of particular types or figures. The star system not only led to the domination of type over character in Turkish cinema, it guaranteed its continuance. Vocalisation of the players by the same voices (due to the dubbing system) further cemented this situation and minimised the dramatic talent required of actors. To be beautiful was enough. Closeups were often cut, while camera angles were chosen to reflect the stars at their best. These considerations regularly outweighed the necessities of dramatic content. Many stars intervened directly, requesting preferred shooting angles and scales. Some of them even held authority in deciding on the director and could change him or her. As a consequence of their increased importance, the stars wages rose dramatically, up to 40% of a film s total production budget. However, the wages of other key personnel (directors, cinematographers, minor players, crew etc.) did not rise proportionally. On the contrary, producers were obliged to decrease other budgetary items in order to balance the rising costs. As the demand for stars grew, so did their workload. Indeed, most of them had little or no break between the completion of a film s shooting and the start of a new one. Increasingly, production schedules were planned according to the availability of the stars. Time pressure on the filmmakers often caused shooting to be rapid and sloppy. An exception to the star system was the Yılmaz Güney phenomenon. Starting his career as a scriptwriter and actor in 1958 and later continuing as producer and director, he became, by the mid-sixties, a star-not-like-a-star. Unlike other handsome male actors, Güney was known as the Ugly King, a rather touchable hero of the people, a champion of the weak and poor in his films. While his action films were appreciated in Anatolia, they were rarely shown in the central theatres of Istanbul. Alongside these films and 33

48 thanks to the profits generated by them he began to produce social-realist films by the 1970s: these included Hope (Umut-1970), Friend (Arkadaş-1974), Anxiety (Endişe-1974), The Herd (Sürü-1979), The Way (Yol-1982), and The Wall (Duvar-1983). As already noted, a mechanism for censorship was put in place in By the 1960s, its effects on Turkish cinema had become clearer. Those filmmakers seeking to express direct or indirect political concerns were caught by this code. Moreover, any representation perceived to be immoral or obscene by the Central Film Control Commission was not permitted. Filmmakers dealt with this problem in two ways: one solution was self-censorship and the other was to trick the Commission. Firstly, selfcensorship required adopting the mindset of the censor and anticipating which scenes of the film might be objectionable. In addition, unfavourable (leftist) writers had their names deleted from the credits supplied to the Commission or used pseudonyms in order to avoid potential problems. Another way of tricking the Commission was to prepare two different scripts: a censored one for the Commission and another one for shooting. After the completion of shooting and in post-production, films were edited in accordance with the approved (censored) script to gain consent for exhibition. However, the film screened for the public was the uncensored one. Although filmmakers found ways to evade it, the censorship system, restrictive and obstructive in nature, remained an important factor shaping the national character of Turkish cinema. 13 Hence the great majority of films presented little opposition to the official ideology of the state. In addition, conservative representations of gender relations were preserved. Approximately three thousand films were made between 1960 and 1974, most of which stand as examples of mediocrity. Most films were melodramas, but there were numerous genres, including comedies, which drew from melodramatic themes. The indigenisation of foreign sources was a commonly adopted way of creating films. The key project of indigenisation was to adapt the stories, heroes/heroines, characters, types, locations, behaviours and endings in a way that Turkish people could easily recognise and approve. Heroes and heroines should represent the social and moral norms of an average Turkish citizen, as audiences might not approve certain extreme manners in a domestic film, while they might have tolerated them in foreign equivalents. The moral norms 13 I will address the concept of national character later in this chapter. 34

49 depended on the identity that the hero or heroine represented. If he or she was a rural type, the audience (both urban and rural) often had a more conservative attitude, whereas urban heroes and heroines might have been granted more tolerance, because their behaviour was deemed normal in the big cities. The expectation was of realistic gestures and manners as a means of fostering the audience s belief in the story. Güllü (1971) by Atıf Yılmaz is an outstanding example of indigenisation, the theme of which was adapted from La Ragazza con la Pistola (Girl with a Pistol-1968) by Mario Monicelli. In La Ragazza con la Pistola, Assunta (Monica Vitti) is kidnapped by Vincenzo (Carlo Giuffrè) and they sleep with one another. The next morning, Assunta realises that Vincenzo, being against marriage, has left for Britain. With the encouragement of relatives and other inhabitants of the town, Assunta acquires a pistol and leaves Sicily to find and kill Vincenzo, who has defamed her. In Güllü, on the other hand, Fikret (Ediz Hun) the son of a big businessman - is found and treated by a peasant girl named Güllü (Türkan Şoray) after having an accident in a car race in the Black Sea region of Turkey. They fall in love and we understand that they sleep together following Fikret s marriage proposal. However, after returning to Istanbul, Fikret notifies her by letter that they cannot marry. With the encouragement of her mother and other inhabitants, Güllü leaves her village (carrying a pistol) for Istanbul to find and kill Fikret in order to save her reputation. While Assunta meets a rugby player, a boy who is on the verge of committing suicide, and a surgeon in Britain, Güllü meets a journalist who helps her in Istanbul. Assunta speaks Sicilian Italian and beginner s English; Güllü speaks Turkish with a Black Sea regional accent. In the end, Assunta finds Vincenzo but she does not kill him; instead she sleeps with him again and finds he is now in love with her. She takes her revenge by leaving him alone in Britain and returning to Sicily. Güllü finds Fikret but does not take revenge the way Assunta does. She marries him and they embark upon a happy married life together. The ending, unlike that of La Ragazza con la Pistola, had to be marriage because for Turkish audiences of the day (urban or rural), it would be highly unusual for a woman to seduce a man and then leave him. Successful indigenisation of the story made Güllü distinct from the original La Ragazza con la Pistola. In essence, most of the adapted films became native. Unless denoted in the credits, it was nearly impossible to realise that a particular film was an adaptation of a 35

50 foreign work. As Sorlin notes in the case of Italy, the manner in which they assimilated and re-used this material was theirs and it is their appropriation of various cinematic sources which has made up Italian national cinema (1996, 172). This statement can be applied equally well to Turkish cinema. Exceptionally, as a few examples, foreign source materials (whether novel, play, or story) were filmed without converting or adapting the original. Those films were not able to win audience recognition because of two factors: firstly, there were economic pressures which meant that to keep production costs low, the costumes and sets had to be altered. Secondly, Turkish audiences did not accept wellknown Turkish actors cast as foreign characters, bearing foreign names and wearing foreign costumes. A range of sources were tapped and exploited to create a huge bulk of films: adaptations of popular novels (native and foreign), theatre plays (mostly foreign), and comic books (native and foreign); the indigenisation of foreign (mostly Hollywood) films; serial films bearing the name of the hero/heroine; remakes of some old native films; and original scripts. Out of all of these, higher-quality films also emerged. Some were filmmakers or scriptwriters original works and some were outputs of a collaboration between filmmakers and authors. In the case of collaboration, either the authors novels or stories were filmed, or they wrote original scripts. In the 1960s, Halit Refiğ, Duygu Sağıroğlu, and Yılmaz Güney emerged in addition to the outstanding directors of the 1950s (Akad, Yılmaz, Erksan, Ün, and Seden). These directors made some of the greatest films in Turkish film history, mostly during the next two decades. Erksan may be considered the first auteur and probably the most creative and avant-garde director in Turkish film history. Beyond the Nights (Gecelerin Ötesi-1960) was the first social realist film and it issued a challenge to the one millionaire in every district slogan of the Democratic Party government. In opposition to the slogan, the film argues that the consequences of the inequality brought about by those millionaires might well be the emergence of some young people who have to commit crimes in order to realise their worth as free human agents and as economic actors in a hostile environment. The Bitter Life (Acı Hayat-1962) treats the social and economic problems faced by a low income couple in the context of urbanisation. The Revenge of the Snakes (Yılanların Öcü-1962) and Dry Summer (Susuz Yaz-1963) represent rural realities with 36

51 overt political references. Both of these films experienced problems with the censorship authorities. Dry Summer achieved the first international success for Turkish cinema by winning a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Time to Love (Sevmek Zamanı-1965) narrates a painter s love of the image of an affluent girl. The girl s realisation of his love and her response are ultimately useless because the painter is not in love with her, but rather her image (a photographic portrait). Drawing from Eastern Sufism, this fascinating film also brings the class matter into question. The film was rejected for exhibition by movie theatres on the grounds that it would be of little interest to audiences. Immortal Love (Ölmeyen Aşk-1966), adapted from Emily Bronte s Wuthering Heights, displayed expressionist features. The Well (Kuyu-1968) was probably the first feminist film in Turkish cinema with its treatment of a rural woman s struggle for the freedom to live with a man of her own choosing. Fig. 2. Dir. Metin Erksan, Time to Love (Sevmek Zamanı), Akad s The Law of the Border (Hudutların Kanunu-1966) displayed the realities of people living near the south eastern border of Turkey. Red River-Black Sheep (Kızılırmak-Karakoyun-1967) narrated the love between a shepherd and Agha s daughter and their struggle to be united. Licensed to Love (Vesikalı Yarim-1968) is an outstanding high quality melodrama. While focusing on the love between a greengrocer and a B-girl, the film addresses the tensions between modernity and feudalism, urban and rural, family and the outer world, new and old, and social centre and periphery. The Immigration 37

52 Trilogy (Göç Üçlemesi), composed of The Bride (Gelin-1973), The Wedding (Düğün- 1973), and Blood Money (Diyet-1974), narrate the tragedies of families newly arrived from the country and adapting to life in the city. O Beautiful Istanbul (Ah Güzel İstanbul- 1966) by Yılmaz exposes bourgeois precociousness with sharp humour. Birds of Exile (Gurbet Kuşları-1964) by Refiğ narrates the tragedy of a family which moves to Istanbul with the great hope of becoming rich. Four Women in the Harem (Haremde Dört Kadın-1965) is a period film which focuses on Ottoman political life during the last days of Made with the collaboration of the prominent author Kemal Tahir, the film draws each inhabitant of a Pasha s residence to correspond to a certain element of society. The scene depicting a lesbian relationship in the harem was extremely courageous for 1960s Turkey, and was attacked by conservative groups. The Unending Road (Bitmeyen Yol-1967) by Sağıroğlu is another film that suffered under the system of censorship; it was only screened after a two year battle. The film stunningly depicts the harsh realities faced by the unemployed migrants of Istanbul. Hope (1970) by Güney addresses the poverty of a coachman (and his family) when his only horse dies. The coachman sustains his hope in search of a hidden treasure chest, but his destiny is despair. Those Awakening in the Dark (Karanlıkta Uyananlar-1964) by Ertem Göreç is the first film made about working class unionisation. The national character of Turkish cinema can be observed especially through the films welcomed by the mass audience. 14 As we have seen, those films were made as a consequence of a series of factors, such as censorship, dubbing methods, the Egyptian melodramas of the forties, tax reductions in favour of domestic films in 1948, the film language of Hollywood, the system of regional operators, the star system, and the economic insufficiencies of the film industry. The films that bear the national character of Turkish cinema, in this sense, were viewed by the whole family as long as they did not involve overt sexuality and worked to highlight socially accepted norms and values such 14 My usage of national character is based on the work of Otto Bauer who provisionally defined the term as the complex of physical and mental characteristics that distinguishes one nation from others (1996, 40). Therefore, with regard to cinema, by the term national character I refer to the characteristics of films which reflect a common taste of the mass audience of a country and also to the characteristics of the national film industry that produces those films. As a cultural production shared by the mass audience, such films naturally represent the nation to a large extent, as the reflective approach to representation in the Introduction - reminded us by Stuart Hall (2003). Yet questions of how a film is national or how a film represents the nation, I argue, differ from the concept of national character. Rather, how and why those films (which are shared by the masses, by the majority of a national cinema s audience) are formed in this or that specific way should be the question regarding the national character of a cinema tradition. Distinctive and similar characteristics of national cinemas can also be addressed in this manner. 38

53 as love, family, friendship, and sacrifice. In most of the films, there was a clear concept and culture of neighbourhoodness, and social types in the films resembled real people that the audience might know and see in daily life. The concept of love was of primary importance insofar as most films pursued a narrative relating to love in some way. Films drew their narrative properties not from the novel, a relatively new form, but from old folk-tales. In this sense, themes and actions often strayed far from reality (although the types were realistic); people found the things they desired in films. Following miraculous coincidences and progress, films ended as the spectator wished; justice and catharsis were achieved. These were contemporary tales containing types rather than characters. Representing the narrative elements in particular patterns resembled the symbolisation in folk-literature, thereby capturing the cultural characteristics of a people on the screen. However, although ethnic minorities might occasionally be seen, the nation was represented as devoid of any conflict, a view consistent with the official ideology. Both the urban and the rural were represented realistically, but the problems regarding industrialisation and urbanisation were only seen in a handful of exceptional films. Gender relations were represented in melodramatic forms that situated women and men in traditional roles where females were passive and secondary to the male protagonists. Regarding style, as Refiğ (1971) points out, the film language was simple and unpretentious, and often delivered in a kind of shorthand. The running time of most films was not too long, usually one hundred minutes or less. Starring actors tended to represent particular types or ideals and were frequently shot in close-up. In the 1960s, with the increase in film production and the development of a film culture, the first institutions related to cinema emerged, as did a series of theoretical debates. A film cultural organisation, Kulüp Sinema 7 (Club Cinema 7), was founded by Sami Şekeroğlu in In 1964, this club launched Film, the first cinema journal. Finally, in 1967, Club Cinema 7 became the Turkish Film Archive. Thanks to Şekeroğlu s valuable efforts, thousands of domestic (and also foreign) films have been preserved as a cultural heritage, and the masters of Turkish cinema came together in the nation s first film school which opened its doors in A film museum also exists under the same structure today. Another organisation in the service of the film industry is the Antalya 15 The current name of the school is Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Department of Cinema and Television. 39

54 Film Festival which began awarding Turkish Oscars in 1964, and is now one of the longest running film culture organisations. Additionally, the Turkish Cinémathèque Association (Türk Sinematek Derneği) was founded in 1965 with the financial support of the Eczacıbaşı Group, one of the leading businesses in the country. The association brought together film critics who considered Turkish cinema to be deficient and inadequate, and set forth an idea of universal cinema as a target for filmmakers. The critics forum was the journal Yeni Sinema (meaning New Cinema ), published by the Turkish Cinémathèque Association. By the mid-sixties, a split between filmmakers and critics had hardened and was generating serious debates. Despite the negative assessment of Turkish cinema by many critics, some filmmakers, inspired by the views of the author Kemal Tahir, were in search of a truly national cinema (ulusal sinema). Halit Refiğ was the spokesman of the movement and defended his views in the book Ulusal Sinema Kavgası (meaning The Fight for National Cinema ). According to Refiğ, what the Cinémathèque circle called universality was in fact a discourse leaving the nation vulnerable to cultural imperialism. The concept consisted of values derived from the specific historical experience and conditions of the dominant nations - values which were then declared to be universal and exported from the centre to the margins. To name the individualistic and Christian values of the West as universal was a colonialist approach. To express it in the words of Ernesto Laclau (1996, 24), the universal had found its own body which was still the body of a certain particularity (i.e. the European culture of the nineteenth century) and expressed itself as a universal human essence. According to Refiğ, in a country like Turkey the main contradiction was not between the classes, but between East and West. Having a different history and economic structure, it was impossible for Turkish society to aspire to be like the West. Provided that filmmakers realised this fact, they could and should make national cinema. In Refiğ s view, the Turkish films made thus far were not products of a national cinema, but of a people s cinema (halk sineması) - the films made thanks to the financial support of the mass audience through the box-office returns. The establishment of the Turkish Film Archive by Şekeroğlu should also be counted as an act which underpinned the idea of national cinema. Alternatively, a group of Islamic filmmakers headed by Yücel 40

55 Çakmaklı put forward the concept of milli sinema. 16 According to this group, films should rather focus on Turkish-Islamic values. The efforts to debate over national cinema remained useless as against the fact that the vast majority of Turkish films were indeed bearing a national character. The milli sinema movement on the other hand went into decline and re-emerged at the end of the 1980s under the name beyaz cinema (white cinema), but its influence was limited to a definite Islamic audience. I will return to the concept of white cinema in Chapter 5. Survival: By the second half of 1970s, the economic and political environment changed for the worse. Following the military intervention in 1971, the suppression of opposition groups caused the student movement to go further underground. State intolerance, the emergence of contra organisations, and an economic setback nurtured an environment for terror. The imposition of martial law extended to many cities. Numerous young activists and some well-known intellectuals were assassinated. Ordinary people were afraid to walk out on the streets. Television broadcasting, having started in 1968, was beginning to reach remote villages. While in the early years of broadcasting it was a privileged device of the upper class, the number of television sets increased dramatically in the 1970s. Indeed, by 1980, television ownership was twenty-five times more than in Compared to cinema, TV was cheaper to consume. After a reasonable fixed cost, the only variable cost was in increased electricity consumption. Moreover the worsening economic conditions and rises in transportation costs made going out for entertainment (including to the cinema) more difficult and expensive. Thus families, the main audience for cinema, gradually quit the movie theatres and stayed at home to watch TV. Nevertheless, cinema retained some advantages over television, particularly in terms of what could be shown on screen: explicit sexuality, violence, Arabesk music, and 16 Milli is an older word corresponding to national. 17 The number of television receivers in Turkey was 126,786 in 1972, 639,348 in 1975, and 3,348,138 in 1980 (Prime Ministry State Institute of Statistics 1977, 288; 1985, 324). 41

56 colour. 18 Thus producers (especially minor ones) who were losing their mass audience, started to use those advantages in order to fill seats. A new type of audience, composed of young/single/uneducated males, was attracted to movie theatres. In addition, 16mm film stock, which was much cheaper than 35mm, penetrated the market in the second half of the 1970s. Most of the films that addressed the new type of audience were shot on 16mm stock. Of the 195 films released in 1979, for instance, 131 were 16mm sex-comedies (Scognamillo 2003, 160). These films drove family audiences still further from the theatres. It is noteworthy that although every detail of the films was diligently examined by the authorities, those sex comedies almost never experienced any problem with censorship. Indeed, Turkey remains the sole Muslim-majority country to tolerate such films. The new audience for Turkish cinema was smaller than the former one. As a result, the number of films decreased, some movie theatres closed, and there was a general decline in the regional operators system. Whereas the majority of film genres continued to be represented, the polarised socio-political climate did bring a growing number of political films. Melodramas and comedies similar to those of the 1950s and 1960s were still being produced. However, the endurance of such films could not mask the fact that the previous unity of themes and style in Turkish cinema had started to dissolve. The third military coup (12 th September 1980) was the most remorseless and effective one. It transformed the country to an extent that is still being felt - in politics, in the economy, the education system, and indeed, in all cultural aspects. The activities of political parties, labour unions, associations, and other political organisations were terminated following the coup. The parliament was closed and the country was governed by military leaders for three years. Many people were sent to prisons and files were opened on more than a million by the authorities. In such an environment, with no visible opposition, new economic policies were easily pursued. There was an increase in import and export trade, while the incomes of the working class and inflation were decreased. There were moves to privatise State Economic Enterprises. As a result of these new economic policies, the distribution of income deteriorated throughout the 1980s. Arabesk culture, which had emerged in the suburbs of industrialising cities in the 1970s, now 18 While colour TV broadcasting officially started in 1984, all films in cinemas were in colour by

57 spread wider in these desperate conditions. This culture, mainly expressing itself in music, took bad destiny as a given and called on its addressee to rebel not to the politicaleconomic system, but to that (abstract) destiny. The lyrics of almost all Arabesk songs are similar in this respect. The crisis in Turkish cinema which had started in the second half of the 1970s became more visible by the 1980s. The numbers of film spectators and movie theatres, which in 1970, were approximately 247 million and 2,424 respectively, decreased to 62.6 million and 941 in 1980, and to 19.3 million and 354 in 1990 (DİE 1973, 7; TSI 2010, 92). Moreover, for the first time since the 1950s, the audience for foreign films exceeded that for domestic films. In connection with these shifts, the number of films continued to decrease from an annual average of productions between 1975 and 1979, to in the 1980s. The production of sex comedies ceased after the coup, but violent and Arabesk films continued to be made. By the beginning of the 1980s, video operators replaced the regional cinema operators. Immigrant Turks in European countries, attempting to preserve their own culture and maintain contact with the homeland, helped to create a demand for videos. With the spread of video players in Europe, they began to demand Turkish films for home consumption. As Sonja de Leeuw (2005) puts it, renting video movies from the home country invoked nostalgia (recalling the there ). Thus, at the end of the 1970s and for the first time, video operators sought to import Turkish films to Germany. In response to this demand, producers started making video films and releasing video editions of cinema films after the season. Shortly thereafter and then throughout the 1980s, video became popular in Turkey as well. Similar to regional operators, the video operators supported producers financially and had temporary rights to the distribution of films. Some film producers founded their own video production companies. This system led to the emergence of a video dealer on every corner and the screening of films in cafés, pubs, tea gardens, etc. without paying a copyright fee to the filmmakers. With the demise of the regional operators and the star system, any remaining unity of themes and narrative finally collapsed. Directors started to choose narrative styles according to thematic concerns or to develop new narrative approaches. Nevertheless, 43

58 films with Arabesk content and violent films (these two compose the great majority of 1980s production) retained a formal unity. The majority of Arabesk productions took their title from a popular song performed by the singer in the leading role. Grief for a beloved woman was at the core of these musical dramas. Typically, the singer performed a few songs from a new album, with album and film released close together so as to deliver mutual commercial benefit. Violent films, on the other hand, were a continuation of those productions that appeared in the late 1970s and resembled the B-movies being produced elsewhere in the world. While some directors of the 1960s and 70s had to make films of these two popular genres, others formed their own production companies to make more personal films. Some made both. In the 1980s for example, Atıf Yılmaz s films addressed the freedom and emancipation of women. A slower and unconventional narrative style was adopted in many of such more personal/intellectual films. At the same time, comedydramas maintaining the style and content marking the period , continued to be produced. These films were made for the mass audience, including families. Although the size of this audience had fallen sharply, it continued to drive ideas of national film character. The 1980s saw a renewed preoccupation with character and thus, the replacement (to a certain extent) of stars by players. The new aspect ratios, such as 16:9 and 1.85:1, were preferred for some personal/intellectual film projects. In addition, since these films principal addressee was not the mass audience, but rather festivals and the European market, the quality of both sound and picture had to achieve certain standards. In 1986, a Law on Cinema, Video and Musical Works 19 was passed. With this new legislation, film copyrights began to be protected. The Central Film Control Commission was abolished and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism gained the authority to control and register films. Although this law abrogated the censorship commission, local governors still had the authority to ban films. Nevertheless, censorship of films decreased gradually and only a few films have been banned or censored since This law is the second concrete state action taken in favour of Turkish cinema since the tax reduction of Sinema, Video ve Müzik Eserleri Kanunu. 44

59 Conclusion Although the first cinema institution was established by a state organ, the army, Turkish cinema has not been supported, but rather has been perceived as a taxable entertainment facility by the state for many years. On the part of private enterprise on the other hand, capital accumulation has been lacking. Indeed, in the early years, it is impossible to describe Turkish cinema as an industry. It is more accurate to identify some emerging factors such as censorship, the dubbing process, Egyptian melodramas and tax reduction in favour of domestic productions - which influenced the filmmaking practices of the following periods. Beginning in the 1950s - but especially gaining pace in the 1960s and lasting until the mid-1970s, it is possible to identify a very definite, intensive, and productive era, during which a national film industry became discernable. The financial support supplied by the mass audience was the impetus behind the growing film business. That was the heyday of Turkish cinema which also made possible the emergence of artistic works. Following an era of mass production, the film industry struggled to survive by producing films for a new audience from the mid-1970s to the end of the 80s a period witnessed gradual dissolve in narrative styles and themes. After 1990, there were a number of innovations made to filmmaking practices derived from the use of new financial sources, including Turkey s membership of Eurimages. These developments will be examined in detail in Chapter 2. 45

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61 Chapter 2 THE STATE OF TURKISH CINEMA IN THE POST-1990 PERIOD AND EURIMAGES AS A NEW SOURCE OF SUPPORT This chapter is composed of two main sections, the preceding one depicting the general view of the film environment in post-1990 Turkey and the latter focusing on Eurimages funding which is a fact that emerged in this period. First, I will give the figures for the population, film admission, number of movie theatres and films in years, which will be followed by the data which shows the change in the movie-goers profile in 1990s Turkey. Then the penetration of American distributors to the film market will be briefly explained. Thus I will present a general picture of the film industry and provide information about the audience for whom the films are produced. The four new financial sources for filmmaking, which is a novelty of the 1990s, will be introduced before proceeding to Eurimages, which is one of those. The section that introduces Eurimages is composed of three sub-headings. First, its philosophy the reasons for establishing such a fund will be explained. Then the history some facts about its establishment process will be given. Finally the mechanism of Eurimages - how the system works and the types of cinema support - will be explained. Films, Movie Theatres, Film Admission The reduction in audience size of Turkish cinema that had begun by the mid-1970s and continued on its trajectory throughout the 80s came to its ultimate conclusion in 1994: the total admission for domestic films was approximately 1.2 million in that year. The audience of foreign films also decreased during this period witnessed the lowest admission for foreign films and also for total film admission (7.8 and 9.3 million respectively) (TSI 2010, 92). Comparing the data from 1970 to 2010 helps us to expose 47

62 the stunning change in the movie-going patterns of behaviour of Turkish people: Table 1 Population, Movie Theatres and Film Admission in Turkey: Year Population Number of Admission Annual Admission Screens for Films Per Capita ,605,176 2, ,662, ,736, ,580, ,473, ,133, ,803, ,257, ,722,988 1,647* 41,064, Source: DİE 1973, 7, 11; TSI 2010, 8, 92; TSI 2011, 41; Yavuz 2011a; Yurdatap and Yavuz 2004, 22. When the figures for admission contradict in different sources, I used the bigger one. * The number of screens denoted in 2010 belongs to the year As seen above, although the population of the country is seen to increase over this period, the annual admission per capita is as low as less than one film per head of population in the recent twenty years. It is a very low number compared to 1970, the time of the heyday of Turkish cinema, when an individual watched almost seven films on average a year. The number of screens on the other hand decreases in the 1980s concomitantly with the general decline in Turkish cinema. Many of the movie theatres turned into arcades and car parks during those years. The number of screens actually reaches the minimum level of 281 in 1993 (TSI 2010, 92). Then it tends to increase regularly and Turkey hosts more than sixteen hundred screens by The reason for that increase despite the low number of movie-going individuals is, to a large extent, the splitting up of cinemas into smaller spaces in order to increase the number of screens and the opening up of new shopping malls, many of which contain cinema complexes. The movie-goers throughout the 1990s and in the first decade of the 2000s preferred domestic productions. Considering the low number of released domestic films, the audience per domestic film is seen to be much higher than the audience per foreign film. For instance approximately 227 thousand people watched a domestic film on average 48

63 in 1990, whereas that figure was 80 thousand for a foreign one; the figures were approximately 377 and 125 thousand in 2000, 334 and 104 thousand in 2010 respectively. The data regarding the number of released domestic feature films between 1990 and 2011 are as follows: Fig. 3. Released Domestic Feature Films in Turkey: Following the recessive years of the 1990s, the uptrend of Turkish cinema in recent years is discernable on the graph. Starting in 2003, the number of domestic films and in the audience size has been gradually increasing. To give an example, the number of movie-goers was 38.5 million in 2008, 60% of whom preferred domestic productions; that is to say, Turkey reached the largest percentage of domestic films market share in Europe and fourth in the world after US, India and South Korea (Kaya 2009). The number of admissions in 2011 is approximately 42.3 million, 50% of which were for domestic films (Yavuz 2011b). A look at the box-office films reveals that there is no foreign film in the top ten list and only two in the top 20 films: Titanic - which is number two all over the world - (12 th ); and Avatar which is number one all over the world - (17 th ) (Akıncı 2011; Kaya 2009; All-Time Box Office 2011). 22 Murat Çiçek, manager of a movie theatre chain, 20 The data which are the basis of the graphs throughout the text are cited from the referred sources. The graphs themselves are formed by LY. 21 Source: Akıncı 2012; Kaya 2009; Yavuz 2011a; Yurdatap and Yavuz 2004, All-Time lists for Turkish cinema refer to the information of last twenty years. There is no reliable data for box-office figures of previous years. 49

64 explained that in this environment cinema exhibition business in Turkey invests on the grounds of box-office success of domestic films in recent years, not the imported films (personal interview, Istanbul, 2 Apr. 2009). However, annual admission per capita in Turkey is still as low as 0.56 (by 2010). The Change of the Movie-goers Profile In addition to the decrease in the size of the audience in the post-1990 period, the profile has changed as well. Starting in the mid-1970s, the main audience which was composed of families from small children to grandmothers - had withdrawn from movie theatres to their homes to watch TV and video films. A new group of young and mostly uneducated males had filled their seats to watch sex-comedies, Arabesk and violent B-films. Now the recent audience of films in Turkey from the early 1990s till today - is composed of more educated young people from the middle and upper classes. Two sets of data give a general insight into the socio-cultural profile of Turkish society in recent years. Figure 4 shows the literacy ratios in years and Figure 5 demonstrates the general population of the country (%) 87, Fig. 4. Literacy Rate (Population 6 years of age and over) Source: TSI 2010, 21; 2011,

65 80 (million) 73, , Total Population Urban Population Rural Population Fig. 5. Population of Turkey in Years. 24 It is discernable that the literacy rate gradually increased during the republican period and the filmmakers - year after year - are making films for a more educated target group, the majority of whom reside in cities. Moreover, a piece of research conducted in the three biggest cities (Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir) in 1994 provides a series of data regarding the change in profile of movie-goers by the 1990s. Notwithstanding my reservation that the time of the interviews made (the time of the day and which movies were screened at that time of the year) and the selected movie theatres (what genre of films they were screening) might affect the result of that research, the findings put forth a clear difference from the film audience of the past a difference which I think more or less still holds today (figures 6 and 7). 24 Source: TSI 2010, 10; TSI 2011, 43. Urban population refers to the population of province/district centres and rural population refers to the population of towns/villages. 51

66 Civil Status (%): Sex (%): M arried, 17.3 Other, 1.2 Female, 30.5 Single, 81.5 Male, 69.5 Age Status: (%) Fig. 6. The Movie-goers Profile in the 1990s: Civil, Sex and Age Status Source: Sinemamızda Seyircinin Kimliği

67 Professional Status (%): Unemployed, 2.0 Retired, 2.0 Other, 1.0 Housewife, 3.7 Self-Employed, 8.1 Student, 46.1 Wage-Earner, 37.1 Educational Status (%): Primary School, 4.7 Secondary School, 16.8 University, 21.7 High School, 56.8 Fig. 7. The Movie-goers Profile in the 1990s: Professional and Educational Status Source: Sinemamızda Seyircinin Kimliği

68 The data shows that the majority of the movie-goers are composed of single and educated people who are students or wage-earners between ages 15 and 30. Women appear as thirty per cent of the audience - this is probably explicable with reference to their minor role in almost every aspect of social life. The Penetration of American Distributors The introduction of American distributors to the Turkish film industry is an important phenomenon of the 1990s. Following the modification of the Regulation for Foreign Capital (Yabancı Sermaye Kanunu) - that was designed to attract foreign investment to the country - in such a way to encompass the film business, Warner Bros and United International Pictures opened their representative offices in Turkey in Already advantaged by their healthy business infrastructure and good reputation, these distributors gained strength in just a few years and acquired a high market share. Including domestic Özen Film, film distribution businesses witnessed a competition between three leading companies from the beginning of the 1990s. Some of the Turkish filmmakers suffered under this oligopoly and held Americans in particular responsible for the fact that their films were not screened at movie theatres. Actually 195 out of the produced 553 domestic films could be released between 1990 and 2003 (Yurdatap and Yavuz 2004, 22). For instance, 108 of the released 154 films in 1993 were Hollywood productions whereas 11 were domestic (Dorsay 1994, 11). However, the American distributors did not hesitate to distribute a Turkish film when they perceived a box-office potential in it: for instance The American (Amerikalı-1993); Istanbul beneath My Wings (İstanbul Kanatlarımın Altında- 1996); and The Bandit (Eşkıya-1996) are the domestic films which were distributed by Warner Bros. The box-office success of these films gave hope to almost everyone in the Turkish film industry: a domestic film was not necessarily to be watched only by a small number of people anymore; it could potentially satisfy a wider audience. In addition, through the agency of American distributors, Hollywood films could be screened in Turkish movie theatres simultaneously with the USA, or a short time after the world premiere. Another benefit that came with these distributors was the renewal of the movie theatres to which they contributed. Hence they turned into modern spaces in which people 54

69 could enjoy the relaxed atmosphere. Maintenance of many of those movie theatres had not been made after they started to host young male audiences for the aforementioned genres of films. The ticket prices, however, concomitantly became higher than before. There were 19 different companies distributing films in Turkey by 2010 (Yavuz 2011a). New Financial Sources for Filmmaking As the video device lost its popularity and accordingly the reason to produce for this market disappeared (it had replaced the system of regional operators by the 1980s), filmmaking became a higher risk business than ever in an environment with fairly low numbers in terms of films, audience sizes, number of movie theatres etc. For a producer, it was nearly impossible to make films depending on only her/his own capital. Hence a new solution to save the Turkish cinema was necessary and came into effect: this was the aforementioned novelty in financial sources. Four new financial sources emerged by the 1990s to support filmmakers. Since then, films have usually been able to receive support from one or more of them. One of the new financial sources was private TV channels which started to broadcast in Acting with the motive of increasing their audience size, private TV channels gave pride of place to entertainment facilities which the state broadcasting company, TRT (Turkish Radio and Television Corporation), kept away from. The broadcasting policies of private channels are claimed to have had a degenerating influence on the society. These, it is asserted, are more observable especially when it comes to the reality shows, the style of transposing the news, and the entertainment programmes. In terms of the cinematic section, foreign TV series were screened on prime time at the outset. However, shortly after the push off, the broadcasters observed that old domestic films were in high demand by their audience. Those films were produced thanks to the financial support of the mass audiences of the 1960s and 70s; children of that era grew up to be parents in the 90s and adults became grandparents. Those people were demanding similar content on TV screens. Thus the foreign TV series were replaced by the old domestic films to be screened on prime-time. Having obtained this market information, some private TV channels decided to support the production of new Turkish films; they gained the rights for screening them after their exhibition in movie theatres. The TV 55

70 channels, however, did not prefer to be the main and/or majority co-producers of the films because the executives figured out that the re-screening of old films generated much more profit compared to producing new ones. By the same token, TV channels ordered either series which narrated similar themes to the old domestic feature films or commissioned the re-making of them as TV series. Thus, the number of domestic series produced has gradually increased in recent years. It should be noted that the state broadcasting company TRT engaged in the co-production of many feature films as well. The filmmakers have also been supported by the Ministry of Culture. Treating cinema rather as a taxable entertainment facility than as an art, the state for many years (from the 1930s until the late 1980s) had evaluated Turkish films on censorship criteria. For the first time in history, the state started to supply monetary support for domestic films through the Ministry of Culture in Following this, in 1991, municipality tax on domestic films was abolished and it was set to 25% for the imported films. Taking the state s unfriendly attitude towards cinema into consideration, these two steps are noteworthy. More than 40 feature films were financially supported (as much as 40% of their production budget) in the first half of the 1990s. Due to political instability and the short lives of the coalition governments, however, state support was interrupted for a few years by the second half of the same decade. In 1997 the municipality tax again started to be applied on domestic films and the tax on foreign films decreased to 10%, equalizing the two. Apart from the interruption for a few years, state support still continues. The Law on Cinema, Video and Musical Works of 1986 was replaced with a new Law on Assessment, Classification and Support of Films 27 in Films are now rated with reference to this legislation by a committee considering the film in accordance with criteria concerning human dignity, public order and morality, and the mental health of children and adolescents. The third new financial source for Turkish cinema which came about after 1990 is the sponsorship of the business companies for films. Supporting a film financially, a corporation publicizes its reputation as well as benefits from tax advantage, since the amount of money employed for such activities is exempted from tax. The filmmaker in turn is able to avoid the risk of audience credit, and covers the partial expenses of a film in 27 Sinema Filmlerinin Değerlendirilmesi ve Sınıflandırılması ile Desteklenmesi Hakkında Kanun 56

71 advance. This is thus mutually beneficial - the sponsor company acknowledges that the money employed for a film will not turn back and the director does not have to worry about the box-office. Besides business companies, non-profit organizations such as foundations and associations have supported the production of a few films, the themes of which they assessed to be in accordance with their missions. Eurimages: Philosophy, History, Mechanism The fourth source that emerged to support Turkish cinema in the post-1990 period is the Eurimages funding which is at the heart of this research and will be examined hereafter. In this part of the chapter, I will first elucidate the philosophy behind the establishment of such a fund and then give the history and explain the mechanism of it. The relations between Eurimages and Turkish cinema will be covered in Chapter 3. Philosophy American cinema had become the world s market leader by the 1950s. It had started to gain power during World War I and grew as an industry for the next three decades by means of transferring talented directors and other film professionals from Europe. It benefitted from the political climate there - stagnancy in the European film industry throughout the world wars in which almost all countries of the continent participated. Keeping this position since then, the trade deficit in favour of American cinema expanded, especially during and following the crisis experienced by the national film industries of Europe throughout the 1970s. By 1990, the market share of European (national and nonnational) films in the European Union was 19.5% whereas US market share therein was 70% (Finney 1996, 15). Even in France, despite all the stricter protective measures taken in favour of national industry, US films took 55.9% of the market (MEDIA Salles, 21). The foreign films market was as low as 1.4% in the US in the same year per contra (Finney 1996, 15). In this environment, the ratio of European films to cross borders to be screened in another European country was 10% (Forbes and Street 2000, 23). In addition to the audience loss of European cinema in movie theatres, private TV channels were growing in Western Europe in the 1980s. Having a commercial approach to broadcasting 57

72 rather than what may be termed a cultural one, those newly-born channels did not care for showing national or European films but offered to the audience what they demanded - which was Hollywood films. State-owned channels unavoidably were influenced by this competition and acted in concordance with market principles. Since the 1920s, European governments have been taking a series of steps in favour of national film industries as an intended measure against the rising market share of Hollywood in their countries. This has included the imposition of quotas, tariffs and restrictions on foreign productions; the requirement of broadcasting of domestic films on TV channels; and encouraging national film industries through subsidies or tax breaks. Co-production, one of the tools for raising finance and enlarging the market potential, between two or more countries of Europe had started in 1913: the first co-production in film history was Das Geheimnis der Lüfte, a full-length feature thriller by an Austrian and a French company (Robertson 2001, 19). The idea of pan-european cinema was prompted by a group of filmmakers headed by Erich Pommer, manager of UFA of Germany, in the 1920s (Rienstra 1998, ). Increasingly a more and more common practice in Europe, a high number of co-produced films (especially those by France and Germany) materialized during the 1960s. Nevertheless, neither the protective methods exercised at the national level nor the co-productions practised through the initiative of companies have been effective enough to prevent European cinema s audience and box-office loss over time. Under these circumstances, the idea of reinforcing European cinema on an inter-governmental basis emerged among filmmakers and professionals. What would be done was to follow an old tradition: co-production, which the European filmmakers practised for decades; and the opening up of the national markets to non-national European films with an organized and institutional approach. A film co-produced, thanks to the support of a supra-national institution, might have a greater potential for reaching international audiences as well as automatically being distributed in the co-producing countries. On the other hand, by the end of the 1980s, the EU was proceeding to a single market and political union. From 1986 to 1993, more than two hundred laws in different fields were agreed upon with the intended purpose of achieving the free movement of goods, services, people and money, i.e. to open the frontiers and abolish the protectionist 58

73 measures in the member states of the EU. Those were presumably the most palpable steps in history to attain what Ernest Renan envisaged in his famous Sorbonne speech in 1882: The nations are not something eternal. They had their beginnings and they will end. A European confederation will very probably replace them (2006, 20). Such a confederation would be achieved through embracing the differences between nations and peoples. Jacques Delor, who served as the President of European Commission for two terms between 1985 and 1995, stated: Europe has every reason to be proud of its cultural diversity but that cannot be an excuse for not having a united Europe. We need both healthy competition and increased co-operation (quoted in Finney 1996, 3). Another statement of his implied the tradition and rationale for support of the arts in Europe: Culture is and always has been a cornerstone of the European tradition. It s nothing new for Europe to subsidize art popes, monarchs and rich benefactors have done for centuries (6). Finally, Eurimages (2009a) described itself as an organization which endeavours to support works which reflect the multiple facets of a European society whose common roots are evidence of a single culture. That is put as the first of two main objectives of the Fund. Secondly, in terms of economics, it invests in an industry which, while concerned with commercial success, is interested in demonstrating that cinema is one of the arts and should be treated as such (2009a). Ryclef Rienstra combined these two objectives together: The meaning of the Fund has a cultural purpose but our actual job is mainly an economic one because we support with money (personal interview, Amsterdam, 3 Nov. 2009). 28 Instead of giving the money directly to their national industries, the member states agreed to pay it through annual fees in order to contribute to co-operation between film professionals from different member states. In short, a number of reasons combined which prompted the establishment of a cinema support fund in order to contribute to European cultural identity and reinforce European cinema which was losing its audience against Hollywood. Nevertheless, that was not a real challenge to Hollywood as Rienstra explained: No it definitely is not competition with America. We are dispersed in Europe. All 28 Ryclef Rienstra is the first Executive Director of Eurimages, served between 1989 and

74 countries would prefer their own national film industry, their own cultural identity and their own market share. That is, of course, why they have never been able to compete with the USA. You shouldn t aim at that because what they can do in Hollywood, we never can. Let s be fair - if you and I would like to go to a good film, wouldn t that be an American in eight out of ten cases? What we want is to maintain what we are good in Europe and to protect the market share. (Nederlander Leidt, 1991) Roberto Olla, likewise, stressed that the philosophy behind Eurimages was not to compete with American cinema financially but rather culturally: I think Eurimages and the MEDIA programme [which will be explained in the following section] were created in the late eighties to make sure that Europe could keep on having films that would reflect the cultural identity of the countries it comprises. That does not mean that the objective was to fight the Americans. The idea was to let our society have its own mirror in a way, its own films (personal interview, Strasbourg, 19 June 2009). 29 So indeed, as we will see, the amount of financial support provided by Eurimages remains at symbolic level compared to Hollywood. History On the supra-national level, the first step was taken by the EU in 1963 to promote a common market in the community, followed by the directives in 1965 and 1968 to open the national markets to the films and distribution companies of the other member states (Rienstra 1998, ). As the national film industries in Europe began to lose their audiences to Hollywood and accordingly lost power over the years, the indispensability of inter-governmental support was propagated more vocally among the cinema professionals. To respond to the demands, the EU introduced the pilot phase of MEDIA 30 programme from 1986 till The EFDO (European Film Distribution Office-1988), EAVE (European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs-1988) and SCRIPT (European Script Fund-1989) were three of the sub-programmes started in this framework. The function of EFDO was to support the screening of low-budget European films in another two EU countries; 29 Roberto Olla is the current Executive Director of Eurimages, has been serving since MEDIA: Mesures pour Encourager le Développement de l Industrie de Production Audio-Visuelle. 60

75 EAVE dealt with training, development and networking for audiovisual producers; and SCRIPT supported the development of new creative scripts. Following the pilot phase, the MEDIA-I programme operated between 1991 and 1995 and has been extended - with the renewals and re-implementations - under the names MEDIA-II ( ), MEDIA Plus ( ) and currently under the name MEDIA 2007 until Throughout the process the projects have encouraged and funded the following areas: script writing; animation production; documentary; use of archive material; distribution; dubbing; subtitling; professional training and a MEDIA business school; European cinema exhibition sector; European film awards; the preservation and restoration of films; the stimulation of financial investment; the development of production digitisation. In addition to all members of the EU, EFTA (European Free Trade Association) countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) and Croatia have been part of the programme (Wood 2007, 8-14; European Commission 2009). MEDIA, however, was initiated primarily as an industry-based programme and stayed that way: it aimed not at co-productions nor did it focus on cultural concerns and objectives. The first official attempt at the establishment of a pan-european cinema and television support fund had come from the French president François Mitterand and was rejected by the EU in 1984 (Vincendeau 1995, 133). Some of the member states were against such a fund because it was said that it meant in fact a movement of investment capital in production. In other words cinema was considered as an industrial activity, not a matter of cultural heritage and conservation. Moreover, there was anxiety about losing control of the national support mechanisms to Brussels: The UK was absolutely against. Germany was not very much in favour (Rienstra 2009). Thus, all attempts by the European Commission to establish a co-production fund failed. Thereafter France researched the possibility of setting up this fund within the framework of the Council of Europe. 31 All the member states of the EU were members of the Council of Europe and this provided the advantage that the member states could set up bilateral co-operation schemes wherein not all the member states had to participate. Agreements were on a 31 Council of Europe was established on 5 May 1949 as an intergovernmental co-operation with Treaty of London. Founding members are Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom (Royer 2010, 5). The objectives of Council of Europe are to: protect human rights, pluralist democracy, and the rule of law; promote awareness and encourage the development of Europe s cultural identity and diversity; find common solutions to the challenges facing European society; consolidate democratic stability in Europe by backing political, legislative, and constitutional reform (Council of Europe 2009). 61

76 voluntary basis only and existed at various levels and fields. That framework was used for setting up a co-production fund, where the member states of the Council of Europe could sign if they so wished. It thus also opened up the possibility for non-member EU states to partake in the scheme. It resulted in the name of Eurimages - on the initiative of the French (Rienstra 2009). Essentially, considering the European Cultural Convention (opened for signature on 19 December 1954) and several previous resolutions, recommendations and works on: - European cultural co-operation; - the promotion of audiovisual production in Europe; and - film co-distribution in the European area, the representatives of the Committee of Ministers of Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden resolved to set up a European support Fund for the co-production and distribution of creative cinematographic and audiovisual works on 26 October 1988 at the 420th meeting of the Ministers Deputies (Eurimages 2003, 2). The aims of the Fund were specified to be the following (3): - Foster the co-production and distribution of creative cinematographic and audiovisual works in order to take full advantage of the new communications techniques and to meet the cultural and economic challenges arising from their development, - Intensify co-operation and exchanges for the purpose of stimulating film and audiovisual production as an important means of promoting Europe s cultural identity, and - Take concrete measures in the financial field to encourage the production and distribution of films and audiovisual works and, thereby, the development of the programme industries. The headquarters was decided to be in Strasbourg where the Council of Europe is located - and the Fund started to operate on 1 January At the beginning there 32 Council of Europe was located in Strasbourg for symbolic reasons. This city had changed hands between France and Germany three times in the 20 th century and therefore was seen as a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation, which was thought essential to a peaceful future for Europe (Royer 2010, 5, 8). 62

77 were simply the 12 member states mentioned above participating. Twenty four new members joined the Fund since then to triple the number of participant states to 36 by the end of The member states - those except founders - and the years they joined to the Fund are as follows: Iceland, Norway and Switzerland (1989); Finland, Hungary and Turkey (1990); Austria and Poland (1991); Ireland (1992); Bulgaria (1993); Czech Republic (1994); Slovak Republic (1996); Romania (1998); Slovenia (2001); Latvia (2002); Croatia and The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (2003); Estonia (2004); Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia (2005); Lithuania (2007); Albania (2009); and Russia and Georgia (2011). The United Kingdom acceded to the Fund on 1 April 1993 and withdrew on 1 January The members of the Council of Europe who have not agreed to be included in Eurimages until today are Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Liechtenstein, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, San Marino and Ukraine. Mechanism The resources of the Fund consist of the obligatory contributions (annual fees paid by the member states and associate members), voluntary contributions, repaid loans, sums derived from cancellations of support, interests earned on the Fund s financial assets, other payments, donations or legacies. 33 The contribution of a member state is determined each year by the national representative of that state according to a scale adopted by the Board of Management (will be called the Board hereafter). 34 The Board is composed of one national representative from each member state and currently meets four times a year. Each delegation should consist of at least two national representatives who can participate the meetings alternatively. The Executive Director, appointed by the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, is the responsible person for the proper operation of the Fund and he/she reports to the Board. Any European state, be it a member of the Council of Europe or not, can apply to join Eurimages. The decision regarding accession is taken by the Board. In the case of a 33 The rules and procedures that will be mentioned hereafter are derived from the official documents of Eurimages, in which detailed information can be found. Some of those rules and procedures have been amended in the past and some are possible to be amended in the future. The information given here are in effect by the time this text is written (2011). The bibliographic information of Eurimages documents can be found in the References section. 34 The Board adopted to apply a new method by 1 January 2011 to calculate the contribution amounts, which takes into consideration the population, gross domestic product and the amount of support requested by filmmakers from a member state in previous years. 63

78 disagreement between the candidate state and the Board, the Committee of Ministers which is composed of the member states of the Fund enters the decision-making process and has the final say. A member state can withdraw from the Fund if they give six months notice before the end of the fiscal year. The assets of the Fund are held in the name of and the accounts are audited by the Council of Europe (but also are available to external auditors). The Fund is managed, and the resources are allocated, by the Board. All the costs and financial supports are expressed in Euro currency. 35 There are four types of support: co-production; exhibition; distribution; and digitisation. Co-production Support Animations, documentaries and feature films with a runtime of 70 minutes or more, which are intended for cinema release, are included in the scope of co-production support. Any film containing blatantly pornographic nature, advocating violence or openly inciting against human rights is considered to be ineligible for support. A co-producer first submits a film project to the national representative of his/her country. The mission of the national representative is to inform the other national representatives about the artistic merits and demerits (director, his/her works and reputation) and the economical state (co-producer, phase and likelihood of realization) of the project from his/her country and defend it if convinced - in a strong and convincing manner. Nevertheless, a co-producer can also submit the project directly to the secretariat of the Fund. In this case, however, there is no reason for the national representative to defend a project he/she does not know. A project that is not defended by the national representative has nearly no chance of being supported by the Fund as the demanded amount is usually much more than the funding allows. In any case the representative concerned should be contacted prior to the Board meeting, otherwise the project is withdrawn from the agenda. As the projects fulfil the formal requirements at the meeting stage, the national representative executes a somewhat difficult task throughout, whereby he/she is expected to be fair and meticulous. In this sense, Eurimages meetings are places where conflicting interests are able to compete against each other: It is for sure that the 35 The currency was French Franc before

79 representatives took into account the amount of money given annually and what they got out. We had fierce discussions about that (Rienstra 2009). On the one hand the representative lobbies in search of other representatives support for the projects from his/her own country and on the other hand he/she has to decide between good and bad projects with an expert eye. This is in the nature of the selection process as there is an abundance of applicants and a limited amount of money. In a competitive environment where pros and cons arise under financial constraints and, given that artistic tastes inevitably cannot escape subjective judgments to an extent, it is probable that some films of high quality unfortunately have been rejected. Nonetheless, Mehmet Demirhan stated that around 80-85% of the supported decisions meet the professional expectations and a really good project is never ignored (personal interview, Istanbul, 7 Apr. 2009). 36 The Board has the final say for the films to be supported but to make the decision process faster and more practical, a Co-production Working Group composed of at least one fifth of Board members is formed for each meeting. This is a balanced group of members from Northern, Central and Southern Europe, and from major contributor countries (France, Italy and Germany for the present). Each member state is assigned to take part in at least one of the five consecutive meetings. The group members examine all the projects that apply for funding, debate on them and resolve on the films to get support. The national representatives defend if they will - the applicant film project(s) in which co-producers from their country take part, during the meeting of the working group. Then the Co-production Working Group presents the films that they recommend for the support and give their arguments to the Board (which is composed of all of the national representatives). Most of the time, the Board takes the advice of the working group; it is for sure possible to disagree with the Working Group s decision and vote against but this is not the case because it is almost impossible for the national representatives who are not in the working group to read all the scripts (Van de Pas, personal interview, Amsterdam, 11 May 2010). 37 For an evaluated project, each member state has one open vote that is put down on the paper and later photo-copied and distributed to all members. Therefore each 36 Mehmet Demirhan is the current National Representative of Turkey in Eurimages, has been serving since Dorien van de Pas is the current National Representative of the Netherlands in Eurimages, has been serving since

80 member gets access to the for-and-against votes of other members. The support decisions are taken by two-thirds majority. A support decision, however, becomes valid only provided that this two-thirds majority has financially contributed an amount which constitutes at least half of the budget in terms of their annual fees. 38 It is a valid claim to say that the major financial contributors to the Fund have a kind of veto power to an extent. These countries, however, individually contribute much less than half of the total budget and the veto power can be exercised only if three of them are against a certain project. Furthermore, there is no quota which defines criteria for lower or upper limits for the countries. Theoretically it is possible that a country s projects may get all the amount set aside for support in a certain meeting or fiscal year but in reality this does not occur. Similarly, paying larger annual fees does not guarantee more support for a country s projects, even though national representatives are concerned about what they get out of their investment. For instance, despite the high annual fees their government has been paying for years, Italian filmmakers get much less than that amount in return. In a similar vein Dorien van de Pas (2010) stated that Netherlands thought of pulling out of the Fund in 2009 because for years their contribution was much higher than the money they got back. This is likely because, as Barrie Ellis-Jones stated, A very large proportion of the money has gone to co-productions coming out of smaller countries (quoted in Finney 1996, 110). 39 The Board takes a support decision on two grounds: one of the criteria is the quality of the work (the script); the other is co-production set-up. Olla (2009) stated that they judge the narration and dramaturgical quality of the script but not the content, i.e. there is no censorship. According to official Eurimages documents, the Fund also ascertains whether a project reflects and promotes the Eurimages aspiration to have contributions from a diverse range of national components to Europe s cultural identity. Here a critical question emerges: what is the cultural identity of Europe? The possibility to define the concept of European Work was discussed in Assises de l Audiovisuel in 1989 upon a request from Eurimages. An excerpt of workshop report was submitted to the Fund which pointed out the difficulty of such a definition: 38 The procedural decisions, on the other hand, are taken by majority of the votes independent of financial contributions of the member states. 39 Barrie Ellis-Jones is the second Executive Director of Eurimages, served between 1993 and

81 On the one hand Europe has a multiplicity of cultures, specifically regional as well as cosmopolitan; it does, on the other hand, have a common history of ideas, of philosophy, science, folk-tales, literature, music and experience even if many school books relate a long tale of antagonisms and conflicts. Although a definition remains elusive, the common base of European culture becomes patently obvious when it is compared with the culture of the Ibu, Chinese, or American Indian It is clear at this stage, however, that from a cultural point of view a work can be European only if its main creative springs, the writer and director, are European. (Eurimages 1989, 2) A pragmatic and practical definition of Europeanness was proposed in order to be able to label an audiovisual work. It was based on two conditions: firstly, the producer must be a member of a European nationality and secondly the work must have a certain number of points on the basis of crew (Eurimages 1989, 3). The European Convention on Cinematographic Co-production employed a similar scheme later in 1992, details of which will be given in the following pages. The attitudes of two executive directors of Eurimages, who served at different periods, at least at cinematic level, are parallel with the above view of what constitutes Europeanness. Rienstra wrote: Seen in retrospect, European films may well exhibit specific characteristics, although presumably only when compared with American films, and to a lesser extent as an autonomous identity (1998, 254). Olla, in addition, pointed out that there is not an exact definition of Europe s cultural identity and any definition is likely to be partial and incomprehensive: The only way one can define European culture is by placing it in contrast with non-european cultures, meaning you can only recognize a European film as compared to an American film. But defining a European film alone in terms of trying to find its own characteristics, this would be impossible, because there is such a diversity within Europe. That - finding a common ground among all the films that are produced in Europe - would be impossible. So, I think, the only way to define European culture and assign it a definition is to compare it to third cultures, like the American, the South American, the Asian, the African and so on. (2009) 67

82 So it is to be understood that there is no censorship for the scripts in so far as what European culture is and what it is not. In a similar vein, the location of the story is not important; it may be anywhere on the earth or space. Stories developed by European filmmakers are welcome provided that they are appreciated from the dramaturgical point of view: There is no such thing as asking yourself is this topic sufficiently European or not? (Olla 2009). On the other hand, what the Board of Management clearly does not like is those films that are very national. They become co-productions only because they need money to accomplish their financing. There is no real will to co-produce and so the Board of Management refuses those films (Olla 2009). The rationale is that projects which aim only at a domestic audience should be able to find the financing in their homeland or can rely on box-office revenues. Furthermore, there is no motive for a minority co-producer to activate the national support mechanisms for a film which will not address the audience in his or her country. At least two independent co-producers from different member states should be involved in a project. 40 One of the co-producers takes the initiative titled the majority co-producer - and usually has more impact on the form and the content of the film. An applicant project should be in compliance with the current regulations of the relevant states and also with the cultural objectives of the Fund. To be eligible for co-production support, a producer whose main activity is cinematographic works - should bear a European nature, i.e. should be a national or legal entity of one of the member states, and should be independent of public or private broadcasting organizations or telecom companies. In a co-production involving two producers (a bilateral agreement), the majority co-producer cannot contribute a share of more than 80% and the minority coproducer cannot contribute a share of less than 20% to the total budget. If the budget of a film is forecasted to exceed 5 million Euros, the contribution of the majority co-producer can rise up to 90%. For a co-production involving more than two parties (a multilateral agreement), the majority co-producer cannot contribute more than 70% and each minority co-producer cannot contribute less than 10% to the total budget. A co-production between producers from member states and non-member states is also possible; in this case, the contribution of the co-producer(s) from non-member states cannot exceed 30% of the total 40 At least three independent co-producers were required until

83 production cost. The rationale here is to ensure keeping the control of the project in the hands of the co-producers from member states. As a cinema support fund of the Council of Europe which aims to promote cooperation between professionals, Eurimages requires the candidate projects to be European in terms of origin, investment and rights. 41 The director of the film must have a valid passport or long-term residence permit from one of the member states of the Council of Europe. 42 A points system, which relies upon the European Convention on Cinematographic Co-production signed on 2 October 1992 and coming into force on 1 April 1994, was set to assess the European origin or character of a project. The production units of a feature film, documentary or animation are assessed with specific points to be counted (see Table 2). Table 2 The points given to each production unit: Feature Film Documentary Animation Director Script (writer) Music (composer) First role Second role Third role Cameraman Sound (recordist, mixer, engineer) Editor Art director and costumes Studio or shooting location Post-production location Researcher Conception Character Design Storyboard Chief Decorator Computer Backgrounds Layout % of the expenses for animation in Europe 50% of the colouring in Europe Compositing TOTAL Source: Council of Europe 1996, 16; Eurimages 2011a. 41 Starting by 2010, obligation to have European origin has been removed from the regulation but European character condition has remained unchanged. 42 Eurimages has announced that co-production projects with non-european directors will also be considered eligible for support, starting by 1 January

84 The first, second and third roles in a feature film project are calculated on the basis of the days to be worked by the actors. A feature film project is considered to have a European character in the case that it achieves at least 15 out of 19 points. A documentary must achieve at least 8 out of 16 and an animation 14 out of 21. If a project does not achieve the required points but has access to national accreditation in each of the concerned co-producer countries, it may be considered eligible for co-production support, if a written confirmation of this is provided by the national authorities. Eurimages is a top financier that becomes part of the process at the last phase: We did that because it was impossible for us to verify the solidity of the national funding or the participation of the distributors. We could not judge the contracts, the validity and the solidity of financiers or their contributions. Before we say yes to a film, they have to prove that all the participants are ready to commit themselves to this film and then at the end we step in. It has to be proven that all the partners are willing to co-operate, willing to invest in the project (Rienstra 2009). Hence a project is expected to have obtained at least one of the following financial sources in each of the co-producing countries in advance: public support (including national, regional, local or supranational supports), television pre-sale, a minimum guarantee, or any other financial arrangement that could be accepted by the Executive Secretary of the Fund. A national or other type of received support facilitates Eurimages support but it is not an absolutely necessary condition. In those cases in which a good project cannot get any of those for any reason, Eurimages funding is theoretically still a possibility. The project must comply with copyright regulations in all of the countries the co-producer companies are established in and all co-producers must have ownership rights (joint ownership) on the negative of the film. Principal photography for a feature and a documentary and principal animation for an animation film project should not have started before the Board s examination in order to be eligible for coproduction support. In any case in which technical or climatic constraints force preshooting, the Executive Secretary must be informed about this. Principal photography or principal animation should be scheduled to start six months after the Board s examination of the project. Applications for co-production support should be submitted in English or French and each co-producer in a project should contact the national representative of his or her own country in the Board. A project can be submitted to the Board and withdrawn 70

85 twice at most, and a rejected project cannot be re-submitted. 43 Regarding the cultural and economic objectives of the Fund pointed out before, each project is evaluated on the following artistic and production criteria: - Quality of the script / level of development (story and theme (originality of content, subject), characters and dialogue, narrative structure, style (director s intention, cinematic vision, genre, tone)) - Contribution of the creative team (experience of the director, producers, authors, scriptwriters, cast and crew) - Circulation potential (festivals, distribution, audience) - Artistic and/or technical co-operation between the co-producers - Level of confirmed financing (and consistency) The qualified projects get a conditionally repayable loan which is interest-free. The producers are allowed to reimburse the Fund on the basis of the revenues generated by the film. Thus, the producer is not expected to repay the loan in case the supported film cannot recover its costs and make profit. The reimbursement ratio of the loans was nearly zero at the beginning and has risen to around 5-6% by 2009 (Olla 2009). The main factor lying behind the rise of the repayment ratio is the measure introduced in 1994: according to a newly introduced rule, a producer who does not meet his/her contractual obligations cannot apply for a new co-production support. Nevertheless, the ratio is still low but apparently this is to be expected. Ellis-Jones explained: We are operating in the pan- European culture and environment, where most producers expect to make their films via public funds, and not to actually do well in the market (quoted in Finney 1996, 111). The applicant projects should include the minimum 2K digital master copy for cinema release, compatible with DCI (Digital Cinema Initiatives) specifications or ISO (International Organization for Standardization) norms on D-Cinema. 44 The amount of the loan cannot be more than 17% of a film s total production cost and can not exceed 43 The right to submit and withdraw a project was three times at most before This condition is in effect since 1 January Digital Cinema Initiatives was created in 2002 as a joint venture of Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros. Studios, which aims to establish and document voluntary specifications to ensure a uniform and high technical performance, reliability and quality control (DCI 2011). 71

86 700,000 Euros. 45 The loan is allocated proportionately between the co-producers depending on their contribution to the budget of the film. In some cases, the allocation may be disproportionate in favour of the co-producer(s) from the countries where cinematographic production levels are low. All the member states except France, Germany and Italy are covered in this status. 46 The Eurimages support must be mentioned at the beginning credits of the film just after the co-producers and in major publicity materials as well. DVD copies with English or French subtitles and the major publicity materials must also be submitted to the Fund after the completion of the film. The data hitherto shows that approximately one third of the applicant projects have not met the requirements, and have thus been evaluated as being ineligible and disqualified beforehand; approximately half of the remaining projects have been awarded support through the Board meetings (Olla 2009). The Fund has contributed to the coproduction of 1,421 films up to the end of 2011, 1,222 (86%) of which are features. The allocated amount accumulated to a total of million Euros, feature films getting the lion s share with a 95.4% ratio. The number of supported feature films annually varied from 15 to 83 and documentaries from zero to 21 in the past twenty-three years. 3 animations have been supported for the first time in 2009 (see Figure 8). The annually allocated amount for the co-productions varied from 6.2 to 24.4 million Euros. Average co-production support awarded per feature film has been 335,672 and per documentary has been 75,858 Euros. 47 Faruk Günaltay (personal interview, Strasbourg, 14 Nov. 2009) stated that member states who contributed larger amounts rather focused on big-budget projects which had the potential of commercial success whereas countries that have smaller film industries demanded support in the name of cultural diversity Before 2008, the limit for financial support was 15% for the films with a total production cost of 1.5 million Euros or more and 20% for the films with a total production cost less than that amount, except period. Two-scheme system was introduced by According to that system, the projects submitted primarily on the basis of their international circulation potential were in the Scheme 1 and the projects submitted specifically in light of the cultural and economic diversity of European cinema were in the Scheme 2. For projects in Scheme 1, the maximum support could not exceed 610,000 Euros for budgets lower than 5.4 million Euros and 763,000 Euros for budgets higher than 5.4 million Euros. For projects in Scheme 2, the maximum support could not exceed 380,000 Euros for budgets lower than 3 million Euros and 460,000 Euros for budgets higher than 3 million Euros. The system turned to single support mechanism in Starting by 2010, non-proportional allocation of support has been available to all co-producers regardless of their country, thus including the mentioned big-contributor member states. 47 For the annual amounts, see Appendix-C. 48 Faruk Günaltay is the first National Representative of Turkey in Eurimages, served between 1990 and

87 '88 '89 '90 '91 '92 '93 '94 '95 '96 '97 '98 '99 '00 '01 '02 '03 '04 '05 '06 '07 '08 '09 '10 '11 Total Number of Films Feature Films Documentaries Animations Number of Member States Fig. 8. Number of Supported Films and Member States in Years. Exhibition Support Europa Cinemas was a project introduced in 1992 as the exhibition leg of MEDIA programme, objectives of which are to: - Increase the number of screened European (non-national) films in movie theatres - Increase the audience attendance to those films - Attract the young generation to European films - Promote diversity in the screened European films - Develop a joint network of movie theatres throughout the member countries The Europa Cinemas project has reached 2,891 screens of 1,057 movie theatres in 599 cities of 64 countries by 2011 (Europa Cinemas 2011). For the Eurimages member 73

88 countries which are not part of the EU and therefore have not got access to the supports of MEDIA programme, another exhibition support was initiated in Working within the framework of Eurimages and intended to be complementary with the MEDIA programme, this exhibition support is aimed at facilitating the integration of the movie theatres in these countries when they join the EU. 38 movie theatres in 27 cities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey benefit from the exhibition support by the end of The movie theatres of Albania, Russia and Georgia, which have recently joined the Fund, have the right to apply for exhibition support. The objectives of the theatres support programme of Eurimages are almost the same as the objectives of Europa Cinemas, except Eurimages focuses on the screening of Eurimages-backed European films whereas Europa Cinemas places its emphasis on attracting a young audience. The exhibition support is in the form of a subsidy, i.e. nonrepayable. Movie theatres which get exhibition support belong to the Europa Cinemas network. In order to be eligible for Eurimages exhibition support, a movie theatre must guarantee good projection conditions and audience comfort and be situated in national or regional capitals, university cities or other key cities or towns for cinematographic distribution. In addition, a theatre must also satisfy the following criteria (Eurimages 2011b): - Commercial theatres - businesses, companies, associations (or any other type of entity owned either directly or through share ownership by citizens of the member states concerned) - that have been open to the public for at least 6 months and operate with a box office/ticketing system and declaration of receipts - Minimum number of screenings: 520 per year - Minimum number of seats: 70 - Minimum admissions over 12 months: 20,000 - Technical equipment meeting professional standards - Safety conditions complying with national law - Pornographic theatres excluded 74

89 Considering all the screens of a movie theatre, at least 33% of the total number of films programmed and at least 50% of all screenings in a year must be European. A European film is defined as a full-length feature, documentary or animation film which is produced or majority co-produced by one or more European company/companies, in which a majority of the professionals who contributed are clearly European nationals, and the film must be recognized as a national film by the producing country or co-producing countries. Films of a pornographic or racist nature, films which advocate violence, and advertising films, are excluded. At least half of the European screenings (25% of the total) in a theatre must be non-national films. A definite percentage of the screened European films the percentage is determined in the annual contract - must be the ones which received Eurimages co-production support. The screening of the European films must be spread evenly over the year. The Board may change the pre-agreed percentages for any case, depending on the total number of screens in a theatre, the market share of European films in that country, the previous year s results and the to-date duration of the theatre s membership in the exhibition support programme. The contracts between the movie theatres and Eurimages are signed annually and are renewable per annum. A movie theatre which meets its obligations in the contract gets a maximum of 1 per admission for non-national European films and national films which are European co-productions; the amount of support is decided by the Board, which can be 15,000 maximum per annum. If it is clearly stated in the contract, the Board may decide to pay a bonus for the screening of Eurimages-backed films; this amount can be 5,000 maximum per annum. Similar to the Co-production Working Group, a Cinemas Working Group has been formed to examine the applications of the movie theatres to be member of the Eurimages network. This working group consists of eight national representatives at most, chosen preferably from the member states which are in the scope of exhibition support. The Group proposes its support decision for the theatres to the approval of the Board. Distribution Support Distribution support of Eurimages is, just like the exhibition support, designed as 75

90 complimentary to the MEDIA programme. Thus the members of the Fund which do not have access to it - namely Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Russia, Serbia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Turkey are eligible for distribution support by the end of A distributor who meets the following criteria can apply for distribution support (Eurimages 2011c): - Head office is in one of the above mentioned member states or - Head office is in one of the member states that have access to the MEDIA programme and wishes to distribute a film produced by one of the above mentioned member states The applicant distributor should be a professional in the business who can prove that with his/her portfolio, and must have fulfilled his/her obligations in terms of the previous contracts with the Fund. A distributor can apply for the support of two films at most per meeting; the film(s) should be eligible for 35mm optical or equivalent digital cinema projections in conformity with the DCI (Digital Cinema Initiatives) standards. A distributor whose head office is in one of the co-producing countries of the film cannot apply for the support. An application which is rejected can be re-submitted only once, provided that the screening date of the film is estimated as after the Board meeting. The film which is applied for must be a feature, documentary or animation with at least 70 minutes of runtime and should not bear a blatantly pornographic nature, advocate violence nor incite the violation of human rights, as in the case of co-production support. It must be produced either by a producer from one of the member states of Eurimages or at least 50% by the co-producers from member states. The film and the director of the film must be European in accordance with the terms of the aforementioned European Convention on Cinematographic Coproduction. The film must be released in the country of origin not more than five years before the request for support decision and not be released yet in the covered region that it is indicated in the application. The film should have been released on at least two prints and the publicity materials for the film should refer to the Eurimages distribution support. While taking a decision, the Board s criteria are the quality of the film and the feasibility of the distribution plan. The priority is for the films that are co-produced via 76

91 Eurimages support, the feature films intended for children and documentaries. Financial support can be at a maximum amount of 50% of the expenses and cannot exceed 8,000 Euros per film. It is non-repayable. Similar to the Co-production Working Group and Cinemas Working Group, a Distribution Working Group has been formed to examine the applications of the films to be distributed via the support of Eurimages. This working group consists of a maximum of eight national representatives, chosen preferably from the member states which are in the scope of distribution support. The Group proposes its support decision for the films to be distributed to the approval of the Board. Digitisation Support Film digitisation support was in effect between 2007 and The objective of digitisation support was to supply financial assistance for the production of a minimum of 2K digital masters of the films with the intention of digital cinema projection, VOD (Video on Demand), satellite and high resolution internet distribution. A project which has already received Eurimages co-production support but has not included the digitisation costs in the budget so did not benefit from digitisation support can apply for this support. A project could be submitted after the completion of the answer print and it can be submitted and/or withdrawn two times at most. A rejected project is not eligible for resubmission. The applicant producer has to be independent of public or private broadcasters and majority-owned by European shareholders. A producer who cannot meet his/her obligations to the Fund from previous contracts is not eligible. The maximum amount of support can be up to 80% of the digitisation costs or 30,000 and it is nonrepayable. 49 If a project has received this support, it is obligatory to put the following note in the end credits of the film, referring to the support: This film was digitised with the support of Eurimages. The reason for ending that scheme was the obligation of producers to include the digitisation costs in their application for co-production support, starting from 1 st January Instead, Digital Equipment Support for Theatres has been launched for the 49 The maximum amount was 10,000 before

92 installation of digital cinema equipment, aiming at the movie theatres in the member states that are in the scope of Exhibition Support. The amount of this support is approximately 20,000 per screen and Eurimages stipulates the mentioning of its support clearly and visibly in the theatre. Conclusion The Turkish film industry met with a series of novel occurrences in the 1990s and went through dramatic changes in terms of production practices, styles and the content of the films. Introduced by the advertising industry, the latest cinema technology has widely benefitted both the filmmakers and TV professionals. Insufficient production conditions are no longer a proper excuse for poor quality films since the mid-1990s. The films are not evaluated by a censorship commission, but are rated and certified by the Ministry of Culture. The demographics of the Turkish cinema audience have changed and the number of produced and released films has decreased, compared to the previous period. American distributors have penetrated the market; private TV channels have begun broadcasting; and new financial sources have emerged, namely TV channels, the Ministry of Culture, sponsorship from business and Eurimages. Out of those four new sources of financial support, Eurimages is the only nondomestic supra-national one. Emerging as an idea among film professionals, Eurimages was established in the framework of the Council of Europe in 1988 by 12 member states to foster the co-production and distribution of creative cinematographic and audiovisual works and to promote Europe s cultural identity. Accordingly two main objectives were set for the Fund: culturally to support works which reflect the multiple facets of the European society and financially to be concerned with the commercial success of films while treating cinema as one of the arts. The number of member states has reached 36 by the end of Four types of support have been adopted by Eurimages. Co-production support mainly requires the collaboration of filmmakers from different member states and takes into account the quality of the work and co-production set-up of a project as criteria to support a film. Exhibition support is designed to favour the movie theatres of non-eu 78

93 members of the Fund. Distribution support is designed for non-eu members likewise and aims to increase the screening of European films outside the producing countries. Digitisation support was initiated for the production of digital masters of films but has been replaced by the digital equipment support for movie theatres million Euros is generated annually by the Fund for the production of 62 films on average. This hardly corresponds to the budget of a cheap American production; that is to say, Eurimages support remains at a symbolic level compared to the financing available in Hollywood. The next chapter will focus on the experience of Turkey in terms of Eurimages and its first twenty years of Eurimages membership. 79

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95 Chapter 3 THE CASE OF TURKEY: THE STORY AFTER TWENTY YEARS EXPERIENCE IN EURIMAGES This chapter aims to put forth the lived experience of Turkey in Eurimages in its first twenty years of membership. 50 The facts will be exposed by referring to statistical data, to the knowledge and observations of professionals who have been part of Eurimages or Turkish cinema and by examining the Turkish-initiative films that have received Eurimages co-production support. First the scope of Turkish-initiative films will be clarified. Then the data regarding the collaboration of Turkish filmmakers with colleagues from other member states will be displayed and the reasons of the country preferences will be explained. The contribution of Eurimages co-production support to filmmaking practices in Turkey will follow this. Before proceeding to the nationalness of the films, the attitude of the national representative against given projects and the issue of whether he or she makes a veto will be discussed. How national or European Turkish-initiative films are, as well as how much the films deviate from the mainstream in terms of cinematic narration and content, will be discussed afterwards. Films which are said to have an orientalist tendency in representation will be addressed in this regard. Then various statistical data will be provided and the audience figures for the films will be analysed. Finally the exhibition and distribution support will be covered briefly and criticisms of Eurimages practices will be looked at. Co-production, Partners, Contribution Turkey, a member of the Council of Europe since 9 August 1949, acceded to Eurimages on 28 February 1990, approximately one year after the fund s establishment, as the 18 th 50 A shorter, and somewhat modified, version of this chapter has been published in SineCine Journal of Films Studies (Yılmazok 2010). 81

96 participant. Faruk Günaltay was the person who endeavoured to persuade the political authorities of Turkey in favour of Eurimages membership and he was appointed as the national representative and served for 15 years. 60 Turkish-initiative co-productions had been supported by 12.8 million Euros by the end of Although the Turkish co-producer was the minority party in some films such as The Blue Exile, Harem Suaré and Wound and a Turkish producer does not even appear in the co-production setup of Waiting for the Clouds, they should be considered (and indeed they are in this study) as Turkish-initiatives, as the directors, themes and landscapes are predominantly from Turkey. 52 On the other hand Sawdust Tales (Usta Beni Öldürsene-1997) by Barış Pirhasan, Facing Windows (La Finestra di Fronte-2003) and Saturn in Opposition (Saturno Contro-2007) by Ferzan Özpetek - even though their directors are from Turkey - will not be regarded as Turkish-initiative films, for the landscapes and characters are definitely non-turkish and the Turkish co-producers are the minority party in these projects. 27 projects in which Turkish filmmakers were the minority co-producers (2 nd or 3 rd ) have received 5.9 million Euros in co-production support by the end of Out of 87 projects, including 60 as the initiative-taker and 27 as minority coproducer, Turkish filmmakers have collaborated with producers from 22 different countries. The details of the preferred countries for co-production are on Figure 9. As is discernable, producers from France, Greece and Hungary are the most preferred colleagues as far as the producers from Turkey are concerned in terms of cooperation. There are a couple of possible explanatory reasons behind this fact. In the first place, the producers prefer to work with colleagues either that they already know or are in contact with, or with any eligible company they can find. In the case of acquaintance, what co-producers inhabit certain countries is of more importance than arbitrary national preference. In terms of co-operating with any eligible company, two facts seem to be of importance. Firstly, the producers from the countries with bigger film industries were not eager to co-operate with Turkish colleagues at that time and hence collaboration with the 51 For the list of the films those have been supported, the amounts of support and audience figures, see Appendix-D. 52 Eurimages denotes Waiting for the Clouds a film without a Turkish co-producer, whereas Ustaoğlu Films, the producing company of director Yeşim Ustaoğlu, announced it as a co-production of France, Germany, Greece and Turkey. 53 For the list of the projects in which Turkish producers are the minority party, see Appendix-E. 82

97 producers from smaller countries was indispensible, as Günaltay (2009) explained. He also added that he channeled some of the Turkish filmmakers (who were in search of coproducers to collaborate with) to those countries. Secondly, the legal environments of those co-producing countries come into prominence rather than the co-producers: because it is very difficult to make co-productions in some countries due to their laws and regulations, Ahmet Boyacıoğlu pointed out ( interview, 8 Apr. 2009). 54 Beyond or outside these reasons, different motives might emerge for different coproducing country choices and it is worthwhile to try and detect them Turkish Co-producer is the M ajority Turkish Co-producer is the M inority France Greece Hungary Germany Bulgaria Italy Netherlands Chezch Republic Spain Bosnia and Herzegovina Switzerland Cyprus Iceland Portugal Belgium Poland Romania Sweden Austria Denmark United Kingdom "T.F.Y. R. of Macedonia" Fig. 9. Turkey Co-production Partners: In the case of France, it strikes one at once that the head office of Eurimages is in Strasbourg and to co-operate with a French producer might be helpful for accessing funds. My interviews revealed that this is not the rationale. On the contrary, as Mehmet Demirhan (2009) noted, to collaborate with a producer from one of the big contributor 54 Ahmet Boyacıoğlu served as National Representative of Turkey between 2005 and

98 states (France, Germany and Italy) might be disadvantageous because there exist about 8-10 applicant projects on the agenda of the national representatives of those countries for each meeting - in which their citizens are the majority co-producers and they have to deal with such a high number of projects. This does not increase the potential for getting support for a certain film. Moreover, the national representatives do not always act in the same way nor do they necessarily vote for similar projects. Rather, focusing on France s impetus and leading role in the European film industry explains the phenomenon with greater validity. Following a strong co-production tradition, France makes bilateral conventions with many countries and there is a notable number of French producers sustaining and promoting different genres or types of films in their portfolio to distribute all over the world. Hence they undertake co-productions not only with Turkish colleagues but with many others as well. A high number of co-productions with Greek filmmakers can be explained with reference to the cost advantage of accessing post-production facilities and also in terms of the geographical proximity and cultural familiarity of the two nations. Although Turkey has attained enough by way of advanced studios and post-production utilities in the last two decades, certain technical operations like processing sound recorded films are much cheaper in Greece - sometimes it costs about one quarter of a film s budget in Turkey. The qualifications of the technical crew, rather than the technology used, have a significant influence upon the artistic quality of the work and make it more apparent. While the qualifications do not vary too much between the two countries, the cost advantage gives the position of priority to Greece. On the cultural and geographical side, the transnational stories which spread to both lands like The Boatman and My Darling Istanbul required a Greek co-producer, actors and crew. The convenience of transportation between the two countries, on the other hand, also makes things easier. In addition to this, understanding each other comes into prominence in a co-production. The style of filmmaking is common in these two countries, compared to Western or Northern Europe. As Ömer Uğur (director of Homecoming) stated: In Turkey, we develop a story in a short period of time and want to shoot it immediately. We have neither a tradition nor a state of mind for long-term planning. We want things to go on fast, actualize now and here We can communicate to Greeks and we understand each other easily. They think like us; we come to an agreement immediately and make it. It takes longer, by as much as one year, with the French, 84

99 German or Swedish producers (personal interview, Istanbul, 1 Apr. 2009). Or, as Semih Kaplanoglu (director of Angel s Fall, Egg, and Honey) stated: We are close to the Greeks. They are more relaxed, more Mediterranean than us, indeed. There was no Eurimages support for Milk and I worked with French and German co-producers. It was easier to get along with the Greeks, compared to the French and Germans (personal interview, Istanbul, 30 Mar. 2009). However, Derviş Zaim (director of Mud and Waiting for Heaven), agreeing with the advantages of co-operating with producers from the Balkan countries, stresses how the others add to the value of a project: Nevertheless the coproducers who serve the purpose and boost a project tend rather to come from Western and Northern European countries (2003, 70). The rationale for co-operating with Hungarian producers is the high quality of post-production facilities which reside in that country at relatively low cost. Coproduction cases with the remaining countries are on account of acquaintanceship, story requirements, coincidences or just the obligations set by Eurimages. The filmmakers did not complain about a serious problem stemming from co-producing in a bi- or multinational environment, where communication has significant importance as Hetty Naaijkens (co-producer of Split) pointed out: You can compare co-producing to a big cake and you always have to divide it, some pieces for you and some pieces for them and how can we put all these ingredients together to make one cake? You really need to have very good communication (personal interview, Amsterdam, 14 Feb. 2010). In general the problems Turkish filmmakers experienced were of the kind of minor nature that any filmmaker might face while executing any given project. On the contrary, director Seçkin Yasar (director of My Darling Istanbul) experienced a serious conflict with her Turkish producer which ended in court and the film was released an immense eight years after the shooting. 55 Eurimages co-production support contributed to Turkish filmmakers in a number of ways. Although the first co-production in Turkish film history was done by Muhsin Ertuğrul through On Istanbul Streets with Greek and Egyptian filmmakers as early as in 55 The shooting of My Darling Istanbul was finished in May As the post-production of the film was not finished in 1.5 years, the director took the producer to court. According to the final court order, the rights of the film were given to the director and scriptwriters at the end of The director finished the post-production thanks to the support of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and her own funding. The film was released in April 2007 ( interview with Seçkin Yasar, 26 Apr. 2009). 85

100 1931, and various co-productions have been made since then, it has not turned into a common practice for Turkish filmmakers and co-productions have not reserved an important place in the Turkish cinema tradition. Whereas the Turkish filmmakers engaged in around a total of 44 co-productions throughout film history before 1990, they have coproduced 37 films in the 1990s - 30 of which were backed by Eurimages. 56 The Eurimages scheme first of all brought in a familiarity with film production in multinational environments which encourages the artists and crews to become closer and to share their experiences. Having partaken once in a multi-national project, it is easier to take on subsequent projects, as Yasar expressed: I can easily proceed in the future to cooperate with foreign producers thanks to my co-production experience (2009). Kaplanoğlu verified the positive results of co-productions: The filmmakers are gradually learning how to co-produce. We see them in foreign markets which was not the case in the past (2009). Its contribution to co-producing practice has been insomuch that a Cypriot Turkish filmmaker (Derviş Zaim) could engage in a project with a producer from (Southern) Cyprus, a country officially unrecognized by Turkey, thanks to Eurimages. Such a collaboration probably would not have been possible otherwise, i.e. without a supranational roof. Secondly, Eurimages experience has helped with the technical aspects of filmmaking, especially sound recording and processing, to advance to hitherto unachieved limits. From the 1940s until the beginning of the 1990s, films were shot silently and dubbed later in Turkey and sound recording was a problematic domain in filmmaking. Technical co-operation with other countries introduced the requisite knowledge and practice to improve this. Thirdly, besides assisting the majority co-producer by undertaking some of the technical work, the minority co-producers considerably contributed to the marketing affairs of Turkish-initiative projects as well. In addition to screening a Eurimages-backed film in the co-producer s country automatically (usually), the distribution becomes easier to exercise in cinemas and amongst the TV channels of other European countries and even non-european ones, depending on the co-producer s international relations. To be at the 56 For the titles of the co-produced films, see: Özgüç

101 level of the international arena is highly important for a national cinema s recognition all over the world. Finally, a vital benefit of co-production support is the advantage of being able to shoot with an extended budget. Zeki Demirkubuz (director of Destiny) confirmed this by his own experience: It is the first time I caught a chance to shoot with a high budget. This was the absolute benefit. My concern or attitude did not change but I could shoot the film in three seasons and thus spare more time for certain pertinent things and be able to enhance the formal quality of the work (personal interview, Istanbul, 30 Mar. 2009). Moreover, some other directors expressed that they would not be able to shoot those films if they could not get Eurimages support. National Representative and Blockage The national representative s role is of importance in the sense of guiding the filmmakers throughout the application process. The national representative does not make a preelection of the applicant projects. Expressing that he is ethically against pre-election as it would mean a kind of censorship and is also against the philosophy and spirit of Eurimages, Günaltay added: I thought of supporting every project coming from Turkey in an indifferent manner, provided that they are not racist, pornographic, fanatic or against democratic and humanistic values. Therefore I essentially supported all projects from Turkey, even if I was not convinced that they were the best projects on the agenda of Eurimages or they had a critical dimension (2009). The subsequent representatives of Turkey confirmed that they also never made pre-elections with regard to applicants and that is the case for the representatives of all the other states as well. Notwithstanding, some filmmakers expressed that they felt a kind of blockage from Turkish representatives in the past against young directors who intended to demand Eurimages support for their first features. What they did was to direct the filmmakers to appropriate paths throughout the formal process. Demirhan stressed two points which exemplify exceptional cases: The first case is if the number of applicant Turkish-initiative projects outweighs the possible funding. For instance, when there are four projects on the agenda of comparable artistic 87

102 quality and it is apparent that only two of them can get the support, he mentioned he would look at which director(s) need(s) it more; he would place the priority of his efforts on the project(s) coming from younger director(s) rather than for the project(s) from acclaimed director(s) whose film(s) were supported by the Fund before. By conducting himself in this manner, Demirhan said, there might therein be a contribution to the emergence of new talents: I can explain it to the parties and my rationale will not be arbitrary for sure (2009). The second exceptional case is that wherein the national representative s intervention in the process might be needed as a blockage for those projects which aim just to make propaganda, not art, Demirhan expressed. He added that a film surely can be critical over social and political issues but what comes first is its aesthetic quality. His approach is understandable - the priority of formal aesthetics is over and above content in the study and evaluation of art. Furthermore, the main financial source of the Fund is the annual fees paid by the member states and no authority wishes to be subverted by an opportunity offered by itself. Günaltay, on the other hand, expressed he did not take the dominant taboos in the country into consideration as a cinema representative in Eurimages, since art cannot be something done under restrictions and it is rather insubordinate by its very nature. He attached importance to the artistic culture of selfcriticism - projects questioning or criticizing Turkey should come from Turkey, not from outside. For instance, he was criticized in some of the media, regarding the Eurimages support for Journey to the Sun of Yeşim Ustaoğlu - which is critical of the predominant nationalist ideology in Turkey about the Kurdish question and Istanbul beneath My Wings of Mustafa Altıoklar which exhibits the religious conservatism in the 17 th century Ottoman state and the sultan as a bisexual individual. That is a democratic attitude. We composed an image in the eyes of other European countries that Turkey does not block support for a project which criticizes the state. I am pleased and proud of that (Günaltay 2009). Nevertheless, the media ignored Journey to the Sun, distributors were unwilling to engage in and the filmmaker had to distribute it with her own efforts, notwithstanding there was no hindrance by official authorities (personal interview with Yeşim Ustaoğlu, Istanbul, 29 June 2010). Two critical films on the other hand, Big Man Little Love and Innowhereland, had certification problems with the state authorities (Pösteki 2005). 88

103 In any case, a considerable number of films questioning the official ideology of the state or the established ethnic, religious and gender identities in Turkey have been produced with Eurimages support in the past twenty years. Approximately half of the Turkish-initiative films speak politically or touch upon politics and political issues. National identity, after all, is a political concept by its very nature and I will discuss the ethnic, religious and gender dimensions of it in Part II. Nationalness versus Europeanness of the Films It is a valid question to ask to what extent the films supported by a supra-national fund such as Eurimages are indigenous or national and to what extent they are transnational, universal or non-domestic. Definitely the most comprehensive and clear answer to that question can be provided by the examination of the films backed by the Fund. Firstly, it should be noted here that there are practically two types of coproductions. One is the type where the co-producing parties entirely get involved in the project, i.e. artistically and technically. The other type is mainly financial in that the necessary fund for the film is raised in different countries but the film is national in terms of its content - that is, a national film of the majority co-producing country. A striking majority of Turkish-initiative films fall into this category. According to Olla, two reasons behind this fact might be: (1) the lack of co-production experience which Turkish filmmakers have had, and (2) the unprivileged position of the Turkish language in Europe. Countries like France, Germany and Italy have a long history of co-productions and this experience creates the condition for a cross-fertilization of cultures in the stories and in general they have a more mixed content contributed to by both or all co-producing countries. I have stated in the previous section the low number of co-productions Turkish filmmakers engaged in the past. On the language side, languages like English, French and German have the advantageous position of being spoken by more than one nation and thus the films in those languages have more chance of distribution outside the co-producing countries and are more open to transnational contexts. On the contrary Turkish is not the official language of any member state in Eurimages except Turkey and spoken in a few countries such as Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Sweden, Norway, Bulgaria and Greece by a small number of immigrants or minorities. Therefore the Turkish-initiative 89

104 films inevitably narrate stories that aim at the audience in Turkey in the first place. Nevertheless this does not necessarily mean they are not universal. The filmmakers care about being perceived by worldwide audiences as they themselves intend to be; this is in the nature of filmmaking. Hence there exists self-control to some extent in terms of being understandable and accessible universally. The filmmakers also consult their projects with their colleagues or with some people with different ethnic and national profiles from both inland and foreign countries at the scriptwriting stage. Some of the filmmakers said that their films narrate the stories of Turkey as co-productions but they belong to the common culture of humanity after being released. They observed that different audiences all over the world appreciated them at the various international festivals. Ersin Pertan (director of Love under Siege), referring to this issue, defined his work as a European film, but added: We are not European; we cannot be. Even if we want to be, Europeans do not accept us. We are not Eastern; we are not close to Eastern or Arabic culture. We are a people of a culture which is peculiar to us. A journey to our roots reveals that the Byzantines influenced the Ottomans more than the Sumer, Hittite or Urartu cultures (1997, 97). 57 Barış Pirhasan (director of Summer Love) pointed out in an interview in 2005 that particularly the Turkish films of the early 2000s should be located in European cinema: The recent Turkish cinema is for sure a European cinema: look at the sources, look at what the filmmakers - including myself - have been influenced by. This is a new breath in European cinema which will be named sooner or later. Though Turkey seems a very different cultural region, Turkish cinema can be grasped in European cinematic context. The crucial point is we should not expect every individual s work to reflect his or her typical culture. The recent Turkish cinema productions, for instance, embrace international themes or dimensions from a peculiar point of view while focusing on topics which are so-called European. (189) Some directors, on the other hand, do not assess their films in terms of national 57 Sumer, Hittite and Urartu are the old civilizations established in or around Asia Minor between the 4 th millennium and 7 th centuries BC. 90

105 cinemas or as a part of European cinema. Semir Aslanyürek (director of The Road Home), for instance, expressed the fact that: None of the films I made belong to a specific nation; they are all human stories (personal interview, Istanbul, 4 Apr. 2009). Özer Kızıltan (director of Takva: A Man s Fear of God) noted that: For film, for visual art, there is no such thing as being Turkish or German. It is universal and it should be that way. There may be local differences but the basic rules and language of cinema are universal. The story of Takva concerns Turkey but it might as well be a narrative of a Buddhist temple or of a fundamentalist Jewish environment as well (personal interview, Istanbul, 31 Mar. 2009). A close look, however, at the films herein reveals that the majority of them are profoundly national in that the stories, the images, the signs, the characters and the context clearly belong to Turkey, including the ones in which the shooting locations are indefinable (i.e. wherein a spectator does not know Turkey and cannot discern which country it is). The tradition of narration is followed which was set in the 1950s and has been described by Halit Refiğ as a language that is plain, less pretentious, and which seeks to reach its goals via shortcuts (1971, 22) (and was shaped under the influence of Hollywood just like the other national cinemas - by the audience s taste and the economical and technical constraints of the film industry). The film language also occasionally displays the ornamental attractions thanks to the possibilities provided by the improvement in cinema technology. There are two exceptional types of films which do not fit in with the abovementioned nationalness. The first group is the films that formally diverge from the majority. As Eurimages has essentially been a place to apply for difficult projects (contextually and formally) which do not have much of a chance in terms of commercial success, some of those films deviate from the narrative tradition as defined by market rules. Films like Rosa I Love You, The Blue Exile, Clock Tower, Angels s Fall, Climates, Egg, Three Monkeys, Honey and Once Upon A Time in Anatolia for instance, display the particularities of what Gilles Deleuze introduced as time-image in which time is no longer subordinated to movement, but movement to time (2003, 106): We no longer have an indirect image of time which derives from movement, but a direct time-image from which movement derives. We no longer have a chronological time which can be 91

106 overturned by movements which are contingently abnormal; we have a chronic nonchronological time which produces movements necessarily abnormal, essentially false (129). As Patricia Pisters (2006, 176) encapsulated from Deleuze, in action cinema of movement-image (first cinema: Hollywood genre cinema) the action is followed through one or two central characters who are confronted with a challenge that is overcome in the course of the actions whereas modern cinema of time-image (second cinema: auteur cinema) is often an idiosyncratic reworking of class genres (sometimes with nonprofessional actors) and pays more attention to the socially less fortunate but the stories are also universal, talking about the human condition in general. The films mentioned above display one or more of several false continuities, banalities of everyday life, re-collection images or crystal time which are particular to time-image. Directors of these films expressed in various interviews that they were influenced by or appreciate one or more of the masters whom Deleuze referred to in order to disclose time-image: namely Ozu, Bresson, Antonioni and Tarkovsky. Such films, as they are not well appreciated by the mass audience, would have hardly had a chance of being made (or little chance of screening even if they were) a few decades ago when the film industry was dependent solely on market rules. Although the landscape is Turkey in those films, they not only differ from the majority of the domestic films in terms of their narrative style, but also the feelings and sentiments they invoke are dissimilar to the main stream and they are thus nick-named as festival films. However, the prestige that a national cinema needs is ensured thanks to the international awards won by them which in turn bring recognition and more interest to the films from Turkey and serve to nourish the national film industry. Among many other awards given to Turkish films, the Best Director award in Cannes 2008 was given for Three Monkeys and the Grand Prix in Cannes 2011 for Once Upon A Time in Anatolia won by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and the Golden Bear in Berlin 2010 for Honey won by Semih Kaplanoğlu are the outstanding examples. 92

107 Fig. 10. Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Three Monkeys (Üç Maymun), Before proceeding to the second group of films that are open to questioning as national films, I have to remind the reader that Eurimages has on several occasions been the subject of heated debate in Turkish cinema circles. Its role and if indeed there is any - influence on national films have been questioned, but these arguments have in general lacked a comprehensive perspective and many have extrapolated their conclusions from single examples (films). For instance the Fund has been claimed to approve easily the films that are concerned with the infringement of human rights, political tremors and Southeastern [Kurdish] problem (Güven 2005) or to support at large the projects which treat the adverse and backward facets of Turkey (Mete 2005) that appeal to the orientalist consciousness of a Western mind (Mete, quoted in Tunca 2005). Those arguments were holding the Turkish representative in Eurimages responsible for such films. However, more or less the same conception of the Fund continued during the later representatives terms of office: Eurimages has a lot of money, as long as you revile at Turkey! (Güven 2006). On the other hand Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films have been advocated to express the land and people of Turkey and their emotions through cinematic language (Özgentürk 2005). The claims against Eurimages imply that (other) Europeans expect certain themes or characteristics from a Turkish film, i.e. they wish to see Turkey in accordance with the codes in their minds and thus only appreciate the films which represent the Turkish people and land via unfavourable stereotypes or contexts. We cannot, however, infer an exact response by asking this question to individuals. Examining 93

108 all the films that have been supported by Eurimages is definitely the best method of finding answers to this question. Eurimages decisions for co-production support might be perceived and expressed as approving easily the films that are concerned with the infringement of human rights, political tremors and Southeastern problem, as claimed by Güven. It might also be seen as a matter of an artistic culture of self-criticism, as Günaltay stated. Moreover, the cultural objective of the Council of Europe is to promote awareness and encourage the development of Europe s cultural identity and diversity (2009) and its cinema support fund encourages filmmakers to reflect and promote the contribution of diverse national components to Europe s cultural identity (2003). Besides, films that openly incite against human rights are considered to be ineligible for support. That is to say, human rights are an important concern for this supra-national organisation. As I have mentioned, the representation of ethnic, religious and gender identities as diverse components of Turkish national identity will be analysed in detail in chapters 4, 5 and 6. The claims of orientalism, however, necessitate a close examination of the films at this point. It is true that there is a second group among Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative projects that it is difficult to label national films since they narrate Turkish society through the eyes of a foreigner, i.e. a Westerner, which invokes the term Orientalism as used by Edward Said. A discourse emerged in the post-enlightenment period, orientalism is the construction of the Orient by the West in an unequal relationship of power and cultural hegemony. It creates and maintains the essentialist idea that the Orient is the backward, exotic and inferior other and exists for the superior European. To quote Said, orientalism can be regarded as a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, dominated by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the Orient (1995, 202). The Orient that appears in Orientalism states Said, is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later, Western empire (202-03). Stereotyping is the prevalent way of orientalist representation, which draws on a good many clichés. As Hall argues, stereotyping reduces people to a few, essential characteristics, which are represented as fixed by nature (2003, 257). Accordingly, speaking for cinema, the subjects and objects of the Orient are suited - by the one who 94

109 produces the representations of them - to the consciousness of the Western spectator. There are a few Turkish-initiative films backed by Eurimages, notwithstanding that they were shot by Turkish directors, which can be said to exhibit characteristics that are particular to the orientalist approach. Steam: The Turkish Bath is the most debated film in this regard. The main focus of the film is the emergence of a gay relationship between an Italian and a Turkish male. I will address this issue in Chapter 6 under the section of LGBT identities and place the emphasis on orientalism here. Except for the director (Ferzan Özpetek) and the milieu, there is almost no clue to the film being made in Turkey. The spectator is allowed to see Istanbul and the people of Turkey only through the eyes of the Italian protagonists, Francesco and Marta. The representations are made in clichés of a kind that might first and foremost come to the mind of a Westerner about Turkey. For instance, when Marta and Francesco discuss in Rome going to Istanbul to sell the bath that they have inherited from Madame Anita, Marta says that Francesco should go because he will be the one to be respected there as a male. Likewise we hear Madame Anita writing in her letters that the women of Turkey should work two times as much as European women should in order to obtain the same things. On Francesco s first day in Istanbul, we see a veiled woman in black in the background. Thus we are told the women by and large are secondary and are of lesser value in that oriental other country. We watch a wedding ceremony and a circumcision feast in the film like a documentary prepared for a tourist. Zozo, the Turkish lawyer of Francesco, is represented as an untrustworthy swindler, which is essential to an orientalist narrative. Turkish hospitality is represented through the family that lives as tenants of Madame Anita, and one would think in a positive way. But the family members ceaselessly insist on presenting offerings to their guests. However, representing them as continuously insisting on serving something to their guests transmits the message that the East exists for the West, even if the director does not intend to be understood in this way. The orientalism of the film is also observable in the architectural paradigms and mise-enscène, as Mary P. Wood states: The protagonist s home in Rome is a high-level, modernist apartment contrasting with the house and bath he inherits in the old quarters of Istanbul, characterized by dark, closed, mysterious spaces, jumbled streets, labyrinthine passages, spyholes and sexual ambivalence (2007, 128). In brief, the film, with its representations of stereotypes and the feeling it creates in the spectator, cannot escape the 95

110 criticism of being orientalist in representation. A few other films deserve attention for some of their scenes that render them open to criticism with regard to orientalism. Harem Suaré depicts the women in the imperial harem in the last years before its closure and cannot escape the criticism for it reminds us of women posing for the colonial painters and photographers of Europe as the exotic orient. Moreover Özpetek (1999), the director of the film, defined the harem as a space where the East and the West are blended in cohesion, and he devotes the two naked scenes of women to orientalist painters. Robert s Movie, another film in the same vein, appeals to Islamic mysticism and shows Mevlevis who perform the sema ritual, in a crude stereotyping of Turkey. The protagonist, John Kelly, does not think of returning to his home city New York because of his love for this country (Turkey), its mysticism and its dervishes. Three of the five leading roles are performed by non-turkish actors and the characters speak mostly in the English language in Robert s Movie. It is more like a foreign film shot in Turkey rather than being national in character. Director Canan Gerede, referring to Cahiers du Cinema, admitted it was not, indeed, a Turkish film: Speaking of style, Cahiers du Cinema for instance, defined it as the best sample of new American cinema from the film language point of view (Gerede and Altan 1992, 67). Furthermore she points out that in Robert s Movie Istanbul is recorded through the eyes and sensations of a foreigner (quoted in Karakaya 2002, 176). In Split by the same director, Sol, the heroine from Iceland, goes to the village of Halil in Anatolia. However, she covers her head in the village while she does not do the same thing in Istanbul. We see her boyfriend from Iceland on the other hand, freely drinking beer. It gives the impression that women have to cover themselves in rural areas of Turkey whereas men have the right to act the way they want similar to the message given in Steam: The Turkish Bath. Other than that, the majority of the signifiers that belong to Turkey are represented in a negative manner in Split. Likewise, in Wound almost everything that Hülya the protagonist sent to Turkey by her uncle - encounters in Turkey is negatively represented; she is a member of a Turkish minority in Germany and wants to return there, where she is used to being. Interestingly, maybe coincidentally, all of the directors of the above-mentioned films live abroad, all in Western countries. As distinct from the films using an orientalist approach, Rosa I Love You is itself 96

111 a work that looks like a foreign film, rather than looking at Turkish society through the eyes of a foreigner. Işıl Özgentürk (1992), the director, expresses that the film is adapted from a novel by a Turkish author (Sevgi Soysal) and composed by the labour of a Turkish director and crew and she also emphasises the importance of national identity, but there is almost no sign that the film is a Turkish one. First of all, the milieu is indefinite; it is impossible to conceive which country it is. We are told that Rosa was a princess in her childhood but she becomes the mistress of a baron in her adulthood. A man tells Rosa that a piano was playing in the chateaus in the past. Such concepts as princesses, barons and chateaus, however, do not exist in Turkish culture and history. The only sign of it being a Turkish film is the scene in which Rosa drinks rakı with three men who are clients of her pension and later they perform a Turkish folk dance. Nevertheless this scene remains unique in the wholeness of the film, inasmuch as a later picnic scene in which Rosa joins three men looks just like something from a French film. Relying on the Turkish-initiative films of the past twenty years that have been financially supported by Eurimages, a Fund in which representatives of European countries make the decisions, it is hard to say that culturally unfavourable contents or scripts/images which throw dirt at Turkey are expected or appreciated by the European decision makers. This is because, for one thing, the majority of those films represent the Turkish people and the land just as they are. The films which adopt an orientalist manner of representation are exceptions, and their number is as low as 5 out of 59 films - those I have mentioned above. In brief those films, the great majority of which are profoundly national, verify the Eurimages criteria which do not allow pornography nor violence nor the infringement of human rights and which encourage the filmmakers to reflect and promote the contribution of diverse national components to Europe s cultural identity. One can, nonetheless, claim that those criteria obstruct the artistic creativity of certain projects. For the projects which do not fit in or which violate those criteria, other possibilities of funding (national support, sponsor companies, TV sales or just the box-office returns) are still open. 97

112 Speaking Statistics Statistical data for the admissions of Eurimages-backed Turkish initiative films in Turkey show a heterogeneous distribution. 58 While some of those like The Bandit and Goodbye which attracted more than one million spectators to movie theatres - have been appreciated by the audience, the majority reached a number of spectators less than 100,000. Films such as Nude, Please Don t Go, Split, Wound, My Darling Istanbul, Encounter, Tales of Intransigence, Angel s Fall, On the Way and My Only Sunshine have been seen by less than 10,000 people, which is too low a number for cinematographic productions. As a matter of fact, the average admission per domestic film has been 278,160 during the period (572 films) and Eurimages-backed films have an average of 184,221 whereas the films which did not get that co-production support (513 films) have 288,964. Especially those films which received support from Eurimages in the first five years of Turkey s membership ( ) have an average admission as low as 30,130 per film. The average of domestic films during the corresponding period is not as high as the general average of the last twenty years but nonetheless it is approximately two times that figure: 61, The average admissions per Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative film in periods of five years can be seen in Figure , , , , , , , , ,565 50,000 30, (8 films) (21 films) (15 films) (15 films) Fig. 11. Average Admissions per Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative Film. 58 For the table, see Appendix-D. 59 Since the years of support decision and release differ, the figures of 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995 and 1997 are taken into account which correspond to the release years of the films that were supported between

113 Rienstra has explained that the Board of Management paid little attention to the box-office potential of the projects in the initial years of the Fund and this seems to have changed in later years: This could be one reason I could think of; there was too much criticism of the Fund on the grounds that the films supported by Eurimages didn t find an audience. So it is very much possible that the Board chose to opt for more audiencefriendly films during recent years because they wanted these films to be seen and recognized by a larger audience. That is very much possible. At that time the Board didn t care about audience results. At the beginning it was just not a major consideration (2009). The relatively high average admission figure between 1995 and 1999 arises from the fact that top-three Eurimages-backed box-office films The Bandit, Goodbye and Cholera Street received co-production support in this period. Among those, The Bandit in particular has a special place in Turkish film history in that it is the first domestic film to come into contact with a large number of spectators after the fall of Turkish cinema started at the end of the 1970s. Released in 1996, the success of 2.5 million admissions 60 gave the hope to the filmmakers that was needed: a domestic film should not necessarily be a box-office crash. The Bandit was like an oasis in the desert for the audience who had been stuck between Hollywood productions and highly personal, symbolic and boring domestic auteur works. Yavuz Turgul, director of The Bandit, had stated two years before that film, in the midst of a barren film industry: To me, Turkish cinema signed its own death warrant the day it lost its commercial character (quoted in Tankuter 1994, 29). And years after its disappearance, this film made use of the classical structure of the Yeşilçam narrative style to which the mass audience had been used to - within the context of a modern love story and with strong characters. The film focuses on a bandit who was captured on the mountains of South Eastern Turkey and sent to jail 35 years ago after his best friend informed the authorities. After serving the sentence, the bandit is free and goes to Istanbul in the hope of taking vengeance upon his best friend, who has married with the bandit s beloved in the meantime. Besides the story, the acutely realistic acting of the players increased the attraction of the film for the audience.the other few films which reached relatively high levels of audience numbers (Cholera Street, Goodbye, Borrowed 60 The admissions for a total number of 9 domestic films were approximately 3 million that year indeed. 99

114 Bride and Bliss) are the ones that followed the classical narrative tradition as well. Fig. 12. Dir. Yavuz Turgul, The Bandit (Eşkıya), The films which experienced box-office crashes, on the other hand, either made use of experimental/symbolic narration (To Walk on Fire, Nude, Rosa I Love You, Clock Tower, Mud) or difficult themes (Graduate of Insanity, My Darling Istanbul, Innowhereland, Children of Secret, Waiting for the Clouds, Angel s Fall) or the characters and the language were simply unfamiliar to a typical Turkish audience (Robert s Movie) it was beyond a matter of being good or bad films. Those box-office crashes can be grasped by the fact that new sources of financial support available after 1990 put an end to the obligation on filmmakers to satisfy the needs or preferences of mass audiences and accordingly provided them to care less for the box-office figures. That is to say that filmmakers have been enjoying the freedom of creativity in style and content much more in recent years compared to those of the past. Besides that benefit yielded by the new sources of funding (including Eurimages), however, what Tunç Başaran (director of Please Don t Go and Graduate of Insanity) said draws attention to the heart of the economy of film production: Some of my colleagues say they cannot make movies because it is too expensive. They don t want to invest their own money. If you don t take the risk in a project, you can t make it good. If you fund the budget using outer sources and the film costs nothing to produce, then you don t care too much about the result (1998, 69). This was the now-disappeared risk factor for a filmmaker wishing to connect with his/her audience. 100

115 The 60 Turkish-initiative projects have been shot by 39 different directors, 7 of whom are women corresponding to 11 films. Ali Özgentürk is the director whose projects have received co-production support the most (5 films). 61 The number of Turkishinitiative projects to receive Eurimages co-production support per year is between 1 and 5, which makes an average of 3 films. 58 out of the 60 films are features and 2 are creative documentaries. All of the features are dramas in the broadest sense. 15 of them are period films whereas the cinematic time is in the present in the others. The runtime of the films varies from between 86 to 123 minutes, meaning they are not extremely long, except one: Once Upon A Time in Anatolia which is 157 minutes long. As the majority co-producer takes the initiative and has more influence on the content of the film, scriptwriters of all the films were from Turkey except the co-writers of The Blue Exile, Steam: The Turkish Bath, Harem Suaré and Waiting for the Clouds. Co-operation between countries is observable also in the critical technical crew duties like those of the director of photography and those of the editor: 24 of the directors of photography and 16 of the editors have non-turkish nationality. The case is different when it comes to acting; only 7.1 per cent of the 5 leading roles (21 out of 295) are performed by non-turkish actors Fig. 13. The Number of Turkish-initiative Co-productions Supported by Eurimages in Years. 61 Ali Özgentürk (2005) stated that he received Eurimages co-production support for Balalaika but returned it later during the shooting because he found another co-producer who was able to finance the remainder of the film. Balalaika, however, will be regarded as a Eurimages-backed film since it was initially approved for support, shot and released. 101

116 The location in most of the films is set in various parts of Turkey, mostly Istanbul. In some films, even though we know that the landscape is Turkey (since they are Turkish stories shot on locations in the country), there is no clear sign, image or dialogue (if there is, very little) affirming the country and its identity. Thus such films as To Walk on Fire, Rosa I Love You, Clock Tower, The Hunter and Angel s Fall can be classified in the indefinable locations category. As co-productions between two or more countries, some films, on the other hand, narrate transnational stories spreading in relevance to at least one country outside Turkey. Steam: The Turkish Bath (Italy), Split (Iceland), The Boatman (Greece), Romantic (Bulgaria), Wound (Germany), Harem Suaré (Italy), My Darling Istanbul (Greece), Balalaika (Russia and Georgia) and Waiting for the Clouds (Greece) are in this category. Mud is an exception in the sense that the whole story is narrated in Cyprus; there is no part from Turkey. Letter, The Time of the Heart and Justice inform us about immigrations to United States, Australia and China respectively, and Goodbye speaks of a woman in Cuba, so as to emphasize a transnational dimension of the narrative, even though we do not see those lands. Rıfat of Please Don t Go is killed in Korea during the war and Robert of Robert s Movie comes from Beyrouth and buys a train ticket to Germany but cannot go. We do not see these lands either, though they have been mentioned. Exhibition and Distribution Support Co-production support has an important place in Eurimages as an overwhelming majority of the funding is reserved for it. That is why I have focused on it at length. Since the other states have access to the possibilities of the MEDIA programme, only the member states of Eurimages which are not members of the EU benefit from exhibition and distribution support. This is the rationale behind the minor proportioning of those funds. Nevertheless, they offer a certain level of contribution to movie theatres and distributors in Turkey. Starting to benefit from it in 1994, the exhibition support has constituted 12.4% of the total support Turkish cinema has received in the French Franc period (before 2001) and 23.4% of the total support in the Euro period by the end of Out of the four countries whose movie theatres receive exhibition support, Turkey takes the largest 62 For the details, see Appendix-F. 102

117 portion from the Fund, as 25 cinemas in 14 cities benefitted from it in Although the amount of annual support reserved for movie theatres in Turkey has increased in recent years, the allocated amount per cinema has been reduced due to an increase in the number of member cinemas. The amount per cinema has received an amount between 10,000 and 20,000 Euros annually in recent years except 2009, when there is a sharp decrease. As a matter of fact, that mentioned amount barely corresponds to a movie theatre s rent for two months at the centre of Istanbul (personal interview with Temel Kerimoğlu, Istanbul, 6 Apr. 2009) or half of the annual electricity cost of running the theatre (personal interview with Adalet Dinamit, Istanbul, 6 Apr. 2009). An increase in the amount of fees Turkey pays to the Fund will probably induce an increase to the amount allocated to movie theatres in turn. In any case, the obligation of cinemas to schedule half of the year for European films feeds the spread of alternative film culture outside Hollywood. Murat Çiçek, manager of a chain two cinemas of which benefit from the support, stressed its importance: If we didn t get such a support, we would probably exhibit just half of the European films we exhibit now (2009). Regarding the distribution support, 20 Turkish films have been distributed in 52 countries thanks to it by the end of Among these, Three Monkeys (9 countries), Takva: A Man s Fear of God (8 countries), and Distant (6 countries) have been distributed in the highest number of countries. 63 On the other hand, 41 different Turkish distributors have benefited from distribution support to distribute 282 films in Turkey whose directors are from 26 different countries. French films/directors occupy the first rank (109 films) in this category. Criticisms As a supranational organisation of many parties that supports films financially where conflicting interests compete against each other, Eurimages cannot escape criticism, and this can be grouped into three topics. Firstly, although a certain percent (currently 17%) of the estimated project budget is supported, a common belief among Turkish filmmakers is that a Turkish-initiative 63 For the full list, see Appendix-G. 103

118 project cannot receive an amount of support more than thousand Euros. This is verified by the statistical data. The co-production support that Turkish-initiative projects have received actually varied in amount between 42,145 (Saint Ayşe) and 330,000 (Once Upon A Time in Anatolia) Euros, excluding Waiting for the Clouds, The Blue Exile and Harem Suaré which got 350,000, 457,347 and 487,837 respectively; as mentioned before, there appears no Turkish producer or the Turkish producer was the minority party in those three projects. Nevertheless, taking into consideration the contribution Turkey has made to the Fund, the amount that the supported projects get is perceived as fair by the filmmakers. 64 The projects in which Turkish co-producers are the minority party, on the other hand, have received support of between 39,637 and 578,500 Euros. The second common criticism of the Fund is that the application process is highly bureaucratic and requires too much paper work. I learned through my interviews with both the Eurimages authorities and the national representatives of Turkey that what is demanded by the Fund are documents which are already supposed to be prepared by the producers and the complaints about bureaucracy and paper work are not particular to Turkish producers; such complaints come from almost all countries. Olla expressed that what they actually demand is the English or French translation of the documents in addition to what they are expected to have prepared in a co-production set-up: We do not ask anything that they shouldn t already have if they are good producers: for instance the co-production agreement, or for instance a budget, or for instance a financial plan or a schedule. Those producers who are complaining of administrative burdens usually indicate two things: if they don t have those materials it means either they are not good producers or they are not ready to come to us. Or the second possible reason - if they don t have it, what they would declare is false (2009). bureaucracy: Rienstra agreed with these criticisms but stressed the inevitability of the I think they are absolutely right but the point is that this was a fund which was set up within the framework of the Council of Europe and the Council of Europe is a very bureaucratic organization. One should understand that we were dealing with 64 For the annual fees Turkey paid to the fund, see Appendix-H. 104

119 member states money and we were highly held accountable for all of our expenses and support amounts by our member states. And another fact is that on the national level, when I was the director of the Dutch Film Fund, I knew the filmmakers, I knew the producers. I knew which one was reliable, which one was not. And for which one I had to be careful and for the other one to say I can trust you. But on the international level we don t know and we are entirely dependent on the judgment of the national representatives, who are not always all that objective. We have always asked because we discussed this very often - for them to submit a project in one fold, just one copy, and we copied it for the Board. And if the file was incomplete it was our fault. So we only said Ok we have 15 member states; you bring 15 copies of the file. It is your responsibility. Maybe it is bureaucratic, yes, but I think this is unavoidable I have seen procedures in France and Germany and I can faithfully say that we are not all that bureaucratic. (2009) Even though the bureaucratic process aims at a tight control of the budgets in such a monetary affair, these criticisms point out that there has been a considerable number of inflated budgets through the applications or false submissions for payments, due to a system which pays a certain percent of the estimated budget and thus encourages the producers to exploit the Fund. Ellis-Jones replied that they were more sensitive and cautious about certain projects: There are tight budgets, which have little realistic room for manoeuvre, fair budgets and loose budgets, and it s the loose ones that we are most keen to re-examine with care (quoted in Finney 1996, 110). Ali Özgentürk, producer/director of 5 films and producer of 1 Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative film, stated that Eurimages was less bureaucratic initially but its later bureaucratic attitude compelled some filmmakers to produce fake documents; the submitted documents are more realistic in recent years, he added (personal interview, Istanbul, 18 Dec. 2010). In a similar vein Özgentürk (2010) pointed out that high bureaucratic mechanism of Eurimages created sleeping producers in the past producers who do not engage in co-production entirely but appear on paper just to meet the Eurimages requirements. Thirdy, there is a commonly held belief that Eurimages will not support a director who is shooting his or her first feature, which is partly true. Rienstra explained this: In 105

120 general I think Eurimages has not very often supported first films in the past because usually they have wanted projects with filmmakers who have a good reputation and very often it was difficult for first time directors to get a film in co-production with two other countries. How can you convince other producers? This is not easy (2009). Notwithstanding the fact that a striking majority of the directors of Turkish-initiative films are relatively experienced filmmakers, Tayfun Pirselimoğlu (director of In Nowhereland) and Bahadır Karataş (director of The Master) got support for their first feature film projects. Conclusion A comparison of the paid annual fees and the support given to the Turkish film industry - filmmakers, movie theatres and distributors reveals that Turkey has effectively benefitted from Eurimages funding in the past twenty years (see figures 14 and 15) Received Support = FF million Paid Fee = FF million Fig. 14. The Amount of Fee Turkey Paid to Eurimages and the Support Received (FF) Received Support = million Paid Fee = 8.09 million Fig. 15. The Amount of Fee Turkey Paid to Eurimages and the Support Received ( ). 65 The source of the data is Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey. 106

121 As is discernable on the graphs, Turkey paid million French Francs between 1990 and 2000 and received support amounting to million. After the currency turned into the Euro in 2001, the paid amount and received support since then have been 8.09 and million respectively. An annual support which is slightly higher than 1 million Euros is not a big amount in the film industry as a whole but it is helpful for the professionals who depend on such support. Turkish filmmakers have collaborated the most with colleagues from France, Greece and Hungary in the first twenty years of membership. Eurimages co-production support has contributed to Turkish cinema particularly in terms of familiarity with coproductions, technical aspects, marketing affairs and extended budgets. Exhibition support encouraged movie theatres to screen more European films. Distribution support likewise has contributed to the screening of a higher number of European films in Turkey as well as screening of Turkish films in other European countries. A close look at Turkish-initiative films backed by Eurimages reveals that the majority of them are national, for they include cultural signifiers that belong to the people and land of Turkey. Nevertheless a few films exhibit evidence of an orientalist approach. The majority of the films display the classical cinematic language that was set in the 1950s and 1960s whereas some filmmakers embraced a different style which can be termed as time-image, to refer to Deleuze. Out of those new financial sources, Eurimages has been the place to apply for more difficult projects in which ethnic, religious and gender identities are represented in a more questioning and critical manner. I will focus on these in the subsequent three chapters. 107

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123 PART II

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125 Chapter 4 ETHNIC IDENTITIES The Republic of Turkey was established as a nation-state from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire and composes a variety of diverse ethnicities. The nation-formation process created a series of problematic practices many of which persist today and are still debated in regard to ethnic identities. This chapter investigates the representation of problematic aspects of Turkish national identity and diverse ethnic identities in Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films. In considering this, firstly an historical account of the establishment of the republic of Turkey as a nation-state will be provided. This will be followed by a discussion of the implicit (banal forms of nationalism) and explicit (contrastive) representations of Turkish nationalism in films. After putting forth the mise-en-scenes of predominant nationalism, the remaining part of the chapter will explore how diverse ethnic identities in Turkey are represented in Eurimages-backed films. The section will focus particularly on the following ethnicities: Kurds, Greeks and Armenians, all due to their historical importance. A short historical background for each ethnic identity will also be provided. Historical Background Founded in 1299, the Ottoman state expanded through war and conquest for the next three centuries. The process of expansion continuously added new ethnic and religious groups to those already present in the empire. The millet system was adopted to govern the multifaceted empire which had spread across three continents by the first quarter of the 16 th century and was composed of a diverse range of ethnicities and religions. The term millet literally translates as nation in modern Turkish; however it possessed a different meaning during the Ottoman era, as the system was based on religious affiliation and the word was coterminous with community. Members of each religion/church were treated as separate and unified millets, and the empire was 111

126 composed of Muslim, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Syriac Orthodox and Jewish millets. Identities were shaped and perceived with regard to these communities. Although in many cases different groups lived in the same town and practised a similar mode of life, each religious community had its own hierarchy, taxation, juridical affairs and even clothing styles. The members of the various communities had the right to elect their religious leaders but these leaders could only earn validity and legitimacy by gaining the sultan s approval. Possessing some privileges over the ordinary citizens, a religious leader s function was to ensure his community s obedience to the sultan. All the Muslims were direct subjects of the sultan, who was at the same time the caliph of Islam this had been the case since New churches came to be recognised by the Ottoman authority due to pressure from European powers. This led to the creation of new millets; the number of millets had reached 9 by 1875 and increased to 17 by The number of written languages present in the Ottoman state also gives us an idea of the diversity of the empire. It has been posited that two dozen languages were used in education and in the publication of books and newspapers in the Ottoman land: besides Turkish, these languages included Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Circassian, English, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Kurdish, Persian, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Syriac, Urdu and Wallachian (Koloğlu 1999). 66 The number of spoken languages and dialects was presumably even greater. Ottoman modernist movements, which started with Tanzimat (Reorganisation) in 1839, eliminated the millet system (on paper).with traditional religious and legal institutions failing to meet the requirements of the modern world on the one hand, and seeking to preserve the integrity of the state against the nationalist movements among its ethnic groups on the other, the Ottomans were forced to take a series of modernising steps; these occurred between 1839 and Another important rationale behind the Tanzimat movement was to prevent European powers (particularly Britain and France) intervening in the internal affairs of the weakened state (especially with regard to the rights of Christian communities). Accordingly, regardless of ethnic and religious attachments, all the citizens were recognised as being equal Ottoman subjects, and the state secured the lives and property of all individuals. Thus the non-muslims, for 66 Orhan Koloğlu mentions that Romany and Croatian languages are also said to be used in print but he could not find the proofs. 67 Millet system had paved the way for the nationalist movements in the empire and Greece had already become an independent state in

127 instance, were no longer duty bound to pay capitation tax (which the Muslims did not pay), they were allowed to become civil servants and were obliged to serve in the military. Western practices were adopted in terms of law, education, finance and governance institutions, which made for a gradual secularisation process. In the pursuit of creating an Ottoman consciousness, a national anthem and flag were adopted, and paper banknotes issued. However, the reforms and the reorganisation did not serve to attach the non-muslims to the empire. On the contrary, aggressive reactions on the part of the Christian communities of the Balkan region arose, because they did not want to lose their autonomy. Muslims, on the other hand, were not happy with the enhancement of the rights of the non-muslim groups. Ottomanism (Osmanlıcılık) as an ideology emerged in the Tanzimat period. Influenced by the French Revolution and dissatisfied by the Tanzimat reforms, a group of intellectuals called the Young Ottomans (Genç Osmanlılar) demanded a constitutional and popular democracy. Ethnic and religious diversities were not real obstacles to an integrated society, and they proposed a common Ottoman patriotism. Namık Kemal was the prominent figure in the movement. Their ideology appears somewhat contradictory, since despite arguing for the overcoming of differences in terms of identity in favour of a common land for the citizenry, they laid emphasis on the Islamic characteristics of the Ottoman Empire at the same time, this clearly presented an unfavourable discourse for the non-muslim communities. The Young Ottomans became the first movement to utilise the media in order to circulate their thoughts. Beyond being an instrument of propaganda, the spread of the newspaper by the 1860s, and of the novel in a later period - following the patterns of Europe in the 18 th century served to promote the emergence of a consciousness both of Ottomanness, and later of Turkishness, among the literate citizens: to recall Anderson, For these forms provided the technical means for re-presenting the kind of imagined community that is the nation (2006, 25). Ottomanism failed to bind the communities who were derived from a diverse range of ethnicities and religions around what was essentially an artificial patriotism. The proportion of Arabs and Muslims in the empire increased after the majority of the land in Europe was lost through a defeat by Russia in the war of Uprisings 113

128 among the Arab population were to threaten the state during that same period. Under these conditions, Sultan Abdülhamid II defended and supported pan-islamism in order to keep the remaining people in a state of cohesion and unity. Islamic values and the bond among Muslims were praised and the sultan emphasised that he was the leader of all the Muslims as caliph. His pan-islamism also aimed at achieving a unity in the Islamic world, designed to defend the rights of Muslims who were living in the colonies of Western/Christian states. Another function of pan-islamism was to block the rise of the Young Turk movement. In a multi-national state, though established and governed by Turks and Turkish Sultans, a Turkish consciousness was not apparent until the second half of the 19 th Century. Whereas the Europeans, prompted by the Italians, had named the country Turkey (Turchia or Turcmenia) since as early as the 12 th century (since the time of the Seljuk state before the Ottomans), we named our territory as Land of Rum, Region of Rum, Seljuks of Rum or Rumelia due to our mission and claimed to be an empire. This is relevant to Rome (Ortaylı 2006, 85). Turks, indeed, perceived themselves as being first and foremost Muslims. What is more, the word Turk was not an esteemed word, and generally referred to underdeveloped or nomad peoples (Mardin 2007, 95). The bureaucratic elite, on the other hand, favoured the term Ottoman during later periods: Until the end of the nineteenth century, the concept of being a Turk, as used in modern parlance, was alien to the Ottoman elites who saw themselves as Ottomans rather than Turks ; the latter seems to have implied uneducated peasants (Poulton 1997, 43). Nevertheless, Turkish was the language of administration and was commonly used amongst the imperial subjects as well, though the term Ottoman language was preferred from the 1840s onwards. The first constitution (1876), for instance, declared Turkish as the official language of the state and every Ottoman citizen was granted the freedom to take office in public service provided they had knowledge of the Turkish language (Koloğlu 1999). 68 In a collapsing and shrinking empire, the final cement used to provide solidity and unity to the state was Turkism, defended by the Young Turk (Jöntürk) movement. 68 The official language system was abolished and a multi-language system was adopted temporarily, from the Imperial Reform Edict of

129 Although they paid lip-service to Ottomanism, their Turkist, centralist and modernist ideology aimed at abolishing the millet system which was based on a diversity of religions. The unionist faction in the Young Turks supported the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, İttihat ve Terakki Fırkası, established in 1889) which successfully overthrew Abdülhamid II in 1908, and enacted the Constitution of 1876 which he himself had cancelled in 1878 on the grounds that the counrty was at war with Russia.The CUP led the country until 1918, first indirectly controlling the government and later acting as the executive body. Ziya Gökalp was a renowned nationalist ideologue who heavily influenced the CUP. Unlike the Turanist (pan-turkist) ideology which defended the unification of all Turkic peoples from the Balkans to China under one state, Gökalp s view was non-irredentist. Although emphasising the importance of Islam as a part of Turkish culture, he proposed the abolishment of the dominance of religion in social and political affairs. For Gökalp a nation was not a racial or ethnic or geographic or political or volitional group but one composed of individuals who share a common language, religion, morality and aesthetics, that is to say, who have received the same education (1968, 15). Turkishness replaced Islam gradually as the primary source of identity after 1908 and the Turkification policy was begun. The language in formal education was made Turkish in secondary and high schools, and Turkish was enforced as the compulsory language in work places. The creation of a Turkish bourgeois was established, and the autonomy of the millets was limited. The irredentist faction of the CUP led the country into WWI, which brought about the final collapse of the Ottoman state. The war brought a profound defeat upon the Ottoman Empire, as it did for Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. The leaders of the CUP, who were responsible for the entrance into the war, fled, and the country was invaded by Greece and the allied powers Britain, France and Italy. The Treaty of Sevres that was signed projected the partition of Ottoman lands amongst the aforementioned powers, and an Armenian state in the Eastern part and an autonomous Kurdish region in South Eastern Anatolia were formed. Kurds would decide later on whether to be an independent state or not. The treaty could not be realised, as the War of Independence led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk started in 1919 and was successfully won in Taking into consideration the past adventurist-irredentist dreams, the land was envisaged as being within its natural borders, 115

130 a defendable region. This position was declared by the National Pact (Misak-ı Milli) at the beginning of Such a vision was achieved to a large extent except in Western Thrace (now in Greece), Mosul and Kirkuk (now in Iraq) and Batumi (now in Georgia). Anatolia had already been seen as the land of the Turks after the loss of the Ottoman hold on the majority of the Balkan region. However, the national forces which had fought in the War of Independence were not ethnically homogenous (non-turkish ethnicities like Kurdish, Circassian and Laz groups were included) and the National Pact did not mention Turks but only Ottoman Muslims. Following the end of the war, both the National Assembly government in Ankara (the legitimate representative of Turkey as the leader of the resistance movement) and the Ottoman government in Istanbul (which had signed the Treaty of Sevres) were invited to Lausanne for the peace negotiations. Thereupon the sultanate was abolished by the National Assembly on 1 November 1922, and the sultan fled the country. The Treaty of Lausanne is a significant document that brought international recognition to the new Turkish government. Signatories to the treaty were Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Greece, Romania and the Serb-Croat-Slovene State of the one part and Turkey of the other part on 24 July 1923 the treaty abolished every type of foreign control (financial, economic, judicial and military) over Turkey and defined the minorities and their rights. Only the non-muslims were covered under the term of minority, just as the Ottoman millet system regarded them as different millets, but all the Muslims as one. The problems related to ethnic identities since the establishment of the republic, especially in terms of the Kurdish question, are largely analysed in the light of this historical context. Besides some other civil rights for the non-muslim citizens, the Treaty of Lausanne had guaranteed the equality of status of all the inhabitants (Treaties of Peace 1924, ): - The Turkish Government undertakes to assure full and complete protection of life and liberty to all inhabitants of Turkey without distinction of birth, nationality, language, race or religion (Article 38) - Turkish nationals belonging to non-moslem minorities will enjoy the same civil and political rights as Moslems. All the inhabitants of Turkey, without distinction of religion, shall be equal before the law (Article 39) 116

131 - Turkish nationals belonging to non-moslem minorities shall enjoy the same treatment and security in law and in fact as other Turkish nationals. In particular, they shall have an equal right to establish, manage and control at their own expense, any charitable, religious and social institutions, any schools and other establishments for instruction and education, with the right to use their own language and to exercise their religion freely therein. (Article 40) After warfare lasting ten years (in the Balkans, WWI and the War of Independence), Turkey had a different demography in 1923 compared to that of the prewar period: Some 2.5 million Anatolian Muslims lost their lives, as well as between 600,000 and 800,000 Armenians and up to 300,000 Greeks. All in all, the population of Anatolia declined by 20 per cent through mortality, a percentage 20 times as high as that of France, which had been the hardest hit country among the European belligerents in the World War... The migratory elements meant a net loss to the population of Anatolia of about 10 per cent, which should be added to the 20 per cent loss due to mortality (Zürcher 1993, 171) Two groups in the National Assembly struggled for power just before the dawn of the declaration of the republic. On the one side were the pro-ottomans who supported the continuation of monarchy with a parliamentary check on power. This group was Islamist and envisaged a multi-ethnical and a de-centralised state. On the other side were Mustafa Kemal and his supporters, who posited a modern, secular and centralist nationstate. The success of the latter caused the new republic to diverge from the Ottoman culture and its concomitant practices. Six arrows, also known as Kemalism, were adopted as the guiding principles of the new republic. They were: republicanism; nationalism; secularism; populism; etatism; and revolutionism. 69 Nationalism, the focus of this chapter, has been at the heart of debate surrounding ethnic identities in Turkey as a problematic issue, since it is an inseparable part of the conceptual underpinnings of the republic. 69 The first four principles were adopted by the Republican People s Party (the governing single-party from 1923 until 1950) in 1927 and the last two in 1935: according to the principle of republicanism, the people, which is constituted of equal citizens, is the source of political sovereignty; nationalism establishes the unity of the nation, its sovereignty and independence not on an ethnic or racial basis but with regard to Turkish citizenship; secularism is the segregation of mundane and religious affairs; the principle of populism depletes the privilege of one social class over others; etatism, adopted in the context of 1929 world economic crisis, means the investment of state enterprise in the areas which the private sector evades; revolutionism meant continuously adapting the system to the needs of contemporary civilisation standards. 117

132 Mustafa Kemal defined the Turkish nation as the Turkish people forming the Turkish republic (Karal 18). According to the article 88 of Constitution of 1924, Everybody in Turkey, without distinction of religion and race, is called Turk with regard to citizenship (TBMM 2010). Ernest Renan provides the following conditions for being a people, which is pertinent in the case of Turkey: To have common glories in the past and to have a common will in the present; to have performed great deeds together, to wish to perform still more these are the essential conditions for being a people (2006, 19). The War of Independence had been won in the contemporarily very recent past, and the republic had been established in order to achieve new phases in the modernisation process. Hitherto the inhabitants of Turkey had already constituted a people ; the next step was to transform that people, the majority of who saw themselves as members of the worldwide Muslim community, into a nation. This was not to be an easy objective for the founders of the republic. At this point, Ernest Gellner s argument becomes deeply relevant: Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to selfconsciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist - but it does need some preexisting differentiating marks to work on (1964, 168). To put it another way, It is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way round (Gellner 2006, 54). Despite the absence of a Turkish consciousness, the people who established the republic were named the Turkish nation. That was the achievement of the mission which was only quasi-achieved by the Young Turks and the Committee of Union and Progress. Being a state established on the ruins of an empire which collapsed due to the uprisings triggered by its multi-ethnic structure, the new republic emphasised national unity and encompassed ethnic non-turks within the umbrella term Turk. Turk was to be a type of nationalism based on territory rather than ethnicity, in the terms described by Anthony D. Smith a model (civic-territorial) which requires a historic territory, a legal-political community, equality of the members and a commoncivic culture and ideology. The people of Anatolia had shared the same land and history for one thousand years. The republican revolution had already brought the equality on the basis of citizenship. It was the unity of the legal-political community to be promoted, which was emphasised through the common traits of the shared culture ( pre-existing differentiating marks in Gellner s terms), inspired by Ziya Gökalp s cultural Turkism. In his writings, Gökalp stressed the role of education in building a unified culture and a 118

133 common national consciousness. The creation of a cohesive sense of Turkishness would require a unified pedagogy of nationalism. Gökalp even deployed his non-turkish ethnic origin as an example: I would not hesitate to believe that I am a Turk even if I had discovered that my grandfathers came from the Kurdish or Arab areas (of Anatolia); because I learned through my sociological studies that nationality is based solely on upbringing (quoted in Kırışcı 1998, ). It should be noted that every nationalism contains civic and ethnic elements in varying degrees and different forms (1991, 13) and it is the ethnic core that often shapes the character and boundaries of the nation (39), as Smith states. Turk was the ethnic core that shaped the character and boundaries of the civic-territorial model of Turkish nationalism. The role of centralised education is also emphasised by Gellner (2006), on the grounds that it provides a generic cultural base to counter diversified, traditional (and sometimes illiterate) local cultures. Aiming to create and spread a common culture, the Young Turks embarked on a common educational system in 1909 in which Ottoman Turkish and History courses were made compulsory. The Law for the Unification of Instruction, introduced in the early days of the republic (3 March 1924), was a revolutionary act used to further a sense of nationhood. Since then all the schools have been governed by the Ministry of Education under a national education policy. Following that, the Arabic letters were replaced by the Latin alphabet in This reform had a three-dimensional function: it assisted nationhood; it served to break the ties with the Ottoman past and Islamic traditions; and it contributed to the orientation towards the Western world. The establishment of village institutes (köy enstitüleri), introduced in 1940, was another step in educational reform. These institutes trained the youngsters of villages to be elementary school teachers and provided practical education in agriculture and technology so as to help them to educate others in the village and future generations as well. They were abolished, however, after the opposition Democratic Party came into power (in 1954). The founding ideology of the republic construed the term Turk as being a melting-pot for all the ethnicities in the country; this might be considered to be rational for an emerging modern and centralist nation-state. Objections quickly arise, however, which assert that the Kemalist nationalism was not just a territorial but also an ethnic 119

134 concept, for the Kurds and other Muslim groups (that were not covered in the Treaty of Lausanne) were ignored from the beginning and were thought to be assimilated in time. These criticisms deserve respect since the practices of the nation-state have not been painless, as we will see throughout this chapter. The profound nationalist atmosphere of the 1930s justifies the criticisms to some extent. It was in these years that an emphasis on the Turkish race in history and language first became apparent. Established in 1931, the Turkish Historical Thesis (Türk Tarih Tezi) was introduced and was developed over the following years through the Turkish Historical Society (Türk Tarih Kurumu). According to this new thesis, the Turks living in Central Asia were forced by geographical conditions to migrate in different directions to China, Europe and the Near East, where they created civilisations. Thus, it is claimed, many nations are descended from the Turks. Sun-Language Theory (Güneş- Dil Teorisi), on the other hand, asserted that all the languages of the world were born out of a single, primeval one to which Turkish was the closest and Turkish hence aided the emergence of new languages. The Turkish Linguistic Society (Türk Dil Kurumu) was established in 1932 and functioned to purify the language, particularly through the removal of Arabic and Persian words. These movements aimed to provide a source of national identity of which the individuals of the very young republic could be proud. By setting ties with its pre-islamic past, the republic distanced herself from Islamic and Middle Eastern culture and traditions, a move which helped to pave the way for Westernising policies. Nationalism and Film An emphasis on a shared and unified culture, that is a national culture, inevitably leads to repression of minorities, as Elsaesser states: A nation, especially when used in a context that suggests cultural identity, must repress differences of class, gender, race, religion, and history in order to assert its coherence, and is thus another name for internal colonization (2005, 36). In a similar vein Hayward notes that the problem of pressure in terms of culture not only occurs between the coloniser and the colonised, but also within a nation state: the role of national culture is (still) to suppress political conflict and disguise it as imagination image/nation - a function that is so clearly manifest in the 120

135 very problematic issue and conceptualisation of national cinema (2000, 96). Because, Hayward adds, national culture is a product of nationalist discourses and is based in the principle of representation and (of course) repression (98). Higson, on the other hand, points out that films will often serve to represent the nation to itself as a nation and invite a diverse and often antagonistic group of peoples to recognize themselves as a singular body with a common culture (1997,7). That is what Turkish cinema served to do for many years by positing the national identity as a fixed concept. The censorship mechanism was a significant factor which reinforced that. As discussed in Chapter 1, the obscure and unconscious mechanisms that worked towards the normalisation of cultural homogeneity and against cultural diversity and change are labelled deep nation by Robins and Aksoy. They asserted that, as a domain of cultural production, Turkish cinema provides an interesting illustration of their general argument. The censorship mechanism was a very effective tool of the deep nation and members of the (censorship) commission saw themselves as the guardians of Turkish national identity. The authors also pointed out the existence of cinematic works in the post-1990 period that act out the logic of the deep nation. Some of these works, those that question the national identity and/or problematise ethnic identities, are within the scope of this chapter. Smith states that in comedy and documentary films (and I would argue this applies to melodramas as well) the people has often signified the common folk, rather than the ethnic folk ; but in history, mythology and war films, this motif is combined with the distinctive ethnic culture of the people be they Jews, Greeks, Romans, Scots, French or Russians (2000, 56). This is the type of film, fetishising the national rather than merely describing it (Higson 2000, 64), which was produced by Turkish filmmakers in abundance. Films which display the heroism of the Turkish troops sent to Korea, to Cyprus and to the War of Independence, and the adventures of historical heroes in the Byzantine palaces, are numerous in the heyday of Turkish cinema before the 1980s. Nationalist discourse has been promoted in a number of films that have been attuned to the popular taste in recent years as well. However, a national cinema should grant a place to the excluded identities too, that is to say if one aspect of a country s national cinema consist of films that fetishise the national, then some other films should represent the minorities and the problematic facets of nationalism. 121

136 According to Higson (1997), the films are the fields of tension at the same time and many films exist that challenge the nationalist discourses. That kind of representation composes a significant part of the Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films. The narrative and cinematic representation of the nation and nationalism in these films can be classified in two groups. One is the implicit representation in which we see banal nationalism displayed somewhere in the background. The second group is composed of explicit thematisations through contrastive representations of nationalism. Implicit Representation: Banal Forms of Nationalism Michael Billig s notion of banal nationalism is a useful concept in discussing what I call the implicit representations of national identity and nationalism. Regarding the established nations, particularly the Western which have confidence in their own continuity, Billig observes: In so many little ways, the citizenry are daily reminded of their national place in a world of nations. However, this reminding is so familiar, so continual, that is not consciously registered as reminding. The metonymic image of banal nationalism is not a flag which is being consciously waved with fervent passion; it is the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building (1995, 8). As national identity is not only something which is thought to be natural to possess but also something natural to remember, Billig argues, it is remembered in the routines of daily life through the flags (and many other reminders as well) which flag nationhood in a subtle manner. That process of remembering is not experienced as a remembering as with the great days of the nations but occurs while one is doing many other routine activities, including forgetting. Therefore nationhood is evoked in an unconscious, unaware way and the nation-state is reproduced by banal nationalism day after day. Those flags are hung outside a public building or for instance decorate a filling station (Billig 1995). The number of banal reminders is so great that they are camouflaged and escape a national inhabitant s notice and only a foreign or an alerted investigative eye can easily perceive their abundance. 122

137 Flags being located in the everydayness of Turkey fit very well into Billig s definition of banal nationalism. They stand unnoticed not only at the official posts but in private spaces such as cafés, taxis, minibuses, boats, bicycles, sports halls, shops, and the windows of apartments. Prints of Turkish flags and images derived from the star and crescent are also observable in everyday life in many different forms. Nevertheless, the Turkish flag as a metonymic image only justifies banal nationalism in the case of Turkey, that is to say it does not display a peculiarity. We naturally see those unnoticed flags in the backgrounds of films, both Eurimages-backed ones and others. What is peculiar to Turkey is the image, especially the portrait, of Atatürk as a banalised reminder of nationhood and the nation-state. The images related to the founder of the Turkish nation-state appear in several different public and private spaces in Eurimages-backed films. For instance we see his portrait: on the walls of cafés and restaurants in films like Robert s Movie (Canan Gerede-1991), The Boatman (Biket İlhan-1999), On the Way (Erden Kıral-2005) and Three Monkeys (Nuri Bilge Ceylan-2008); in the office of a high-school principal in My Only Sunshine (Reha Erdem-2009) and Honey (Semih Kaplanoğlu-2010); on the wall of the doctor s office in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan-2011); and on the wall of Doğan s atelier in The Master (Bahadır Karataş-2009). We see the bust of Atatürk in the school garden in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan-2011) and the memorial tomb (anıtkabir) of him fills the background in a scene where three protagonists go on a walk in Our Grand Despair (Seyfi Teoman-2011). In two films the portrait of Atatürk is hanged in the offices of people who could be thought to be irrelevant. Mr. Ali of Takva: A Man s Fear of God (Özer Kızıltan-2006), who is a conservative merchant and shows respect to the sheikh of the religious brotherhood to which he belongs, keeps an Atatürk portrait on his wall. However, the religious brotherhoods were all abolished in 1924 as a step of revolutionary spirit, and this move was led by Atatürk. There is also a money case under his portrait, thus the scene draws attention to the pragmatic nature of trade: the tradesmen in general appear and act in accordance with their commercial interests. Thus they pay some cursory lip-service to the founder of the secular-modern nation-state as a common reference point. In a similar manner, we see Atatürk s portrait in the office of the boss of a night club that looks like a 123

138 place of filthy business, where Irini of My Darling Istanbul (Seçkin Yasar-2007) is invited when she is in search of her kidnapped boyfriend. In short, the main banal reminders of nationalism and national identity for Turkey are the back-grounded flag, the various images of star and crescent, and the images related to Atatürk. The last of these banal reminders is the one that is peculiar to Turkey and implicitly represented, i.e. back-grounded in at least 11 Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films to my observation. I will now proceed to the second group of representations (contrasting ones) of Turkish national identity and nationalism of which there are ample critical examples. Contrastive Representations of Nationalism Mette Hjort (2000) has examined the strategies deployed by Danish filmmakers in their attempts to foreground more explicitly the theme of the nation. Hjort identifies two general approaches, adopting the terms monocultural and intercultural in her analysis. In the monocultural approach, the audio-visual field is hyper-saturated with national elements and interlocutors, whereas in the intercultural approach we see the mobilisation of different cultures and the use of contrastive cultural elements to foreground specifically national questions and direct the audience s attention to the problem of national identity. The intercultural approach is the most common incarnation of the theme of the nation and might be deployed to re-connect with national roots, re-imagine national identities or call into question the rationality and legitimacy of social differentiation along national lines, through contrastive thematisation. The intercultural approach is thus potentially more critical. One of the examples Hjort gives is Riget (The Kingdom-1994) by Lars von Trier and Morten Arnfred. The title of the film has a dual meaning in Danish: the national hospital and the kingdom, empire or state. Both meanings clearly direct our attention to questions of nationhood and national identity. The Swedish doctor working in the hospital occasionally goes to the roof and, facing in the direction of Sweden, reviles the Danes. In one such instance, he mentions a series of icons or brands of his own country. Two national identities are thus ironically contrasted and as a result, the very pursuit of personal identity in and through the national appears 124

139 questionable, even laughable (116). The use of irony and making the audience laugh, although not essential to the narrative, increases its effect on the viewer. In addition to Hjort s notion of intercultural thematisation, I would draw attention to the idea of contrastive representations of the nation and nationalism. I use this term advisedly to describe the processes whereby well-known signs, symbols, acts or rituals of the national identity and nationalism are shown to the spectator, together with their antithetical interrogative elements. More specifically, the term helps to identify the methods used by filmmakers to juxtapose contrastive elements or make them occur in the same context in order to raise questions with regard to national identity and/or nationalism. Although one might claim that contrastive representation could be utilised for celebrating nationalism and degrading the other or the non-national, the transmitted message becomes clear through the agency of the feeling that is invoked in the spectator. In other words, there is critical potential in the discourses and representations created by these methods. The collision of contrastive elements occasionally marks the whole of a film; at other times, it is confined to specific sequences and in many cases, the collision takes place within a single shot. I will now discuss scenes from two selected Eurimagesbacked films (Waiting for the Clouds and Mud) that may serve as illustrative examples of these representational strategies, I will then focus on a film (Big Man, Little Love) that problematises Turkish nationalism through contrastive representation. Many other Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films make use of contrasting themes related to the nation, even if the nation and/or nationalism is not the larger problem or subject matter addressed by the narrative. These themes vary widely but can be grouped under the subheadings of Praising of Turkish Ethnicity, Turk and the Other in Opposition, Patriotism, Flag, and Atatürk; details of these representations can be found in Appendix- I. Waiting for the Clouds (2005) by Yeşim Ustaoğlu, is a film which focuses on identity, specifically in relation to a woman of Greek ethnicity, wherein the nation is contrastively represented throughout the narration. Indeed, the collision of contrastive elements pervades the entire film. For example, there is a scene in which school pupils sing an anthem taught by their teacher: 125

140 One, two, three If surrounded by the enemy, if abandoned on their own, Do the Turks give up? Do the Turks give up? Turks never give up! Turks never give up! Until the end of time Turks never give up! Turks never give up! The pupils start to laugh toward the end of the anthem as Mehmet, the hero of the film, has wet his pants. The teacher punishes Mehmet by making him stand against the blackboard while the others continue singing. In another scene from the same film, all the pupils of the school are gathered in the front garden to recite the daily oath, as is the practice in Turkish schools. One pupil says the words and the others repeat: I am a Turk. I am honest. I am diligent. My law: Protect the younger, respect our elders, love my country, my nation, more than myself. My goal: Success and progress. My existence is the good of Turkey. What an honour to say I am a Turk. Mehmet flees the stage to see a friend who is waiting behind the wall while the oath is repeated by his schoolmates. In the final example from Waiting for the Clouds, we see the celebration of Turkish Products Week in the classroom: Teacher: Pupils: Teacher: What week is this? (Altogether) Turkish Products Week! What have we learned? 126

141 Pupils: Turkish products are the best products. Then the teacher asks what they have brought from home for the celebratory lunch. All the pupils have brought anchovy fish, which is clearly a local product of the Black Sea (in keeping with the setting of the film) and therefore, not national in the sense intended by the celebration. As we have seen, while foregrounding nationalist songs, recitations and festivities, thereby drawing the spectator s attention to the theme of the nation, the director contrasts those elements of nationalism with small, ironic acts. Mehmet wets his pants during an anthem proclaiming that Turks never give up; he flees the scene at the moment of the daily oath propagating the positive aspects of Turkishness. Finally, there is the juxtaposition of local and national products when it is the latter that are meant to be celebrated. Together, these scenes question and satirise nationalism. The contrastive representation does not need to be ironic, as is evident from the opening scene of Mud (2003) by Derviş Zaim. We see a Turkish troop deployed in Northern Cyprus and the major makes a speech to the soldiers as they stand under the bright sun. He states that Cypriot Turks had long been threatened by the Greeks, enduring massacres, rapes, forced migration and great losses. Thanks to the arrival of the Turkish army on the island in 1974, he continues, the Greeks and the Turks have been living in peace in their own separate regions for thirty years. However, according to recent news, the Greeks in the southern part of the island are again building up weapons and the Turkish army must be ready to resume the fight. The soldiers repeat three times: We must be ready! At that moment, Ali, one of the soldiers, falls to the ground and faints. This makes a compelling opening to a film which goes on to critically examine the Cyprus dispute through the Turkish habitants of the island. Big Man, Little Love Before discussing Big Man Little Love, which is one of the most prominent films that thematise the nation contrastively, I shall consider Mikhail Bakhtin s concepts of dialogism and heteroglossia. According to Bakhtin, the only way to construct and sustain a meaning with the other is to establish a dialogue in between. He defines dialogic 127

142 relations as follows: Dialogic relations are relations (semantic) among any utterances in speech communication. Any two utterances, if juxtaposed on a semantic plane (not as things and not as linguistic examples), end up in a dialogic relationship (1986, 117). Dialogic relation is the acceptance of difference and the constructed meaning does not totally belong to only one side. In such a relation both sides own a surplus of seeing, i.e. I cannot see all of what you see and you cannot see all of what I see. The meaning is modified and perceived by the other according to his/her own experience, knowledge or seeing in that process. Without dialogue, there is no existence, there is no life. Heteroglossia is, as Michael Holquist articulates, a way of conceiving the world as made up of a roiling mass of languages, each of which has its own distinct formal markers (1990, 69). However, an extreme monologism does not accept the existence of an equal consciousness except itself. In that sense official languages, even those that are not totalitarian, are masks for ideologies of many different kinds, but they all privilege oneness; the more powerful the ideology, the more totalitarian (monologic) will be the claims of its language (Holquist 52-53). Nevertheless dialogism and heteroglossia are in the nature of life and necessity, as Bakhtin states: The single adequate form for verbally expressing authentic human life is the open-ended dialogue. Life by its very nature is dialogic. To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth (quoted in Gardiner 1992, 31). Cultural practices, in this respect, have proved to work against monologism in different times and places of the world. Mr. Rıfat, a retired judge in Big Man Little Love (2001) by Handan İpekçi, represents the monological voice of the nation-state which gives no room for languages other than the official Turkish. One day, the couple responsible for bringing up Hejar, are killed in a raid by the police; the five year old Kurdish girl had lost her parents before. As the sole survivor of the raid, Hejar is taken in by Mr. Rıfat, who is her neighbour. He tells Hejar not to speak Kurdish and that only Turkish should be spoken in this country. However, Kurdish is her mother tongue and she does not know how to speak any other language since she is an infant in the pre-school period. Mr. Rıfat also objects to English being adopted as the language of teaching in colleges, and tells Hejar that a nation should lay claim to her native language. The national element the 128

143 official language of Turkish is contrasted here with Kurdish, an unrecognised element. The irony lies in the conflict between Mr. Rıfat s demands that the child relinquish her own language, even as he lectures her about a nation s claim to its own language. His acquaintance with Hejar forces him to face the other realities of the country: he realises that his servant Sakine is also Kurdish (her real name is Kurdish - Rojbin - but she has concealed this) and can communicate to Hejar; he witnesses the tough life conditions in the suburbs of Istanbul; and travels sitting close to a woman in a veil in the same minibus. Finally, in order to communicate with Hejar, Mr. Rıfat learns from his servant how to say Don t Cry in Kurdish, and many other words soon follow. Hejar begins to learn Turkish and a relationship between the two that might be described as dialogical is established. In this sense, the film focuses on the encounter of the monological voice of the nation-state ideology with one of the neglected ethnicities of the country and the recognition of heteroglossia in this case the Kurdish language. The film narrates a transformation from a monological denial to a dialogical relation. It was banned for displaying the police in a negative manner but later this ban was acquitted by a court ruling. Fig. 16. Big Man, Little Love (Büyük Adam, Küçük Aşk): Hejar and Mr. Rıfat (Dir. Handan İpekçi, 2001). As we have seen, Turkish filmmakers have questioned national identity more clearly in the post-1990 period. Among the works which have thematised nationalism, 129

144 Eurimages-backed films have made it thorough by either displaying the banal reminders of nationalism in the background or by foregrounding the national elements together with their interrogative contrastive elements. I shall now discuss the representation of diverse identities in these films. Diverse Ethnic Identities A valid piece of research published by Peter Alford Andrews (1989) posits the existence of at least 47 different ethnic groups in Turkey. While the Muslim population displays a mixed character due to the intermarriages over the centuries of assimilation, the non- Muslim groups are much more ethnically distinct. The Treaty of Lausanne significantly contributed to the distinctiveness of non-muslims via its protective articles designed for them. In the previous section I focused on the implicit representation of banal nationalism and contrastive representations of Turkish national identity in Eurimagesbacked films. The following section covers the diverse ethnic identities, i.e. the Kurds, Greeks and Armenians, and their cinematic representation. Each sub-section first provides an historical background for each ethnicity, before addressing issues of representation in the relevant films. Kurdish Identity It would scarcely be an overstatement to say that the realism of the political demands of an ethnic group within a polity is largely determined first by size, both absolute and relative to other groups, and second by its geographical distribution (Mutlu 1996, 517). Given their prevalence in Turkey and relatively loud vocalised demands, the Kurdish identity deserves to be treated separately, despite the Kurds not being defined as a minority group in the Treaty of Lausanne. There is no reliable statistical data about the sizes of the ethnicities since the 1965 census. Indeed, this was the last time the question, not of ethnicity, but mother tongue, was asked to the citizens. Figures regarding the size of the Kurdish population, released in recent years vary, suggest they account for between 12% and 26% of the country s population (Menon 1995; Mutlu 1996; Kırışcı 130

145 1998; Houston 2001; Romano 2006). However, as Servet Mutlu states, more often than not, these estimates reflect pro-kurdish or pro-turkish sympathies and attitudes rather than scientific facts and erudition (1996, 517). Regardless of the specific figure, the Kurds are the second largest ethnicity and the Kurdish question is the core point of the debates around ethnic identities in Turkey. Kurdish districts were included in the Ottoman territory in the 16 th century. Martin M. van Bruinessen (1989) points out that we encounter the first written expressions of a Kurdish ethnic awareness around 1,600 AD and that a clearer awareness existed from the 17 th century onwards, due to the political stability brought about by Ottoman supremacy, which tended to consolidate previous ethnic boundaries. By the end of the 19 th century, one of the two separatist threats to the empire, the Kurds, started to function as a weapon against the other, the Armenians, via the Hamidiye Regiments which composed of various Kurdish tribes. Established by Sultan Abdülhamid II in 1891, these regiments persisted until the 1920s and fought for the Ottoman army in WWI. The role of Hamidiye Regiments in the atrocities against the Armenians is a known fact, yet, it is also noted that these regiments served to foster the emergence of a Kurdish national consciousness. Probably envisaging a decentralised Islamic order in the post-war period, the Kurds supported the War of Independence on a large scale, especially following the quashing of any likelihood of an independent Kurdish state, which had been projected in the Treaty of Sevres. In his 1927 speech, Atatürk narrated the case in the days of the war: From one end to the other of Anadolu [Anatolia] the population is united. All decisions are taken jointly by all the commanders and our comrades. Nearly all the Valis and Mutasarrıfs [governors of provinces] are on our side. The national organization in Anadolu comprises every district and community. The propaganda aiming at the erection of an independent Kurdistan under English protectorate has been successfully countered and the followers of this movement have been dispersed. The Kurds have joined the Turks (1963, 15). Nevertheless, the Kurdish people began to be considered as part of the Turkish identity by the 1930s. A great deal of research followed from the establishment of the 131

146 Turkish Historical Society, and the Turkish Linguistic Society, which attempted to promote the Turkishness of the Kurds. According to Poulton, Atatürk s approach to the issue was, at first, to concede the differing ethnic identity of Kurds, however this approach changed following the uprisings: Initially, he appealed (Kemal Atatürk) to them (Kurds) as fellow Muslims but as a separate people (ethnie). However, faced with continuing Kurdish insurrections, he began to emphasising the unity of the nation. Henceforth, all manifestations of Kurdish nationalism were proscribed (1997, 96). With the first rebellion in 1788, a great number of Kurdish rebellions have taken place throughout history, though accounts of specific figures vary. 70 While some historians see them as possessing a nationalist character, others prefer to ascribe a religious essence to them. Taking the historians reflections into consideration, the cases of Şeyh Said (1925), Dersim ( ) and the PKK (since 1984) rebellions are eminent. However, the Kurdish question was not wholly manifested in the form of armed rebellions. The first Kurdish cultural organisation, Taali ve Terakii Kurdistan (Recovery and Progress of Kurdistan), was established in 1908 and the first Kurdish political association, Kiviya Kurd (Kurdish Hope), was established in 1910 and legalised in 1912 (Smith 1991, 132). The first legal Kurdish organisation in the republican period was established in 1969 under the name Devrimci Doğu Kültür Ocakları (The Revolutionary Cultural Society of the East) and the first legal political party to recognise and announce the Kurdish ethnicity became Türkiye İşçi Partisi (The Workers Party of Turkey) in 1970, which provoked its own closure by the Constitutional Court on the grounds of encouraging activities against the indivisibility of the country. Many Kurdish organisations emerged during the 1970s, almost all of which subscribed to Marxist discourse, contrary to the nationalist and/or Islamic character popular during the initial years of the republic. Of those, PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan/Kurdistan Workers Party) was the most radical and engaged in armed struggle against feudality and colonialism (they defined the Turkish state as a colonial one) in the Kurdish populated region, in favour of an independent Kurdish state; around forty thousand people have been killed hitherto. In the last twenty years, however, it has been frequently argued that the discourse of PKK has deviated from Marxism-Leninism towards nationalist and/or 70 Mutlu (1996) points out that 13 guerilla-style uprisings occurred during the republican period. Menon (1995) suggests 27 revolts between 1920 and 1940 occurred. Rouleau (1996), referring to one of the former prime ministers, Süleyman Demirel, states that there have been 29 rebellions in the 20th century. 132

147 Islamic tendencies, and rejecting an independent state but struggling for regional autonomy. The PKK was labelled a terrorist organisation by the state from the beginning, due to their violent acts against the military and police forces as well as civilians. The European Union and many western states listed the PKK as a terrorist organisation in recent years. On the other hand, the Kurdish question has been formally vocalised through certain legal political parties established many closed by court decision - in the post-1990 period. Virtually all of the Kurdish organisations aspired towards self-determination, but made gaining cultural rights (language, literature, folklore) and recognition of their ethnic identity a key priority. The state, on the other hand, had for many years considered the issue a terrorist problem and acted to suppress it. A part of the Kurdish population in the relevant regions was deported to the more western lying cities following the uprisings in the 1920s and 1930s. The Democratic Party government during the 1950s established pragmatic relations with the feudal leaders to keep the regions under control. Although the constitution of 1961 contributed to a relatively democratic atmosphere, the bans on using spoken or written Kurdish language and names remained in place. The strength of the suppression increased especially following the military coup in 1980, which emphasised the unity and indivisibility of the nation and the country. The 1990s brought about official recognition of Kurdish identity by the state. However this period also saw evacuations of villages, closure of political parties and publications which focused on the Kurdish question, assassinations and/or the disappearance of prominent political figures in South Eastern Anatolia, and the militarisation of the region. The 2000s witnessed steps being taken towards widening the cultural rights of the Kurds, and this included the freedom to teach Kurdish in private lessons, and furthermore the stateowned TV corporation (TRT) starting to broadcast in Kurdish and other minority languages such as Arabic and Bosnian. Nevertheless, the problem still retains its importance and is a central factor in debates regarding ethnic identities in Turkey. Kurds and Films Until the 1990s due to the mechanism of censorship filmmakers could neither focus on the Kurdish question, nor overtly represent Kurdish identity, except for a few examples 133

148 where the issue was handled in a rather indirect manner. For instance The Law of the Border (Hudutların Kanunu-1966) by Lütfi Akad narrated the risky trade of the smugglers (because of the mined terrain throughout the south eastern border). The Herd (Sürü-1979) by Yılmaz Güney and Zeki Ökten depicting the long journey of a Kurdish family who travel to the capital by train to sell their sheep, is critical of the patriarchal order in those communities. A Season in Hakkari (Hakkari de Bir Mevsim-1983) by Erden Kıral portrayed the tough conditions of life in South Eastern Anatolia through the story of a teacher who is assigned to one of the villages in the region. A few more examples could be added to these. However, within these films, we do not hear the Kurds speaking Kurdish, nor a direct dramatisation of the identity issue. In many other cases, the Kurds are represented - without mentioning their Kurdishness as immigrants to big cities, in rural narratives that are critical about their customs and feudality, or as funny-types who speak Turkish with a markedly different accent. The post-1990 period witnessed a more clear representation. Kurdish legends Mem and Zin (Mem û Zin) by Ümit Elçi and Siyabend and Xecê (Siyabend û Xece) by Şahin Gök were filmed without Eurimages support in 1991 and in 1993 respectively. Probably the first film to overtly focus on the Kurdish question and within which we first heard characters speaking Kurdish, is Let There Be Light (Işıklar Sönmesin-1996) by Reis Çelik (a non-eurimages film), as the director pointed out (personal interview with Reis Çelik, Istanbul, 1 Apr. 2009). Casting the Turkish army and PKK as the opposing sides of a war and calling the latter guerillas (as the Kurdish left calls them), the director noted great difficulty in shooting the film, due to the ban put in place by the army authorities, and that after completion he was threatened and tried in court for praising an act which is deemed as an offence by the state ; he was acquitted (Çelik 2009). Other non-eurimages films that focus on the Kurdish question include, The Photograph (Fotoğraf-2001) and Storm (Bahoz/Fırtına-2008) by Kazım Öz, Trial (Doz/Dava-2001) by Gani Rüzgar Şavata, I Saw the Sun (Güneşi Gördüm-2009) by Mahsun Kırmızıgül and On the Way to School (İki Dil Bir Bavul-2009) by Orhan Eskiköy and Özgür Doğan. As for the Eurimages-backed films, it is possible to group these works into two categories based on their representation of the Kurds. The first group of films are those 134

149 that point out various problems faced by Kurds or that partially attempt to portray the Kurdish question as a problem. For example Goodbye Tomorrow (Reis Çelik-1998) narrates the capture, trial and execution of three prominent leaders (Deniz Gezmiş, Yusuf Aslan and Hüseyin İnan) of the generation of 68, and is based on real events. The prosecutor s indictment claims that everybody living in Anatolia is Turkish, and the defendant s reply is that different ethnic groups live in Turkey, a fact which is not accepted by the prosecution. Deniz Gezmiş, just before his execution, shouts Long Live the fraternity of the Turkish and Kurdish peoples. In Journey to the Sun (Yeşim Ustaoğlu-2000) we see a crowd on the street celebrating the victory of the Turkish national football team, and waving flags. There is a driver who does not join in with their excitement and does not blow his horn. Some people in the crowd ask him Are you a fucking Kurd? because he is thought to be ethnically non-turkish for not joining them. A few men from the crowd kick and stamp the car, breaking its glass. In Innowhereland (Tayfun Pirselimoğlu-2002), the mother of Şükran tells her a story of a youngster who was killed and thrown into the river Genç after being incarcerated, just like the case of Berzan s father in Journey to the Sun. Rıdvan of Toss Up (Uğur Yücel-2004) talks about Elif, who was his girlfriend when they were in high school. She had once told Rıdvan: We are Kurdish The villages are being evacuated. There are terrorists. Years later, when Rıdvan is in the army, he realises after a clash in rural South Eastern Anatolia, that one of the PKK militants he shot is Elif, lying on the ground. Thereupon he loses his composure, starts running unthinkingly, steps on a mine, and loses one of his legs. The second group of Eurimages-backed films are those in which we hear either Kurdish names referred to or the Kurdish language spoken. The characters of Kurdish origin bear Kurdish names in a few films: The Bandit (1996) by Yavuz Turgul (Baran, Berfo and Keje); Journey to the Sun (2000) by Yeşim Ustaoğlu (Berzan); and Big Man Little Love (2001) by Handan İpekçi (Hejar and Rojbin). Those characters speak in their mother tongue to the people who are of the same ethnic identity, except in The Bandit: Baran speaks Turkish to the mad woman who stayed in the ruined village and to his old friend who was forced to inform on him to the gendarmerie. Besides this, we hear a peasant (and later another man in the hospital) vocalising the Kurdish word Nenas in House of Angels (Ömer Kavur-2000) which means Unknown. We also hear a Kurdish ballad in the soundtrack to On the Way (Erden Kıral-2005), during a scene in which the 135

150 filmmaker Yılmaz Güney is moved by the police to another prison in a car. The people in bridal procession, which they (Güney and the policemen who accompany him) encounter at a service area on their journey, also sing a Kurdish folk song and dance the halay, upon which the policemen take Güney away from that place. In a contrasting case, Hejar, the little girl in Big Man Little Love, cannot communicate to the salesperson, when Mr. Rıfat takes her to purchase new clothes. Mr. Rıfat cannot explain that she is Kurdish and does not know any other language: Salesperson: Mr. Rıfat: Salesperson: Mr. Rıfat: (to Hejar) What is your name? She doesn t speak Turkish. Why? Isn t she Turkish? She is Turkish but lives in Germany. Among the Eurimages-backed films, Journey to the Sun (2000) by Yeşim Ustaoğlu is the film that most fairly portrayed the problematic aspects of the predominant Turkish nationalism, and the difficulties of bearing a Kurdish identity. Journey to the Sun Focusing on the changing life of Mehmet, this film is about his transformation in terms of learning what it is to be a Kurd. Mehmet is a worker in the municipality of Istanbul, having migrated from Tire, a town in Western Anatolia, a few months prior to the time depicted in the film. He is arrested by the police at a checkpoint because of a gun the man previously sitting next to him had left when leaving the minibus. The music tape with Kurdish language that was given to him by Berzan (a new friend, and a peddler), combined with his darker skin, reinforces the suspicions of the police that Mehmet is a Kurdish activist. Even his girlfriend, Arzu, can hardly believe he is not Kurdish. This is evident in the dialogue following his being released by the police: Mehmet: Arzu: Mehmet: Nobody believes I am from Tire. Are you from Tire? Why does everyone ask me that? 136

151 Arzu: Mehmet: Arzu: Mehmet: Arzu: Mehmet: I don t know. It s like you re too dark to be from Tire. Is that a crime, to have dark skin? Why did they [police] throw you out? Seems I m too dark for them too. Let s change your looks. We ll bleach your hair blonde. Maybe you can grow a ponytail. (smiling) You want me to wear an earring too? Life becomes more difficult for him now, what with having a record with the police. He moves to different addresses, but every time his door is marked with a red X sign. In the second part of the film Mehmet takes the coffin of Berzan (who had been incarcerated by the police after joining a demonstration supporting the hunger strikers in prison, and was subsequently found dead) to his village in South Eastern Anatolia in order to fulfil his friend s last request. As an irony of fate, Berzan had told him before that his father was also incarcerated and found dead, which he said was commonplace in that region. Mehmet witnesses the evacuated villages and military measures taken in the Kurdish populated towns during his long journey. We see the doors of the houses in Berzan s town, Zorduç, are marked with an X sign, as in the case of Mehmet. Mehmet stops to speak to the hitchhiking newspaper seller children during his journey in that region. One of those kids finds his blondee hair strange and asks why it is so: Kid: Mehmet: Kid: Mehmet: Kid: Why is your hair blond? Why is yours black? God made me this way. He made me this way, too. Strange thing to do! This dialogue draws attention to the relativity of identity. While Mehmet was too dark for some people in Istanbul, his new blonde look is strange for the Kurdish kids 137

152 this time. Everybody judges him according to his/her own references and whatever he does he cannot escape from being strange. Black hair and skin is strange in the West, whereas it is the blonde man who is the stranger in the East. Fig. 17. Journey to the Sun (Güneşe Yolculuk): Berzan, Mehmet and Arzu (Dir. Yeşim Ustaoğlu, 2000). In the final scene in a dialogue with a soldier on a train, Mehmet expresses that he is not from his hometown Tire but, in fact, from Zorduç, Berzan s hometown, and says he has a friend from Tire. As the director Ustaoğlu pointed out, Mehmet perceives the Kurdish reality throughout the film: While he does not know what it means to be from Tire, Mehmet understands Zorduç and Berzan, and he becomes one with Berzan. The film is about Mehmet growing up, and he now can say I know very well what it means to be Berzan; I have a friend from Tire, called Mehmet, I know him as well (2010). As mentioned in the previous chapter, Faruk Günaltay, the representative of Turkey in Eurimages at that time was criticised by some of the media for the coproduction support decision for Journey to the Sun and the distributors were not eager to circulate the film. In conclusion, given their size, vocalised political demands and long history of insurrections, Kurdish identity and representation deserves separate treatment, even 138

153 though they are not officially recognised as a minority group. Turkish cinema has for many years represented Kurds without mentioning their identity or in films showing the problems faced by them in an indirect manner, but the last two decades have witnessed a more clear and questioning representation. Both Eurimages-backed films and other Turkish cinema have either directly pointed out Kurdish question or given place to Kurdish language and names in a variety of works. (Non-Muslim) Minorities In this section I shall discuss the representation of Greek and Armenian identities, two communities that were declared minorities by the Treaty of Lausanne. The Jews of Turkey, another group declared a minority, will be discussed in Chapter 5, which addresses religious identities. The concept of a minority meant almost nothing in the Ottoman era because of the aforementioned millet system. The term became a valid one courtesy of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which served to protect the civil rights of non-muslim citizens. The treaty guaranteed minorities equal rights with their Muslim compatriots, including the right to run their own educational, religious and social institutions. However thousands of Greeks and Armenians had left the country when the War of Independence ended and their number had shrunk to diminutive levels compared to pre-war period, as Erik J. Zürcher states: The larger Christian communities were practically gone (the Armenian community had shrunk to about 65,000 and the Greek community was down from around 2 million to 120,000); and Anatolia, which had been 80 per cent Muslim before the wars, was now approximately 98 per cent Muslim. Linguistically, only two large groups were left: the Turks and the Kurds, with half a dozen smaller groups (Greek, Armenian and Syriac-speaking Christians, Spanish-speaking Jews, and Circassian, Laz and Arabic-speaking Muslims) (1993, 172). In spite of the protective articles of the Treaty of Lausanne, and the egalitarian principles of successive constitutions, in practice it would appear that non-muslim minorities have faced discrimination. The case of capital levy (varlık vergisi) is a prominent example. Although Turkey did not engage in WWII, military expenditure had 139

154 to be increased and approximately one million soldiers were kept in the army as a precaution. Industrial and agricultural output decreased following the withdrawal of manpower from production and compounded by warfare an economic recession ensued. To cover the deficit, the government decided to collect a one-time tax from the citizens in November 1942, called capital levy. However that tax was aimed at non-muslims under the premise that these tradesmen had gained advantage from the war because of credit speculation and black-marketing. Foreigners and Dönmes (Jews converted to Islam) paid twice the Muslim rate, while non-muslims paid up to ten times as much as Muslims (Poulton 1997, 117). 71 The ones who could not pay that tax were deported to work camps. The rising internal and external reactions forced the government to abandon the levy approximately one year after its issue. The capital levy was intended to serve the Turkification of the economy by debilitating the financial power of non-muslim minorities. Mrs. Salkım s Diamonds (Salkım Hanım ın Taneleri-1999) by Tomris Giritlioğlu is a non-eurimages film that focused on this issue. The loss of non-muslim minorities significantly undermined the diverse culture of Anatolia, as Andrew Mango stated in 1976: The disappearance of minority communities has broken the texture and the articulation of society which, after fifty years, has not yet fully healed and reformed itself (13), an observation which still holds true today. Greek Identity The Greeks of today s Greece (Hellenes) became the first ethnicity to gain independence from the Ottoman Empire and formed a sovereign nation-state in Greeks in Istanbul, like the other non-muslim groups, maintained some autonomy under the millet system for approximately five centuries. The Turks and Greeks, the two main ethnicities of Istanbul after the city passed into Ottoman hands in 1453, lived together without much integration between the two communities. However, their support for the Greek army that invaded Anatolia after WWI caused the Greeks of Istanbul, Izmir and the rest of Turkey to be perceived by the Turks as disloyal: During the period of Turkish defeat 71 Referring to Benbassa and Rodrigue, ŞuleToktaş (2006, 207) gives the figures as: The tax rate calculated on the basis of annual revenue earned was 5 percent for Muslims, 156 percent for Greeks, 179 percent for Jews and 232 percent for Armenians. 140

155 and despair, the Patriarchate and Istanbul s Greek community had supported the Athens government in the cause of the Megali Idea. In 1919, even when the Sultan s government was still in office, Greek Orthodox churches issued a declaration calling for union with Greece. The Patriarch petitioned the Allied powers to support the Greek cause. Money and volunteers were sent to aid the Greek army fighting Turkish forces in central Anatolia (Alexandris 1983, 57). 72 Consequently, following the War of Independence, many Greeks had to leave Istanbul. There were roughly 250,000 Greeks in Istanbul according to Patriarchal estimates, approximately 150,000 of those went to Greece between 1922 and 1924 (Alexandris 1983, 104). In addition, following the war, there was an agreement between the two countries to exchange minorities living in each country: In order to eliminate future irredentist Greek claims on Turkish territory, the Kemalist government resolved not to allow the deported Greeks to return. Greek proposals for a voluntary exchange of minority populations were rejected by the Turks. Ultimately, the agreement reached by both sides of Lausanne provided for the compulsory exchange of the Greeks of Anatolia and the Turks of Greece, with two exceptions (Bahcheli 1990, 11). The Greek inhabitants of Istanbul and the Muslim inhabitants of Western Thrace were excluded. The total number of Greeks who left Turkey for Greece amounted to 900,000 and the number of Turks who left Greece for Turkey to 400,000 (Zürcher 1993, 171). 73 Before that, following the Balkan War of , approximately 30,000 Greeks were deported from their homes in Thrace and Anatolia in order to accommodate some of the 300,000 immigrated Muslim refugees from the war zone, 122,655 of whom were from territories that were lost to Greece (Bahcheli 1990, 8). 74 Greece and Turkey enjoyed neighbourly relations in the initial decades of the republic until the dispute over Cyprus caused a tense atmosphere in the 1950s. Whilst representative delegations were negotiating in London over the status of the island, a news broadcast on Turkish radio and then an afternoon newspaper announced on 6 th 72 Megali Idea is a type of Greek nationalism which aims to unite all the ethnic Greeks in one Great Greece by expanding the borders of the country to the regions where they live, in this case at the expense of the Ottoman state or of Turkey. 73 The figures included the people who left Turkey before the Treaty of Lausanne. Justin McCarthy (1983), on the other hand, estimates the lowest possible number for Greek refugees as 850, Justin McCarthy (1983, 130) refers to Stephen Ladas who noted the deportation of 85,000 Greeks from eastern Thrace to interior Anatolia in 1914 and 150,000 Greeks from western Anatolia to Greece. However, McCarthy states that Ladas does not offer any source for that information and thus his figures are questionable. 141

156 September 1955 that the house in Salonika, Greece, where Atatürk was born, had been bombed. The reaction in Istanbul resulted in a riot in which more than five thousand properties owned by Greeks and other non-muslim citizens were destroyed and despoiled, including houses, shops, churches, schools, factories, hotels and bars. 59% of those belonged to Greeks, 17% to Armenians, 12% to Jews, others to Dönmes and citizens who migrated from Belarus (Güven 2005). Hundreds of reports of rape were also filed. The government promised to compensate the damages and cast the blame on antirich communists. However the compensation did not cover the losses made, and the arrested intellectuals were acquitted by court. The governors of the ruling Democratic Party however, including the prime minister, were later found guilty after the military coup of 1960 for provoking the people against non-muslim citizens. It is also claimed that a Turkish university student in Salonika was the perpetrator of the bombing, however the accuracy of these claims has yet to be verified. Thousands of Greeks had to leave Istanbul for Greece after the incidents of 6-7 September Pains of Autumn (Güz Sancısı-2009) by Tomris Giritlioğlu is a non-eurimages film that focused on those incidents. Among many other conflicts, the Cyprus conflict is probably the most disputed between Greece and Turkey. Remaining under Ottoman rule from 1571 until 1878 and under British afterwards, Cyprus was declared as an independent republic in Comprised of two ethnicities, 80 per cent Greeks and 20 per cent Turks, the island did not experience internal violence until the mid-1950s. However the EOKA organisation, which aimed at enosis, unifying the island with Greece, started its campaign of violence on April 1, 1955 (Bahcheli 1990, 33) and killings started in The violence escalated, reaching a peak in 1963, following attempts to change the basic articles of the constitution in favour of the Cypriot Greeks. The scale of the fighting in December 1963 in Cyprus surpassed all previous experiences of internal violence. During the most intense period of fighting, between December 21 and 25, hundreds of people were killed, wounded, or taken as hostages (60). The military coup of 1967 in Greece encouraged the enosis aim once more but Turkey, being one of the three guarantor states (along with Greece and Britain), intervened in the affairs on the island due to the violent incidents of 1974, and it deployed troops in the northern part, and simultaneously caused the fall of the military regime in Greece. From this period on the two ethnicities have lived in 142

157 separation. While the Greek side in the south still uses the name Cyprus and claims to represent the whole population of the island, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was declared an independent state in 1983 but was not recognised as such by any country other than Turkey. The wars against Greece and the Turkification process of Anatolia caused a decrease in the Greek population, from 1,254,333 according to Ottoman census of (McCarthy 1983, 110) to just a few thousand, in the space of a hundred years. In essence, the mutual deportation of minorities contributed to the constitution of more homogenous nations both in Greece and Turkey. Since then two further events, the 6-7 September 1955 incidents and the Cyprus conflicts of 1963 and 1974 have caused the Greek minority of Turkey to shrink further. Greeks and Films Greek identity was represented in Turkish cinema, albeit occasionally; this often took the form of secondary roles in films, in which Greek characters would speak Turkish in distinct accents (as was found in representations of Kurds). It should be also noted that many citizens of Greek origin have contributed to the formation of Turkish national cinema from the beginning as producers, cinematographers and technical crew. However, the problems faced by the Greek minority were not displayed in the films; censorship was the definite factor behind this fact. The troubled Greek-Turkish international relations described above did become themes of (non-eurimages) commercial films which were bent to nationalist agendas in past and recent Turkish cinema. In terms of Eurimages funding, this has proved to be a good forum in which to support the representation of both citizens of Greek origin and the problematic relations between Greece and Turkey. Waiting for the Clouds (Yeşim Ustaoğlu-2005) as a Eurimages-backed film focuses on a woman who has to conceal her Greek identity and lives in the Black Sea area with a Turkish name for almost sixty years. The film begins with archival footage of deportations in and from Anatolia. Eleni, who is known in her community by her Turkish name Ayşe, is one of the hundreds of thousands of Greeks deported in 1916 from the Black Sea region to southern towns of Anatolia. The government took the decision to 143

158 deport the Greeks following the invasion of the northern city of Trabzon, at the Black Sea coast by the Russian army during WWI. The government s decision was a precautionary check on the potential of the Greek minority collaborating with the Russians. The deportation took place when Eleni was ten years old and she had to march a great distance to the south, with her family and the other exiles. During this journey her mother and sister died as a result of cold conditions and starvation. She and her six year old brother Niko survived and were adopted by a Turkish family. Ayşe/Eleni never spoke Greek, and nobody has known of her real identity since Selma, the daughter of the Turkish family who saved her, passed away. The film moves to 1975 and Ayşe/Eleni decides to go to Salonika, Greece, to see her lost brother years later (after the demise of Selma). There she meets a deported Greek woman from Havza, a town in the inner Black Sea region of Turkey: they speak Turkish in between. As discussed earlier in this chapter, Waiting for the Clouds questions and satirises nationalism through foregrounding nationalist songs, recitations and festivities and thus draws attention to the question of identity. Three Eurimages-backed films touch upon the Cyprus conflict, one on 1963, the other two on 1974 incidents. Firstly My Darling Istanbul (Seçkin Yasar-2007) points out how Greeks were deported because of the Cyprus conflict. In one scene in the film, the character Ali explains: Istanbul was rescued from Greeks three times: in 1453, in 1922 and in ,000 Greeks were deported from Istanbul in 1964 with 20kg of effects and 22 dollars at most. Then their assets were seized Chauvinistic politics were executed step by step. I vaguely remember in my childhood the Shopping among Turks and Citizen, Speak Turkish [ Vatandaş Türkçe Konuş ] campaigns. There has not been a serious study on this issue yet. Mustafa adds: We were using Cyprus as an excuse to be rescued from the Greeks. That is it. The media added fuel to the flames at that time The father of Irini in the film was a Greek who had to leave Istanbul for Greece in A neighbour, one of the remaining Greeks, says: They had us pay for all that took place in Cyprus. 144

159 Mud (Derviş Zaim-2003), a film shot in the northern territory of the island, intends for the spectator to recall the War of 1974 through a plethora of symbols beside mere dialogue. Ali, who is a soldier in the Turkish army by this point, had survived by chance a fusillade fired by Greek Cypriot militants. Temel on the other hand, a friend of Ali s sister, cannot overcome the trauma he suffered when he shot two unarmed Greek Cypriots in In the film Toss Up (Uğur Yücel-2004) Cevher s father explains how the tensions between the two nations destroyed his marriage with his Greek wife, Tasula. Two Turkish fishermen beat a Greek colleague of theirs during the War of Cyprus. When he condemns the fight, one of the fishermen responds you produced a child from a Greek woman. When he returns home, he asks Tasula if her father was a Greek agent, and then drives her and their son from the house. Twenty-five years later, Tasula and their son visit him after the great earthquake in Love under Siege (Ersin Pertan-1997), a film about the handover of Istanbul from Byzantium to the Ottomans, informs us the Ottoman army that besieged Istanbul was composed of fifty-thousand troops from different ethnicities, including Greeks. The finale of the film draws attention to the cultural continuity in societies even if the political systems or rulers change, noting on the screen: Knowing Byzantium is the key to understanding the Ottomans and thus today s Turkey. In five other films, Greek minorities still present in Turkey are represented. These are: the Greek family of Please Don t Go (Tunç Başaran-1998), in the Antakya region; Hristo, of Boatman (Biket İlhan- 1999), who is the owner of a shop in Çeşme; Madame, of Goodbye (Zeki Ökten- 2000),whose four friends visit her at the end of their daily walk in Bozcaada; Tasula, of Encounter (Ömer Kavur-2003), who works in a pension-restaurant in Bozcaada and whose relatives have left Turkey many years ago and now visit her; and Niko of My Darling Istanbul (Seçkin Yasar-2007), who is the owner of the restaurant where Irini, Ali and their two friends have dinner. Consequently, being one of the two biggest ethnicities of Istanbul during the Ottoman era, the Greek population in Turkey dramatically diminished during the period of the War of Independence. The international problems between Greece and Turkey have always adversely influenced the Greek minority in Turkey, a situation which has contributed to the decline of Greeks in the Turkish population. A relatively high number 145

160 of Eurimages-backed films provide representation of the Greek minority as well as the troubled dimensions of Greek-Turkish relations. Armenian Identity Unlike other ethnicities, Armenian minorities were spread into various regions of Anatolia, though they are more condensed in the eastern part. However they did not make up the majority of any province. Controversy surrounds the true number of Armenian s living in Anatolia before WWI, because of the relocation/genocide debates. McCarthy (1983, ) estimates it at approximately 1.5 million and 8.5% of the total population. Armenians were called the faithful people (millet-i sadıka) because of the services supplied to the Ottoman government as they replaced the untrusted Greeks (who gained independence before), starting in the second quarter of the 19 th century (Koloğlu 1999). Nevertheless, nationalist movements which broke the empire into pieces had an influence on that faithful people as well and some Armenian fractions claimed independence. The empire, which by this point had lost the majority of its territories in Europe, did not tolerate this new claim in Eastern Anatolia, which was close to the Russian border. Hence the affiliation was breached by the end of the 19 th century and a few violent incidents by and against Armenians had already occurred before Today, approximately a hundred years later, the incidents of 1915 are still fiercely debated and controversy rages in terms of the official versions of the historical theses of the Turkish and Armenian parties being discrepant. Zürcher elaborates: At the outbreak of the war, Armenian nationalists saw in a Russian victory their chance to achieve the establishment of an Armenian state in eastern Anatolia. Russian propaganda encouraged these aspirations. A few thousand Armenians joined the Russian army; there were Armenian desertions from the Ottoman army and guerrilla activity behind the Ottoman lines. Confronted with this situation, the Ottoman cabinet, on the initiative of the Interior Minister, Talât Pasha, decided to relocate the entire Armenian population of the war zone to Zor in the heart of Syrian desert. This relocation (tehcir) was carried through in 146

161 and it resulted in the death of enormous numbers of Armenians. So much is undisputed historical fact. (1993, 120) As Zürcher (1993, ) explains, there are three points of controversy surrounding this issue. One is the necessity of the operation. While defenders of the relocation-decision point out the treasonable activities of the Armenians and the difficulty to define who was loyal to the empire and who was not, objections arise on the grounds that it was not only the Armenians of the war zone that were deported, but also those from many different locations of Anatolia as well. The second controversy concerns the number of deaths. While the defenders of the official Turkish thesis claim the figure to be around 200,000, the Armenian thesis claims the number of deaths to total up to ten times that amount. Thirdly, the most critical point of the debates focuses on whether the incidents of constituted a genocide, or not, and whether the government was involved in this officially, or whether the deaths were planned and instigated by a minority clique in the ruling party (CUP) in order to solve the Eastern problem. Regardless of the reasons or intentions, the result was a tragedy beyond any dispute. Besides the deaths, hundreds of thousands of Armenian citizens had to leave the country during or following WWI. By 1965, the Armenian population of Turkey had decreased to as low as 56,286 (Armenian speaking) or 69,526 (Gregorian Christians) (Andrews 1989, 127). Many citizens of Armenian origin have contributed to the development of Turkish national cinema from the very beginning, as have the members of Greek minority. They occasionally took part in secondary roles in films. Problems faced by them were not displayed in the films, due to the aforementioned censorship system. As for the Eurimages-backed films, the Armenian question has not been focused upon directly, and has been implicitly addressed in only one work, Summer Love (2001) by Barış Pirhasan. The little boy shows a photo, speaks about Arpin who is now an old woman, and her family who had to migrate to Canada. Probably referring to the incidents of 1915, the boy speaks about the Armenians running away years ago and how Arpin was rescued by a Turkish family: Look. That s Arpin. Hugging her cousin. She stayed a year in Canada, 147

162 then came back again. When Arpin was small, all the Armenians were running away. Fatma Ana s Mum opened the door, grabbed Arpin and pulled her inside. Besides that implication, the representations of Armenian ethnicity as a component of the people of Turkey are much more numerous in the films that are within our scope. Cevat, of The Blue Exile (Erden Kıral-1993), runs into a theatrical company on the train while being moved to his new town of exile. All the actresses of that company are non-muslim and one of them is called Vartuhi (an Armenian name). In Istanbul beneath My Wings (Mustafa Altıoklar- 1996), Agop, clearly an Armenian name, serves alcoholic drinks in his restaurant in spite of the ban of the sultan. Anna, from the film Steam: The Turkish Bath (Ferzan Özpetek- 1997), speaks of an Armenian dish in the restaurant where they celebrate the marriage news of Füsun. Representations occur in three other films: the owner (Hacik) of the shop to whom Teodora, and Antuan, sell the Sultan s belongings in Please Don t Go (Tunç Başaran-1998); the headwaiter (Melikyan) of Pera Palas Hotel, in The Time of the Heart (Ali Özgentürk-2004); the boss (Helvacıyan) of the travelling theatre company in Borrowed Bride (Atıf Yılmaz-2005), are Armenian citizens of Turkey. In conclusion, Armenian identity is not focused on in any of the Eurimagesbacked Turkish-initiative films; however they have been represented in secondary roles in a relatively high number of films. Other Ethnic Identities In addition to the ethnicities already discussed, other ethnicities are represented or mentioned in a number of films. We see Master Butros, who is an Arab, going to fight in WWI as a soldier of the Ottoman army, in The Road Home (Semir Aslanyürek-2006). Similarly the nickname of the bully in Cholera Street (Mustafa Altıoklar-1997) is Arap [Arab] Sado and the nickname of one of the drivers in Once Upon A Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan-2011) is Arab, probably because of their ethnic origin. Takva: A Man s Fear of God (Özer Kızıltan-2006) displays prejudice against Arab identity. Muharrem, the protagonist, recalls a scene from his childhood in which his grandmother says [he] who drinks coffee, becomes Arab. Muharrem reflects that this may be the reason he does not drink coffee. 148

163 Representations of other ethnic identities are as follows: it is mentioned that the soldiers of Georgian, Serbian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Russian, French, Latin and even Greek origin form part of the Ottoman army, shown in an army of 50,000 troops that besiege Istanbul in 1453, in Love under Siege (Ersin Pertan-1997); we see the Italian minorities of Istanbul, such as Madame Anita and Mr. Oscar in Steam: The Turkish Bath (Ferzan Özpetek-1997); Safiye, one of the girls in the imperial harem is actually Italian in Harem Suaré (Ferzan Özpetek-1999); Evliya Çelebi takes the sketches and notes to Antonio Pasha (Italian), Gomez Agha (Spanish), Mr. Artin (Armenian) and Mr. Itzak (Jewish) for translation, because they are in an unknown language and probably have something to do with flying, in Istanbul beneath My Wings (Mustafa Altıoklar-1996); the existence of various ethnic groups that live in the Ardahan region, in Eastern Anatolia, is displayed, for example in the characters Koço (Kurdish), Şaho (Azeri), Malakan Kaiser (German) and Troubadour (Armenian), in Tales of Intransigence (Reis Çelik-2004); Esma s peer mentions the Gypsies in a negative manner in that they are full of tricks in Summer Love (Barış Pirhasan-2001); the inhabitants of Cholera Street (Mustafa Altıoklar-1997) are from many diverse ethnicities, including Gypsies and Greeks. However this film criticises the state and police forces attitude towards minority groups. Three men in the crowd talk after a criminal incident: A: Shall we complain to the police? B: The police would love to see us fight and kill each other. A: Then what can we do? B: Get together. Unite against injustice for the first time. Unite! C: What do you mean unite? Stop that communist jargon! B: You are useless! Conclusion Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which was composed of diverse ethnicities and held a peculiar governing system accordingly, the Republic of Turkey was established as a centralist modern nation-state that adopted a unified culture. It was 149

164 more a civic-territorial nationalism than an ethnic one, as defined by Smith; intended as a melting-pot identity, and without distinctions of religion and race such that everybody was called Turk. However, the practices could not escape oppression or negligence in terms of minority ethnic identities. Furthermore, the demography of the Anatolian population dramatically changed after long-term warfare due to the decrease in the number of non-muslim minorities. While the Treaty of Lausanne provided equal rights for minority communities, it also contributed to their isolation in the protective articles. For many years Turkish films have tended to posit national identity as a fixed concept, thereby serving to reinforce a unified, national culture; the censorship mechanism from the 1930s to the late 1980s was a significant factor behind this kind of imagination and representation. During the past twenty years, the problem of national identity has started to be interrogated in film and represented with greater complexity. The filmmakers have made direct use of the cinematic medium as a field of tension within which national discourses might be challenged. A significant number of Turkish-initiative films supported by Eurimages have focused on, questioned or represented both predominant nationalism and the diverse ethnic identities in Turkey. While banal forms of nationalism, to refer to Billig, have been implicitly represented in the background of films, an explicitly contrastive representation has been adopted where filmmakers have intended to problematise national identity and nationalism. The images related to Atatürk have appeared in at least 15 films either as banal reminders of nationhood (at least 11 films) or as contrastive representation of Turkish national identity (5 films). 75 Big Man Little Love (Handan İpekçi-2001) has questioned Turkish national identity through language, a film which can be read with reference to Bakhtin s concepts of dialogism and heteroglossia. The diverse ethnic identities of Turkey such as Kurds, Greeks, Armenians and a variety of others have been represented in a relatively large number of films, and in some cases they have been problematised, for example in Journey to the Sun (Yeşim Ustaoğlu-2000) and Waiting for the Clouds (Yeşim Ustaoğlu-2005). 75 For the details of contrastive representation of Turkish national identity, see Appendix-I. 150

165 The figures showing representation of nationalism and diverse ethnic identities in film are presented on the graph Explicit Representation of Turkish Nationalism Images Related to Atatürk Kurdish Identity Greek Identity Armenian Identity Arab Identity Other Ethnic Identities Fig. 18. The number of Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films in which national elements and diverse identities have been represented or problematised (minimum numbers out of 59 films). 151

166

167 Chapter 5 RELIGIOUS IDENTITIES As mentioned in the previous chapter, the Ottoman Empire used a governing system based on religious affiliation. 76 The Republic of Turkey emerged from this empire as a centralist nation state, adopting a principle of secularism. The implementation of secularism, however, meant state control, and the use of religion to support a nation building process. Religious identities that exist outside the majority Sunni Islam have been largely ignored or excluded from Turkish national identity in this context. This chapter discusses the representation of both Sunni Islam and the ignored or excluded religious identities in Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films. After providing an historical background on the establishment of nation-state with regard to religion and secularism, a brief history on the abdication and subsequent revival of Sunni Islam identity during the republican period will be given. This will be followed by a discussion of the representation of Islamic identities found in Turkish cinema due to either commercial or ideological reasons, focusing on Eurimages-backed films of the last twenty years. The latter part of this chapter will provide general historical information on diverse religious identities and the representation of these identities in the films covered in this research, namely Alevism, Christianity and Judaism. Historical Background Emerging as a state religion, and in the form of a religious state in the 7 th century, Islam deeply influenced the societies where it was embraced. In the Ottoman social structure, communal bonds were determinative and had priority over other social roles, and thus religious leaders maintained an esteemed position in society. In a similar vein, being Muslim was a requirement for achieving higher bureaucratic positions, regardless of the 76 A shorter, and somewhat modified, version of this chapter is currently under consideration by Routledge as part of an edited volume on religion and cinema. 153

168 ethnic origin of the officer. Moreover, since the 16 th century, the sultan has also been the caliph, which means the shadow of God on the earth, who, although being head of religious affairs, did not intervene in religious affairs or explicate Islamic law. Rather, the şeyhülislam (Sheikh of Islam) was responsible for the executive powers of religious authority in the name of the sultan. The post of şeyhülislam was created in 1424, occupying the same rank as grand vizier, i.e. prime minister (Karaman 2008). As Bernard Lewis states, For the Ottoman, his Empire was Islam itself. In the Ottoman chronicles the territories of the Empire are referred to as the lands of Islam, its armies as the soldiers of Islam, its religious head as the Sheikh of Islam (1952, 47). Even though the Islamic religion was deeply influential in social life, and was ostensibly an inseparable part of the state mechanism, the state retained a privileged position over religion in the Ottoman Empire at all times. The sultan had the power to appoint and discharge the şeyhülislam, and therefore religious authority could not contradict state authority. Rather, the state, helped by holding the post of caliphate, took advantage of Islam in order to achieve its political aims: it aroused the Muslim millet against the Christian states in cases of disputes or wars and, at the end of 19 th century, supported pan-islamism ideology in order to keep the remaining Muslim people a unified and cohesive group. Although Islam was an obstacle to Westernisation, the state s privileged position over religion provided the basis for the importation of Western military systems and martial technology in the 18 th century, which was justified by the sublime benefits of the state after the loss of territories in Europe. Western concepts such as positivism, enlightenment and secularism entered through the opened door, especially after the Tanzimat (Reorganisation) movement (1839). With this, the role of religion in public life gradually decreased. Important steps were taken to establish a national education system during the period of constitutional monarchy after 1908, which paved the way for the secularisation of the forthcoming republic. However, despite its decreasing role in public life, Islam remained influential in society and thus the traditional institutions that were based on religion could not be abolished, instead modern institutions were established in junction with them, leading to dual structures. 154

169 The republican revolution of 1923 was definitely a move towards the principles of enlightenment and positivism. The 1931 program of the governing Republican People s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Fırkası), for instance, declared: The party has accepted the principle that all laws, regulations and procedures used in the administration of the state should be prepared and implemented in accordance with the foundations and the forms that have been provided by science and technology for contemporary civilisation and the necessities of the world (CHP 2010). The party also declared that the separation of religion from state and mundane affairs was the main reason for progress. Şükrü Kaya, who served as the interior minister between 1927 and 1938, took this one step further when he stated: Religions have fulfilled their purpose and their functions are exhausted; they are institutions which can no longer renew their organisms or revitalise themselves (TBMM 1934). The republic distanced itself from religion, as it was considered an obstacle to the implementation of a transition process from the old (Islamic) cultural system to the modern (Westernised) one. To accomplish this transition, three agendas establishment of the Presidency of Religious Affairs, Westernizing reforms, and legalisation of secularism were carried out simultaneously. Islam had functioned to unite and motivate the country s Muslim people against enemies during the wars which occurred before the establishment of the republic. Yet, as a religion which crossed national borders, it contradicted the secular-nationalist-modern project of the new regime. The cultural identity of the Turkish people had largely been shaped by the Islamic religion in the past, but it had now become an obstacle to the establishment of the concept of secular citizenship. Thus on the one hand what needed to be done was to cut the bonds with Islam through reforms of social life and, furthermore there was a need to get religion under control so as to make it function to promote and support the republican project. Religion needed to be made secondary to the nation-state project, which would operate as a moderate religion integrated into the state structure, creating secular Muslim citizens. This was initiated by establishing The Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı) which replaced the abolished Ministry of Religious Affairs and Pious Foundations in The Presidency of Religious Affairs (PRA) was maintained by succeeding constitutions and aimed to avoid political 77 The Ministry of Religious Affairs and Pious Foundations (Şer iyye ve Evkaf Vekaleti) was formed in

170 affiliations and remain in harmony with the secular principles of the nation-state, as stated in article 136 of the Constitution of 1982: The Department of Religious Affairs, which is within the general administration, shall exercise its duties prescribed in its particular law, in accordance with the principles of secularism, removed from all political views and ideas, and aiming at national solidarity and integrity (BYEGM 2010). Affiliated to the office of prime minister, the PRA is organised all over the country. As an institution, it administers mosques, appoints local religious representatives, organises Koranic courses, arranges pilgrimage activities, determines the content of the Friday sermons, and issues fatwas as and when needed. It also supplies religious services for Turkish communities living abroad. The function of this institution, as a uniting authority, is to enlighten the public on religious matters, make Muslims conscious of superstition and protect them from exploitation of religious feelings, and avoid granting privilege to any religious order or group. The PRA has been the face of Turkish modernisation in the religious sphere: it served as an institutional assistant through the rationalizing and shaping of Islam to make it compatible with positivist enlightenment thinking and thus created an official Islam. The PRA is unique in this sense, as there has never been such an example in any other country nor in the preceding Ottoman period. The institution, however, does not wholly escape criticism. The state s role in running religious affairs is questionable, given its commitment to secularism. Furthermore, while non-muslim communities carry the costs of their religious affairs themselves, the cost of the PRA an institution which has been criticised for not even meeting the religious needs of all Muslims but rather only the Sunni majority is met by taxes paid by all citizens. Another objection is that state officers who are religiously authoritative are given the appearance of a clergy (though the opposite is claimed by the PRA bureaucrats), which clashes with Islamic principles. Finally, complete freedom and objectivity of the PRA is said to be impossible, since its president is appointed and can be discharged by the governing party (after the approval of the president), and as such, the institution is not separate from politics. The second set of actions undertaken in the initial years of the republic were the Westernising reforms aimed at modernizing society. These were: 156

171 1924 Abolition of the caliphate (which had been in force since the death of the prophet Muhammed and held by the Ottoman sultans since 1517) so as to eliminate a potential source of objections to Westernisation and claims on the sultanate; unification of the educational system, including the abolition of religious education and unification of all the educational institutions from elementary to high schools under the authority of the Ministry of Education, which aimed to give new generations a national culture and consciousness; abolition of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Pious Foundations; closure of sharia courts Ban of religious orders; closure of the dervish lodges and cells; replacement of fez with hat; ban on wearing the veil New Civil Law (institution of obligatory official marriage, ban of polygamy, equality of women and men in the family); adoption of Western clock and Gregorian calendar Replacement of Arabic script with Latin alphabet Abolition of Arabic and Persian courses in high schools Adoption of European weights and measures Replacement of Arabic call to prayer with Turkish Introduction of family names; ban on wearing religious clothes (except for state religious officers) Replacement of Friday holidays with Sunday. All these reforms were implemented in a top-down manner, but were eventually adopted by the masses. Atatürk s charismatic leadership as a glorious commander against both the forces occupying the country and the caliph-sultan (a representative of the old system and a collaborator with the occupying powers) smoothed the way for the reforms. Otherwise, radical changes of this extent would not have been easy in a country in which the common and dominant identity of the majority of the population was closely tied to Islam. Thirdly, secularism was adopted as a guiding principle of the new republic, and was legalised over time. The history of Turkish secularisation goes back to the Reorganisation period ( ) when the influence of religion on profane affairs decreased to some extent. The Committee of Union and Progress after 1908 also worked toward the secularisation of the state and education system, though to a lesser extent than 157

172 the republic. During War of Independence, Islam was declared the state religion in the Constitution of 1921, and remained so in the next constitution (1924, the first of the republican period). Secularism was first adopted by the governing single-party (CHP) in 1927 as one of the guiding principles (one of the six arrows mentioned in the previous chapter). The article in the constitution that declared Islam as the state religion was annulled in 1928, and there was thus neither a religion of the state nor secularism until 1937, when that principle entered into the constitution. The 1961 and 1982 constitutions confirmed Turkey as a secular country. Although I use the term secularism, what Turkey actually adopted was laicism, inspired by the French Revolution. As Niyazi Berkes (1998) states, while the word secularism denotes the idea of worldliness, laicism rather emphasises the distinction of the laity from the clergy. Secularism, as it is regarded in major protestant countries, theoretically posits a state that holds a neutral attitude towards religions. While respecting people s right to belief, secularism separates religion from the public affairs of the state. The two institutions of religion and state are presumed separate, and do not interfere with one another. However, it was not thought to be easy to apply that style of secularism - wherein the Church is autonomous - in a majority Islamic country, for Islam itself espouses an entire social system with economic, legal and moral dimensions. Taking into consideration the permanence of the new Western-oriented nation-state project, the republic could neither leave religious affairs in the hands of brotherhoods nor bestow an unlimited autonomy and freedom on the religious authority. Furthermore, the religion and religious authority (PRA) was shaped by the state and located as an administrative function in the organisational chart of bureaucracy. This was, in a sense, the tradition inherited from the Ottoman Empire, where the religious authority was secondary to the state. A series of factors contributed to the formation of what can be called the Turkish version of Islam. Although some scholars prefer to call it the state version of Islam due to the secular principles and practices of the republican period, I insist on not reducing the phenomenon to the secular state factor as this would mean ignoring the other parameters which are of significance throughout the production process of this unique system. The aforementioned PRA practices and the secular principles of the republic have clearly been 158

173 influential. However, it should be mentioned that the former Seljuk and Ottoman states cannot be said to have applied rigid Islamic rules despite the fact that being Muslim was a very determinative component of cultural identity. Furthermore, secular principles gradually entered public life in the later years of the Ottoman Empire (where the religion possessed a subordinate status to the state). Anatolia and its Muslim people were not only geographically but also culturally open to both East and West and were influenced by the both. Close relations with the Christian and Jewish communities definitely influenced the world-view of an ordinary Muslim citizen in Anatolia. Şerif Mardin states that the specifics of Turkish history contributed to create a special setting for Islam, a setting where secularism and Islam interpenetrate, which of course is quite different from saying that Islam and secularism have fused (2005, 148). In parallel with that one can say a Turkish version of Islam or Turkish Muslimness can be defined as tolerant, rejecting any kind of violence, rationalist and Sufi Muslimness against, for example, a rigid, fanatical, literalist, anti-sufi and anti-traditional Muslimness (Okumuş 2008, 350). Religious faith is confined to an individual issue, and thus Islam does not (or is wished not to) contradict secularism. It has also been practically complementary to Turkish nationalism - even though nationalism is a secular ideology by its nature and Islam was perceived as a possible obstacle in the initial years of the republic - for its uniting power on Muslim people. In Turkey, as the most secular Muslim-majority country, types and levels of religious practices vary according to social classes, geographies, ages and sects. Hence, by the term Turkish version of Islam, what I refer to is the belief system most likely to be adopted by an average Muslim citizen who is not influenced by fundamentalism. Notwithstanding the dominance of a moderate form of Islam and the ban of the dervish lodges and religious orders in 1925, the orders subsisted in practice. Broadly defined, a religious order (tarikat) is a number of believers united by the respect that they show for a particular person or lineage, whom they regard as different from other human beings by virtue of their being favoured by God. Perception, practice, priorities and sensitivities of a given religion vary depending on the religious order and each one claims literal adherence to or the real follower of Islam. The rebellion against the republican regime by the Nakşibendi order - led by Şeyh (Sheikh) Said who was a local Kurdish 159

174 religious leader - brought about the ban of religious orders. 78 Mustafa Kemal s declaration refers to this rebellion: The Republic of Turkey cannot be the country of sheiks, dervishes, disciples and followers. The most straightforward and the truest religious order is the order of civilization (Culture and Tourism 2005). Observing that political opposition to the new regime was taking a religious form, the state turned toward a more authoritarian secularism in the 1930s. The single-party government of the time has been criticised for an alleged Jacobin attitude towards religion, and its practices have been named repressive, militant or aggressive by Islamist and liberal circles. Minority religions on the other hand, as I explained before, enjoyed relative autonomy under the millet system of Ottoman Empire and they have been protected during the republican period by the Treaty of Lausanne. I will cover minority religions later in this chapter, after focusing on Sunni Islam - the majority Islamic sect (mezhep) - in the next section, and Alevism, the minority Islamic belief. Sunni Islam Relations between state and religion started to change with the shift to multi-party democracy after World War II. The ruling party, the CHP, attempted to placate conservative voters by making concessions on secular principles: the ban on visits to tombs and shrines belonging to religiously respected figures was lifted; elective religious courses were placed on the curriculum of elementary schools; a faculty of theology was opened at Ankara University; and courses for training prayer leaders and preachers started. However, those moves were not enough to keep the CHP in government. A series of factors - the poverty that resulted from the war, demands of the emerging petit-bourgeoisie and the promises of less state intervention in religion - paved the way for the centre-right DP (Democratic Party) to come to power in the 1950 elections. All centre right parties established pragmatic relations with Islam, whilst subsequently begotten religious parties have been overtly sensitive to Islam and its injunctions. Religious orders have hence been a critical subject of Turkish politics ever since, because of the centre right s pragmatic 78 As mentioned in the previous chapter, this and many other rebellions in the Kurdish-populated regions have been debated by historians in terms of whether they bear a nationalist or a religious character. The role of local feudal aghas who have economic interests - in such rebellions should be noted here. 160

175 affiliation with Islam and because of the religious parties wholesale sensitivity to Islamic doctrine. The first actions of the DP government were to lift the ban on the Arabic call to prayers and to permit religious broadcasts on the state-radio channel. Thereafter, the status of courses for training prayer leaders and preachers was changed to high-school level: those schools, which had been opened as a result of the law on the unification of instruction passed in 1924, had been closed in 1930 due to a lack of demand. The number of prayer leader and preacher schools (imam-hatip okulları) increased over time and the education system came close to having a dualised structure. In a similar vein, the elective religious courses in the curricula of elementary schools firstly became a norm, and then became constitutionally compulsory in Both centre right and far right parties have benefitted from Islam, using it to bring wider appeal to their ideology of Turkish nationalism. A more effective fusion of Islam and nationalism was achieved in the state mechanism through the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis (Türk-İslam Sentezi) instituted following the military coup of Established in 1970, Hearths of the Enlightened (Aydınlar Ocağı) propounded this ideology in opposition to the leftist ideology that was gaining support in the universities and among intellectuals. The members of the Hearths of the Enlightened were conservative academics, politicians and businessmen, and the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis aimed at a fusion of Turkish nationalism and (Sunni) Islam religion: Its basic tenet was that Islam held a special attraction for the Turks because of a number of (supposedly) striking similarities between their pre-islamic culture and Islamic civilization. They shared a deep sense of justice, monotheism and a belief in the immortal soul, and a strong emphasis on family life and morality. The mission of the Turks was a special one, to be the soldiers of Islam. According to this theory, Turkish culture was built on two pillars: a 2,500-year-old Turkish element and a 1,000-year-old Islamic element (Zürcher 1993, 303). This ideology was also embraced by the coup leaders of 1980 and religious courses were made compulsory. The Turkish-Islamic Synthesis appears, for instance, in the General Aims of Religious and moral Education, which was proposed in 1982: To learn in basic and middle education enough basic knowledge of Islamic religion and 161

176 morals in accordance with Ataturk s laicist and other principles, along the lines of the general aims of the Turkish national educational policies; thus the populace will obtain good morals and virtues to ensure in them a love of people, religion, morals, Ataturkism, national unity and togetherness (quoted in Poulton 1997, 182). The Turkish-Islamic Synthesis ideology implemented after the military coup paved the way for the growth of legal and illegal Islamist movements throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Perceiving and representing secularism as an anti-islamic religion, these movements worked towards Sunni Islam s central role in public space at the least, if not aiming for the fall of the secular-kemalist state. Although the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis assisted the rise of Islam in Turkey, the Islamists refused such a fusion because of the universal character of the religion, which is conceptually contrary to nationalism. While the revival of religion and religious orders in the 1950s is indicated by political accounts, the explanation remains incomplete without considering the role of developing capitalism in the country. Starting with the transition from commercial to industrial capitalism in the 1960s, religion gained influence principally within two sectors of society. The first was the labour force, some unemployed, who, maintaining their rural and traditional conservative moral values, immigrated to big cities as a result of industrialisation, but were dissatisfied with the realities of modern capitalism. The second sector was the petit-bourgeoisie and artisans of small Anatolian cities and towns who could not benefit sufficiently from, or were harmed by, the development of capitalism. The solidarity and social bonds that capitalism failed to provide were offered by religious orders, especially to the poor, who were deprived of social security. In conclusion, with the continual concessions made to secularism for political reasons on the one hand, and capitalist modernisation and social uncertainty on the other, this worked for the revival of the religious orders and contributed to the (re)infusion of Islamic identity in Turkey, particularly in the smaller cities and towns of Anatolia. Recent research has indicated that six out of every one hundred people are members of a congregation or religious brotherhood today in Turkey, and the ratio is higher in the east of the country compared to the West (Türkiye nin Cemaat Tablosu 2011). The next section will provide an historical backdrop for Sunni Islam and films in 162

177 Turkey, focusing on two Eurimages-backed films, Takva: A Man s Fear of God and Istanbul beneath My Wings. The first displays the power of religious orders in contemporary Turkey while narrating the transformation of an ordinary devout Muslim, and the second film depicts Islamic conservatism during the 17 th century Ottoman period through the story of the first flying human in history. The two films both draw attention to the role of Sunni Islam in Turkish society in different periods. Sunni Islam and Films The representation of Islam has found a place in Turkish cinema from the very beginning as an important component of cultural identity. In addition to this, commercial factors (box-office concerns) and the Islamic worldview of certain directors significantly contributed to the increase of religiously themed films. The signs, symbols and rituals of Islam, such as mosques, prayers, customs, and the religious weddings performed by imams, have been visible to varying degrees in films depending on the aim of the filmmaker, particularly in narratives that focus on rural issues and themes. Apart from their presence in films that focused on religious themes, for many years the imams have been represented in a negative manner by the film industry: they cooperated with the allied powers that occupied the country after WWI and denounced the resistance movement (War of Independence) against this. They also colluded in exploitation through their co-operation with the brutal aghas in the villages, and represented a fanatical, reactionary attitude against modern values and novelties in society. This kind of representation, which cannot be said to be totally false, and has changed in recent years, has been criticised in Islamic circles and claimed to be an exaggeration. By the 1950s, the film industry started appealing to the religious sentiments of Muslim people for commercial motives. Islamic symbols were shown in melodramatic films in rather irrelevant contexts, juxtaposed, for instance, with belly dancers, eroticism and many other commercially attractive elements. Another use of Islam for commercial motives from the 1950s to the 1970s was in the films that focused on the lives of religiously important figures. The producers aimed to attract the Islamic audience to movie theatres in that way. 163

178 A different type of representation of Islamic identity started with the milli sinema ( milli is an older word translated literally as national ) movement, as mentioned in Chapter 1. Yücel Çakmaklı, the theorist of the movement, made his first film, titled Crossroads (Birleşen Yollar), in Milli sinema, according to Çakmaklı, was to be the cinematic narration of national culture and advocacy of the genuine culture against the imperial values of the West. The genuine and/or national culture he advocated was one that was fused with Islamic culture. In that sense, milli sinema is different from ulusal sinema ( ulusal is the newer word corresponding to national ) which was suggested by Halit Refiğ and some other filmmakers (as also mentioned in Chapter 1). The Islamic filmmakers of the milli sinema movement aimed to utilise the power of cinema in order to transmit religious messages. Such films focused on: the changing lives of individuals who, having been on the wrong road by displaying Western values, choose the Islamic way at some point in their life to attain peace of mind; the ban on wearing head scarves in certain public spaces; the criticism of secular practices of the state by way of the problems experienced by covered females and graduates of high schools for prayer leaders and preachers (imam-hatip liseleri); and the narration of life stories of religiously important figures. Later the terms Islamic-sensitive films (İslami duyarlıklı filmler) and white cinema (beyaz sinema) have also been used to describe such films, although Abdurrahman Şen, who coined the term, objected to the limitation of white cinema to Islamic films. He did not, however, provide a sharper definition of it except to narrate the stories of this land within an aesthetical field, and Islamic films and filmmakers have thus often been referred to by the term. Abdullah from Minye 1-2 (Minyeli Abdullah 1-2, ) by Yücel Çakmaklı and You Are Not Alone 1-2 (Yalnız Değilsiniz 1-2, ) by Mesut Uçakan have been the Islamic films that have reached a relatively large audience. Neither the Islamic films of the milli sinema movement and/or white cinema, nor the commercial films which focused on or exploited Islamic themes, can be counted among the outstanding films of Turkish film history. A very fundamental reason for this was the underdeveloped and clichéd characters in the leading roles. Takva: A Man s Fear of God, supported by Eurimages, is an exceptional film in this sense, which successfully focused on the transformation of an ordinary religious individual. 164

179 Takva: A Man s Fear of God Takva in relation to Islam, means fear of God and the avoidance of sin. The film, directed by Özer Kızıltan (2006), narrates the transformation of an ordinary devout Muslim who somehow finds himself entangled in the power games of a religious order (tarikat-ı aliyye or tarikat), which leads him to develop a mental disorder. It also depicts the social and economic power of religious orders in Turkey in an objective and realistic manner in as much as this is possible. Muharrem, the protagonist, is a single middle-aged devout man who has been working at a sack wholesaler since his childhood as a paid worker, leading a quite and poor life. He does not fail in his Muslim observances: we see him waking up early in the morning, performing the ablution and the namaz (Muslim worship), and praying after dinner at home. He also joins the zikir (trance) ritual in the dergâh (dervish lodge) regularly. He has not slept away from his home throughout his entire life. Observing and appreciating him as a good and honest Muslim, the Sheikh offers Muharrem the administrative duty of collecting the income from the rented real estate properties that are owned by their tarikat and executing the maintenance of those assets. According to the Sheikh, it is not good for the ulema (Muslim theologians and scholars) to deal with profane business. Muharrem is an ordinary person with an open heart and this case is extraordinary indeed, thinks the Sheikh. Thence, Muharrem becomes closer to the tarikat and his disturbing journey shaped in a power-faith dilemma starts. He moves to live in the dergâh and on his first day Muharrem prays to God to not allow him to fail and feel ashamed. The tarikat owns forty-three houses, thirty-five shops and seven land holdings in different districts of Istanbul. Thanks to the rental income from this real estate, they provide a number of poor youngsters from all over the country with a religious education, including taking care of their board, lodging and clothing. According to the beliefs of the tarikat, all of their assets basically belong to God and they are entrusted to them. Devoting labour to those assets means worshipping God. The Sheikh requests Muharrem to order the maintenance works from the craftsmen who are affiliated with them. In this way it will be an opportunity for a brother to do good and help the development of the dergâh at the 165

180 same time. The respect for the Sheikh among the disciples is extremely high; we see them, for instance, bending in front of him and kissing his hand. His assistant, Rauf, even kisses the glass of sherbet before handing it to him. The word of the Sheikh is the law. He serves as a kind of spiritual brokerage and as a local middleman between man and God, to refer to Gellner (2006, 40). Two profane domains, monetary relations on the one hand and sexuality on the other, distort the world of moral values that Muharrem is used to. Accepting the offer from the Sheikh, he is assigned a dozen suits and pairs of shoes, a quality watch and rosary, an expensive pen, a mobile phone and a car with a driver. These are the symbols of affluence that are meant to exhibit the wisdom of the Sheikh and the abundance the tarikat promises. It is not easy for Muharrem to bear those symbols of power and affluence, which he is not used to, from the beginning: what difficult concerns these are. I was living an ordinary life before, he says. His working day is divided into two: he works in the sack wholesaler in the morning and carries out his duties for the tarikat in the afternoon. His personality is also divided, and he starts to act as a semi-boss in the workplace, especially toward Muhittin, who is a young man newly hired to assist him and carry out routine tasks when Muharrem is out completing the tarikat s work. Muharrem projects the crisis and discrepancy in his inner world onto this young colleague. A contradiction he experiences between two cases in his rent collection duty is the first major breaking point in his world. He witnesses, during his visit, one of their tenants, a mechanic, drinking alcohol, and reports to the Sheikh that the mechanic should leave the shop. However, the Sheikh and brother Rauf do not agree with him: the mechanic is paying the rent regularly and, if he is a sinner, it is his own sin, not theirs. In the second case, the heavy disease of a tenant does not allow him to work, and he is thus not able to pay the rent. The tenant s covered wife has three children, and has nowhere to turn. Probably for the first time in his life, Muharrem feels the unbearable burden of possessing power and decisive authority: It is up to you [to take the rent or not] Mr. Muharrem, the tenant s wife appeals to him. When Muharrem shares his tendency not to take rent from that poor and religious family, the Sheikh s response puts him in a difficult dilemma. The Sheikh says: 166

181 The rich and the poor at all times have existed since the prophet Adam. However, the number of poor is more than a proper rate this day; poverty is extensive. Muharrem, our religion protects the poor. Your dignified heart is aware of this; that is divine light of yours. If taking rent is not required, don t take it. Yet, if one of the students has to be dismissed here because of not taking that rent, you choose that student. We cannot be part of that sin. It is your duty with the permission of God. Your dignified heart will make the right decision. Know that, your dignified heart is selected for this duty because it will make the right decision. Then Muharrem says believe me Master, those profane affairs are so difficult. Later we are led to understand that Muharrem has decided to evict the mechanic from the shop but he also experiences an hallucination, an image of the tenant s wife begging on the street. Another monetary affair, occurring in the wholesaler in which he works, intensifies his crisis. In a confused state of mind, he sells some sacks to a contractor at a price more than its value. As a good and honest Muslim, he is disturbed by the trade and tells this to his boss but partly lies. He pronounces the amount less than he received. The boss does not mind at all and tells him not to exaggerate the case; for the boss, it is legitimate as he already fulfils the economic orders of Islam and, furthermore, the particular case is not a sin according to the Koran. Thereafter, two friends of the contractor visit Muharrem and demand the same amount of sacks the following day. He feels obliged to charge the same, excessive, amount of money the second time. These contractors want to trade with Muharrem because they have heard of his good reputation. Nobody cares about the excess amount of money, except him. He asks himself: So many lies I have told over and over. So many people I have deceived. Furthermore, everybody is pleased with goings on. How did I do this? In addition to the dilemmas he experiences between his past, ordinary and poor, Muslim life and the business affairs that are believed to be Islamic, serving God, by the tarikat s leader and members, Muharrem occasionally experiences sexual fantasies regarding a particular woman in his dreams. He wakes up, having ejaculated, in a 167

182 remorseful and ashamed mood, because he considers himself a sinner, even in his dreams. Banknotes and alcohol accompany the images of the woman. Meanwhile, the Sheikh indirectly asks Muharrem if he thinks of getting married because marriage is licit in order to meet the necessities of the body and not to fornicate but he refuses. As his state of mind worsens, he comes to believe that the woman in his dreams might be the evil one. However, one day he sees her in a shop, covered with a headscarf, and follows her. When she stops in front of the Sheik s house he asks her who she is, the woman s reply is traumatic for him: Don t you know me, Mr. Muharrem? I am the daughter of the Sheikh. This is the last episode before he experiences a complete mental breakdown. The Sheikh later exhibits him at one of the gatherings in the dergâh and diagnoses his case as being that of suffering from staying between being one with God and not. Muharrem, however, in the midst of the dilemmas that led to him losing his mind, had bemoaned to Muhittin (his assistant in the shop) about the mood he was in: I presumed the fear of Him [God] would put me in order. Muhittin, I only wanted to be a good human, only a good human. He exists all the time and everywhere. God exists all the time, everywhere. If you do the things He orders and don t do the things He refuses, you become a good human in this world and will be at ease in the afterlife. But it didn t, it doesn t. The devil exists all the time. Maybe what we call devil is ourselves. The controversy that emerges in Muharrem as a result of the gap between power and faith stands in the centre of the narrative. The power is exterior, i.e. the power of God as the Highest Being, of the Sheikh and his order, and the administrative or decisive power assigned to Muharrem. His faith, on the other hand, is internal, and has accumulated in him until his experiences executing the administrative post in the tarikat. The contradiction between his internal faith and the external power(s) lead him to suffer from a mental disorder, or to suffering from staying between being one with God and not, to quote the Sheikh. In the last scene we see the daughter of Sheikh nursing Muharrem, who is unconsciously laying on a bed in the dergâh. Apart from narrating the transformation of Muharrem, the film also depicts the political power of the religious orders and the close relations between religion and politics, 168

183 which I outlined in the historical discussion of secularism and religion in Turkey. For instance, politicians from Ankara, the capital, visit the Sheikh and request a zikir ritual; that means they know or have heard of him and show respect. In another example, Muharrem does not have to wait in the queue to pay the electricity bills of the state-owned company for the assets that belong to the tarikat, because the branch manager of the company is also a member of, or sympathises with the tarikat, and there is great solidarity among the brothers. Muharrem, however, feels discomfort about overtaking the other customers waiting in the queue and expresses his feelings to Rauf, the Sheik s assistant. He is then told that their tarikat has to manage those affairs without losing time, since they educate too many youngsters. Thus, his every minute is valuable. He should feel that way. He shouldn t waste time, wait or be tired. Every single minute he gains is a new opportunity for him to serve God. Fig. 19. Takva: A Man s Fear of God (Takva): Muharrem and the daughter of the Sheikh (Dir. Özer Kızıltan, 2006). In conclusion Takva: A Man s Fear of God displays how Sunni Islamic identity has been visible and influential through religious orders in a constitutionally secular state that distanced itself from religion as a founding ideology, and despite the word of Atatürk which denotes that Turkey cannot be a country of sheiks, dervishes, disciples and 169

184 followers. The film s portrayal of the predominant power of religious orders in a contemporary situation is achieved not through narrating it didactically but rather by focusing on the transformation of an ordinary devout Muslim. Two other Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films represent how religious bonds influence mundane affairs, which should normally be separate in a secular state. While Sol and Halil of Split (Canan Gerede-2000) wait for the court s decision as to who their daughters will stay with, Halil invokes the assistance of his Sheikh and the court decides accordingly: the daughters stay with the father. Thus we understand that the judges of the court are under the influence of the Sheikh. In The Master (Bahadır Karataş- 2009), on the other hand, Doğan s brother-in-law benefits from his relations with a religious community in order to become the holder of a franchise, which is implied through an Islamic bureaucrat in Ankara. These two examples exhibit how Islamic bonds assist, and indeed impede, people they do so by violating the principles of equality and equity in a constitutional state, for the religious orders work in favour of only their members. Istanbul beneath My Wings The post of şeyhülislam (Sheikh of Islam) and the relations between the state and religion during the Ottoman era has been briefly explained in the historical discussion. To recall, the sultans did not intervene in religious affairs or explicate Islamic law though they were literally the figurehead of religion as the caliph. The şeyhülislam on the other hand, who had a very important rank similar to that of prime minister, could not controvert the sultan s authority. This hierarchy enabled the adoption of many Westernisation movements in a state of Islam. Islam was highly influential in the Ottoman society and it was consistently referred to as a source of restrictions and conservatism. Istanbul beneath My Wings, while narrating the story of first flying man in history, mirrors the above-mentioned role of şeyhülislam in the Ottoman state structure and Islamic proscriptions in the 17 th century. For instance Sultan Murat IV, upon witnessing Hezarfen Ahmet Çelebi (the man to fly) and his assistant (Lagari Hasan) examining a corpse, brings the ulema (Islam experts) 170

185 together and asks: Sultan: Şeyhülislam: Sultan: Şeyhülislam: Answer me! Does our religion allow such scientific studies on dead bodies? God forbid. Our religion orders us to surrender the dead to God who gives and takes lives in the world. Even though some physicians have the cunning inclination to practice their art on dead bodies, this inclination is evil temptation. I see. How do we punish those who commit the sin? With death penalty. During the trial, the rational mind of Hezarfen Ahmet Celebi encounters the Islamic conservatism of şeyhülislam: Şeyhülislam: Ahmet Çelebi: Şeyhülislam: Ahmet Çelebi: Şeyhülislam: Ahmet Çelebi: Şeyhülislam: Now let s take this matter of flying like a bird. Has the Almighty God given you wings? No! The wish to put on wings and fly is defying God s will, isn t it? Almighty God didn t give us wheels. But mankind has invented and used it for his travels. God gave us neither wings nor wheels. But he gave us brains so that we can think. Enough, you impertinent man! Do you mean that I have no brains? Not at all, my lord. I am referring to those who are unable to use the brains that God gave them. When we use our minds and knowledge, mysteries are solved, mankind progresses and our sufferings lessen. Sir, of all the nonsense you spout, only the following make sense: The mind that Almighty God granted us. But, people like you use your minds to serve your personal pleasures instead of serving God. Therefore you do not deserve to have your lives spared. Instead of being good subjects of Islam, they are bad seeds who deviated from God s purpose. My lord, each seed is created differently as a unique individual whereupon the community is formed. Individual is the essence of the community. Wasn t our prophet Muhammed an individual too? You impertinent fool! Stop profaning the sacred name of our 171

186 prophet! What do you mean by saying the individual is essential? The individual exists for the good of the community and the state. You must not ask what the state will do for you, but what you can do for the state. Otherwise there would be chaos, as everyone would have something to say. Lagari Hasan: Ahmet Çelebi: Let them! Is that bad? Mankind progresses only thru the personal progress of each individual s mind. Therefore, my lord, let everyone have something to say! At this point Lagari Hasan intervenes and proposes the benefit of flying for military goals. He reminds the court of the siege of Istanbul by Sultan Mehmet II, and the siege of Vienna by Sultan Süleyman, and imagines how easily the flying Ottoman soldiers would dominate their enemies. At that point Sultan Murat IV, who has been monitoring the trial behind a window, intervenes, and allows the two scientists to continue their work on flying but forbids the examination of corpses. This can thus be seen as an example of the superior authority of the state (sultan) over religion (şeyhülislam) in the Ottoman Empire, as is previously mentioned. In addition to Istanbul beneath My Wings, Islamic conservatism is represented in three other Eurimages-backed films. Eflatun Efendi, of Waiting for Heaven (Derviş Zaim- 2006), who is the chief miniaturist of the palace, sketches the portrait of his dead son in a Westernised style. His assistant, Gazel Efendi, invoking the Islamic ban on portraits, says: Gazel Efendi. Forgive me. Drawing in the style of the infidels only heightens your suffering. If only I hadn t encouraged you. In The Master (Bahadır Karataş-2009), the mayor orders the removal of a statue of a naked woman, which he perceives to be obscene as his morality is, to a large extent, defined by the Islamic worldview. The last example of Islamic conservatism comes from Waiting for the Clouds (Yeşim Ustaoğlu- 2005). Two men in the town are talking about the infidelity of Ayşe/Eleni who is actually Christian. According to these two, Selma, Ayşe s elder sister, might also be an infidel : - What about Selma? - How should I know? 172

187 - She s six feet under our cemetery now. - Let s dig her up and check. - How can we check? Women can t be circumcised. - We ll see if the earth accepted her or instead she grew horns. - At best she has a God. Besides the above-mentioned scenes that display Islamic conservatism, numerous audio/visual representations of Islam have found a place in Eurimages-backed Turkishinitiative films. These include depictions of worship, rituals, symbols, concepts and elements of the predominant Sunni sect of Islam. To borrow Billig s concept of banal reminders of nationhood that I referred to in the previous chapter (such as the flags that are not flagged), those signs which are in the background can be called banal reminders of religion, as cultural signifiers in a Muslim-majority society. The details are explained in Appendix-I. The next section will cover Alevism as the minority Islam belief and its representation in cinema. Alevism A very different comprehension and practice of Islam to that of the Sunni majority in Turkey is offered by the Alevi sect. To clarify the distinction between the aforementioned religious order (tarikat), which was represented in Takva: A Man s Fear of God, a sect (mezhep) is a much larger religious group, sometimes referred to as a denomination, distinct from the larger religious body and has followers in a much wider geographical area. Like the Catholics and Protestants in Christianity, Sunni and Alevi beliefs compose different sects of Islam in Turkey. Spread across a wide geographical area from Central Asia to Africa and Anatolia, Alevism has been shaped by the cultural peculiarities of its adoptive peoples. Alevis exist in various regions of Turkey and though the overall estimations vary between 10% and over a quarter of the country s inhabitants they are mostly estimated to compose about 20% of the country s population (Poulton 1997; Erman and Göker 2000; Öncü 2006). A definition of the Alevi way of Islam is not easy to provide, even for Alevis 173

188 themselves. Literally expressed, it is the way of the people who are attached to Ali, who was the fourth caliph after Prophet Muhammed; Ali and the twelve imams are sacred in Alevi belief. To love Ali is to love God and to love God is to love Ali. Although they are called the Shi ites of Turkey in some sources, the only similarity to the Shi ite Islam of Iran and the Jafari sect in Turkey is their respect for Caliph Ali and the descendants of Prophet Muhammed. The Bektaşi order is the most extensive branch of Alevi Islam. While some Sunni Muslims perceive it to be non-islamic, others categorise any sect which does not fall into Sunni Islam under the umbrella of Alevism. Depending on the point of view, it is named as a sect in Islam (religious term), Turkish way of Islam (by Kemalists) or a philosophy of life (by left intelligentsia) by different circles. Some even call it Anatolian enlightenment. I use the term sect for Alevi belief because of its popularity as a word among people in Sunni and Alevi communities and religious scholars. The definition of Murtaza Demir who is the chairman of Pir Sultan Abdal Foundation for Culture and Education (Pir Sultan Abdal Kültür ve Eğitim Vakfı), an Alevi organisation - gives general insight into Alevism, denoting it as a secular and humane belief which does not discriminate against women: We predominantly live in Anatolia. We are no different than Turks and Kurds in terms of our roots. Our notion of God and conception of belief, however, is totally different from those static worshippers and dogmatists. We keep away from essential and mathematical pre-acceptance of belief, believe that heaven and hell are in this world, respect and love the human being as one of God s titles. We are attached to God not modally but at heart. We believe in God not as an entity to be frightened of but to be loved. We sincerely accept that women should have the same rights as men. We reject the primitive understanding which considers woman as a commodity, which insults and packages her in veils, burkas or turbans, and which regards polygamy as the command of God. (quoted in Çalışlar 2009, 136) Suffering from the state s hostility in the form of either slaughter or mistreatment in the Ottoman era, the Alevi community has been ignored throughout the republican era. In the name of national unity, they have been counted in the Turkish-Sunni identity, and thus subjected to assimilation. The curriculum of the compulsory religious courses lower 174

189 than that of the university level installed after the military coup of 1980 excluded Alevism in this context. The ban of religious orders and closure of the dervish lodges in 1925 also adversely affected the Alevi community. Mosques have been built in their villages throughout the republican period despite them not going to those places for worship. Cemevi (assembly house), where they worship instead, has not been recognised by the Presidency of Religious Affairs (PRA), nor their belief as a separate sect of Islam. Moreover, they were disallowed from worshiping overtly until the beginning of the 1990s (Cafer Solgun, quoted in Çalışlar 2009, 106). It was illegal to be organised in a society or foundation under the name Alevi for many years due to the divisive act, until the Supreme Court decision allowed the use of the word in the case of Alevi-Bektashi Federation (Alevi Bektaşi Federasyonu) in The first Alevi organisation, however, was established in 1963 (Hacıbektaş Turizm Derneği/Hacıbektaş Tourism Association) and the first political party in 1966 (Birlik Partisi/Union Party). The number of organisations and publications increased dramatically after 35 citizens including artists, authors and poets - were killed during a festival in Sivas, a central Anatolian city, in a hotel fire started by a fundamentalist Sunni Islamist group in This was not the only violent incident aimed at Alevi citizens: fatal acts of aggression by extreme-right nationalists in Kahramanmaraş (1978), in Çorum (1980) and in Istanbul (1995) were backed or condoned by the state. 79 Although this seems somewhat paradoxical because of the state s ignorance, or, in some cases, condoning, of aggression toward them, the Alevi community has consistently supported the republican regime and held esteem for Atatürk, as their national status, in the republic, officially rose to equal citizens from subjects of the caliph-sultan, an administration under which they were exposed to consistent persecutions (in the Ottoman period). Their struggle for identity, nevertheless, has endured, and they have mostly supported Kemalist and/or left-wing political parties. Regarding the PRA, a state institution financed by taxes collected from every 79 A very important occurrence in Alevi history different in character to the aforementioned aggressions - is the rebellion in Dersim, a region in Eastern Anatolia, and its repression by the state ( ). Having an Alevi-majority population, the people of Dersim consistently suffered oppression and persecution during the Ottoman period and maintained a kind of autonomy, which did not quite fit the centralist nation-state structure of the republic. The measures taken to keep the region under control caused a vehement uprising and drastic reaction from the state forces, which in the end left thousands dead and in exile. The name of the province was changed to Tunceli by the end of

190 citizen but serving only Sunni Muslims, the Alevis propose two alternative solutions: that it should either be abolished since there is no base for an official religious bureau in a secular state, and each religious group should organise and finance itself, or every religious group in Turkey should have proportional representation in the PRA in accordance with their populations, but not in a hierarchical order. As Ali Balkız, the chairman of the Alevi-Bektashi Federation, has stated, they demand recognition by the state: (Alevis) call for: Alevi printed on the religious section of their identification cards [instead of only Islam] 80 ; the abolition of the compulsory religious courses; the same status for the cemevi that is given to the mosque. They do not wish mosques to be built in Alevi villages and Sunni imams to be appointed for those mosques. They call for Madımak [the hotel in which 35 citizens were killed in 1993] to be turned into a museum and they wish not to be prevented from promotion because of being Alevi. They demand to be able to become generals, governors, and deputies (quoted in Çalışlar 2009, 36) Based on face-to-face interviews in twelve cities of Anatolia, the survey on diverse identities in Turkey implemented by Binnaz Toprak (2008, 52-76) et al. outlines the extensive discrimination and prejudice against Alevis by Sunni Muslims. Accordingly: food prepared by an Alevi is believed to be forbidden by religion and thus not consumed; they are not believed to be virtuous ; the marriages between Alevis and Sunnis are very limited; a woman married to a conservative Sunni man is usually forced to fast and to perform the namaz; Alevi employees and trades-people are discriminated against and they feel forced to go to Friday prayers and fast during Ramadan, or appear to be fasting, though their belief does not require that they do so; their villages and districts are not properly served and demands for worship places are not met by the municipalities; they have to hide their identity because of the above-mentioned reasons. Like the state, Turkish cinema has also substantially ignored Alevi identity. When a filmmaker has needed to display a religious sign or focus on a religious theme, this in most cases has been one belonging to Sunni Islam. The reason behind this might be 80 The European Court of Human Rights decided in 2010, upon an application by a Turkish Alevi citizen, that a religion section on identification cards infringes the principle of the freedom not to disclose religious beliefs and thoughts (AİHM 2010). 176

191 the extensive prejudice against Alevi identity among the Sunni majority and the desire not to lose this mass audience. Ali (Hazreti Ali) by Tunç Başaran, for instance, is one of the few films that addressed an Alevi audience. It was made in 1969, during a period when it was popular to narrate the lives of religiously important figures, and focused on the life of Caliph Ali who is respected by Alevis. Regarding the Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films, four out of fifty-nine films represent Alevi identity, which is quite a high percentage when compared to the cases in Turkish film history. Summer Love Focusing on the romantic first love of a teenager girl for a boy who is a few years older than her, Summer Love (2001) by Barış Pirhasan, a Eurimages-backed film, puts both the Alevi identity and the prejudices against Alevi communities on display. Esma is sent to her relatives living in a village in Eastern Anatolia by her parents in Ankara for the summer holiday. She gets closer to her aunt Saliha there and shares her feelings for Hüseyin - a boy in the neighbouring village. She sadly learns, however, at the end, that Hüseyin does indeed love her aunt. The population of the village of Esma s relatives are Sunni while Hüseyin s village is a member of Alevi community. Esma and her Sunni Muslim relatives call the neighbouring Alevis red turbans (kızılbaşlar). The term red turban is normally a word historically assigned to the Alevi community and there are various stories of its origin. However, its usage by prejudicial Sunni conservatives refers to all the perceived negative aspect of Alevi culture today. For instance during a talk between Esma and her aunt about Hüseyin, Saliha even says that they are members of different religions, which is a representation of the fact that some Sunni Muslims perceive Alevism to be non-islamic, as discussed above: Saliha: Esma: Listen carefully. There is no laughing matter. You re not the same age or religion. Why not the same religion? Aren t they Muslims? They shout Allah Allah from the rooftops as well. Then Saliha corrects herself: Saliha: Did I say they weren t Muslims? 177

192 This objection of Esma comes after she joins a cem ritual; until then she knows almost nothing about Alevism, as we understand in a talk between her and her Alevi friends. One of her friends informs Esma that they don t have hodjas or imams but there s dedes (religious leaders) instead and Esma is told about Ali, the 12 imams and Karbala the key elements of Alevi belief. All Esma knows about them is that they are red turbans. Esma defends herself on the grounds that she failed the religion course in school. Upon this the others make fun of that, implying that Alevism is not taught in religion courses or only prejudices about Alevis are given in those courses. The film also shows a cem ritual, the collective assembly, at length where we witness many details. All the families of the Alevi community are gathered, they worship in the way their belief requires, some of them play the bağlama (Turkish/Alevi folk instrument) and some others dance the semah where both women and men participate. As shown in the film, cem ritual is very different from the Sunni Muslim practices. Similarly, we see a cem ritual in the Eurimages-backed The Road Home (Semir Aslanyürek-2006); when Mahmut, the protagonist, visits the Alevi master (pir) after returning from war. Besides this, The Road Home also exposes Sunni prejudice in a scene which alludes to the misbelief that Alevis are not virtuous because they put out the candle and engage in incestuous sexual affairs : learning that Mahmut is from Antakya (a southern city close to Syrian border where the Alevi population is dense), one of the soldiers in the front tells him what he has heard by saying some people do that candle thing there. 81 The other two Eurimages-backed films that represent Alevi identity are Tales of Intransigence (Reis Çelik-2004) and Istanbul beneath my Wings (Mustafa Altıoklar- 1996): in the former film, we see the portrait of Ali on the wall of Şahsenem s house, and in the latter Bekri Mustafa represents the Bektaşi culture, which is a branch of Alevism. 81 The phrase candle went out (mum söndü) alludes to an accusation about a holy moment of some cem rituals in which twelve candles (representing the Twelve Imams) are doused with water. For centuries it has been widely spread among Sunnis to demean Alevis by accusing them of having (incestous) sexual affairs after blowing off the ritual candles. However, this is a rumoured belief which does not exist (Alevi 2012). Alevis are quite sensitive about this prejudice among Sunnis. A famous showman in 1995 (Güner Ümit) and another one in 2010 (Mehmet Ali Erbil) made jokes about the candle thing in live broadcasts, and both were fired by their TV channels following the serious extent of the reaction by Alevi citizens. 178

193 Christianity I explained in the previous chapter that the millet system adopted by the Ottoman state was based on religious affiliation and that word was synonymous with community. Accordingly each community had a kind of limited autonomy and a religious leader s function was to ensure his community s obedience to the sultan. While the secular republican regime abolished the system based on religious affiliation and rendered individuals as equal citizens of the same imagined community, the equal treatment of non- Muslim minority groups was mainly provided by the protective articles of Treaty of Lausanne (articles 37-44). One may argue that the acceptance of Turkishness and Sunni Islam as the basis for national identity and integrity on the one hand, the Treaty of Lausanne on the other, contributed to the isolation of Christian minorities. Notwithstanding the fact of bearing Turkish passports and serving their legal obligations (tax payment, military service, etc.), the general perception is that the Christian minorities have not been accepted in the Turkish identity and not seen as genuine citizens, but rather as a fifth column, the extension of the external powers of their kin states (Greece and Armenia) inside the country. The support by Ottoman-Greek citizens of the Greek army that invaded Western Anatolia after the WWI, and the desire of some Ottoman-Armenian citizens for an independent state in Eastern Anatolia nourished feelings of hostility against these two minority groups, which have not ceased even years after the establishment of the republic. I outlined in the previous chapter some of the lived experiences which worked against them, such as the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s, the capital levy of 1942, the riots on 6-7 September 1955, and the exile of Greeks from Istanbul in Besides the problematic situation of the Christian minorities in relation to national identity, it is not easy to say that they are not under oppression in terms of religious freedom, especially in the smaller cities of Anatolia. For instance, research by Toprak et al. (2008, ) suggests that both the religious commissaries and the ordinary Christian worshippers feel intimidated to speak about their problems and they lead an invisible life in small cities. The fatal aggression experienced by Christian priests 179

194 and missionaries in recent years probably reinforced this feeling. 82 On the other hand some churches in Anatolia that had been out of service for many years have been renovated and opened for worship recently. In larger cities such as Istanbul the situation appears less problematic. However, the status of the patriarchate has been a controversial issue for a long time. The state accepts the patriarchate in Istanbul as an institution of the Republic of Turkey and the patriarch is the head of Greek-Orthodox community. Accordingly, only Turkish citizens can serve at the post of patriarch and as bishops, and this issue is one of internal affairs. The patriarchate, on the contrary, claims that it is universal and the ecumenical authority for Orthodox Christians all over the world, i.e. the equivalent of the pope of Catholicism. Since questions related to ethnic and religious identities have not been asked in the censuses since 1965, it is impossible to give exact figures for the membership of the various religious communities in Turkey today. Nevertheless, an approximate estimate of the number of Christians is as follows: 65,000 Armenian Orthodox, 15,000 Syriac Orthodox, 3,300 Jehovah s Witnesses, 3,000 Protestants, up to 3,000 Greek Orthodox, and additionally small, undetermined numbers of Bulgarian, Chaldean, Nestorian, Georgian, and Maronite Christians (U.S. Department of State 2010). Christianity, though, has been represented in quite a high number of Eurimagesbacked Turkish-initiative films, considering these communities compose in total less than 1% of the country s population. Some of those representations are in transnational stories of a non-turkish individual or context. A great majority of representations of Christianity relate to Greek-Orthodox identity. Various symbols and acts, from church to praying practices and the patriarchate, are observable in these films as part of the filmic subjects religious identities, presented in a neutral manner to meet the requirements of the story. Older Turkish cinema, however, in some cases represented Christianity in a rather negative light, as in the symbols of the enemy-byzantium in the historical B-films for instance. In Eurimages-backed films, a Christian symbol is used as a contrastive element in only one scene of Split (Canan Gerede-2000): the Muslim Halil pulls off his Christian wife s (Sol) cross necklace while they are making love. The director is not on Halil s side 82 Some of the recent aggressions against Christian religious figures include: Father Santoro was killed in Trabzon (2006); Father Francini was wounded in an attack in Izmir (2007); three missionaries were killed in Malatya (2007); Bishop Padovese was killed in Iskenderun (2010). 180

195 here, but depicts the act to give the spectator an idea about his personality and religious fundamentalism at the beginning of the story. All other Christian representations in Eurimages-backed Turkish initiative films can be found in Appendix-I. Judaism The Ottoman state is seen as the protector of Jews, in history, who suffered from the persecution carried out in Christian Europe. Large numbers of Jewish groups immigrated to the Ottoman Empire before and after their expulsion from Spain in 1492, as well as from other countries, which led to the composition of one of the largest Sephardic communities in the world. They were mainly domiciled in Istanbul, Salonika and some Anatolian towns. Similarly, many academics and intellectuals who had to leave Nazi Germany in the 1930s came to Turkey and worked as scholars in Turkish universities. Although Jews were the most self-contained community and those who spoke the minimum level of Turkish during the Ottoman period (Koloğlu 1999), they were integrated into the nation-state project to a much greater extent than the Christians after the establishment of the republic: On 15 September 1925, Bejerano [the Chief Rabbi] voluntarily renounced the Jewish millet s special status as guaranteed under Article 42 of the Lausanne Treaty, instead opted for ordinary Turkish citizenship (Poulton 1997, 279). However, the Citizen, Speak Turkish! campaign, at the end of the 1920s, which was aimed at the minorities and implored for them to speak not in their mother tongues but in Turkish in public spaces, overshadows the general idea that the Jews of Turkey voluntarily integrated themselves into the nation-state project as a whole; there seems to have been a degree of compulsion. Today the mother tongue of almost all of the Jews in Turkey is Turkish, besides a European language, most commonly Ladino (Judeo-Spanish). There was never a neighbour-kin state which could nurture feelings on the Jews part and they did not collaborate with the allied powers which invaded Anatolia after WWI but supported the War of Independence, so the Jews of Turkey in general have not been perceived as untrustworthy in the same way that the Greek and Armenian minorities have been. Unlike most of Europe, Turkey has scarcely seen officialised, state-sponsored 181

196 anti-semitism in its history. For instance, ghettos which isolate Jews from the rest of society were never in operation in the Ottoman state. On the contrary, Jews were considered by the empire to be the faithful people. Research conducted by Toktaş (2006) consisting of face-to-face interviews with members of the Jewish community in Istanbul shows that, while there has never been official anti-semitism at the state level, some individuals do exhibit such discriminative prejudices. However, a report by the World Jewish Congress in 1938 (La Situation Economique des Juifs Dans le Monde) points out that the policy of Turkey in favour of nationalising the economy through state capitalism in the post-war period had adverse effects on the Jews; although Turkish citizenship was legally sufficient to allow them to engage in business with the state or to work in state institutions, what was required in practice was to be a Muslim and Turkish citizen (Bali 2005, ). According to Rıfat N. Bali, a Jewish researcher, the general opinion that there exists no anti-semitism in Turkey stems from the expressions of eminent businessmen who are known as representatives of the Jewish community, for they undertook the mission of promoting Turkey (309). An example of anti-semitic prejudice is the incidents of After the Nazis came to power in Germany, propaganda about Jews increased in some of the media and caused violence against the property of Jewish citizens in a few provinces of Thrace. Thousands of Jews had to sell their real estate and move to Istanbul after this. The state did not tolerate the violence and the media and provocateurs responsible for the incidents were penalised (Toktaş 2006). In the capital levy of 1942 and the incidents of 6-7 September 1955, on the other hand, Jewish citizens were also adversely affected, not for being Jewish but for being members of a non-muslim minority group. Other than being exposed to prejudices similar to other non-muslim minorities, the Jews of Turkey have occasionally received negative reactions due to their relatively wealthy position in society and also as a result of the anti-semitic propaganda of the extreme religious right. Anti- Semitic propaganda carried out by religious right media and political groups in recent years resonate with a certain group of people who have Islamic sensitivity due to the disputes in the Middle East and the Israel-Palestine controversy. However, despite the absence of anti-semitism at the state level, in practice it is almost impossible, and highly unexpected, for a Jewish citizen to achieve a high position in the state bureaucracy. 182

197 The Jewish population in Turkey has fluctuated depending on international political situations. It increased during WWII, for instance, and decreased after the establishment of Israel, because of emigration to the new state. The Jewish population is estimated at between 20,000 and 25,000 today (Epstein 1989; Toktaş 2006; U.S. Department of State 2010). 83 Regarding Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films, the representation of Jewish identity is low and indirect in comparison with other non-muslim groups, i.e. Christians. In Istanbul beneath My Wings (Mustafa Altıoklar-1996), besides an Italian, a Spanish and an Armenian scholar, Evliya Çelebi also takes sketches and notes to Mr. Itzak - who is a Jew - for translation, which are in an unknown language and probably about flying. Another representation about Judaism occurs in Honey (Semih Kaplanoğlu-2010): a group of women are gathered to commemorate the Prophet Muhammed s ascension to heaven and they mention the names of some other prophets as well, among those named is Aaron, a prophet of the Jews. Conclusion Aiming to go above and beyond contemporary civilisation as a modernised and radically secular state, the republican regime adopted secular principles which preceded and contributed to the formation and permanence of a relatively democratic order in a Muslimmajority country. However, though secularism requires the segregation of state affairs and religion, the state made use of religion for the reinforcement of Turkish national identity and integrity; hence one can say that the republican regime absorbed the Ottoman tradition of the state s priority and superiority over religion. The Presidency of Religious Affairs was formed in this respect and could not escape the criticism of imposing a moderate and secular Islam on the one hand and excluding non-sunni identities on the other. Thus the practice of the republican regime has been described not as secularism but rather as the promotion of a state-islam. Following the transition to a multi-party democracy, Sunni Islam became a central subject of politics, and the religious sentiments of the voters have been exploited 83 Toktaş refers to: Karimova and Deverell. 183

198 for political ends. Social uncertainty brought about by the growing capitalist economy in the 1960s and the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis - which proposed a fusion of Islam and Turkish nationalism adopted as the official ideology of the state by the military coup leaders of paved the way for the Islamist movements and religious orders to gain power and Islamic identity to become more of an issue. Non-Sunni identities, on the contrary, have been ignored or excluded. Of these, Alevism, which suffered persecution during the Ottoman period, has been ignored by the state in the republic though Alevis have officially become equal citizens of the country. They have also been subjected to extensive prejudice and discrimination by some conservative Sunni Muslims. Regarding non-muslim identities, Christians have not been perceived as genuine Turkish citizens due to political-historical factors, whereas Jews have been more integrated into the nationstate and have not been considered to be as hostile as the Christians. However, both have had to endure inequities, which have stemmed from their being of a different religion in a Muslim-majority country. Various audio/visual representations of religious identities may be found in a relatively high number of Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films. Out of these, Sunni Islam has unsurprisingly been the most common. The representation of Alevism has been relatively high, compared to older Turkish cinema, but is still low in proportion to their population. Christian representations, on the other hand, have been quite high in number sixteen films especially in proportion to their population. Jews have been indirectly represented in only two films. The number of depictions of religious identities in films is shown on the graph (see figure 20). The Sunni Muslim identity has been backgrounded in forty-three out of fifty-nine Eurimages-backed films via a variety of prayer practices, symbols, rituals or symbols as the most extensive cultural signifiers of the majority religion. In particular two films problematise different aspects of Islam religion, filmic time of one is today and the other is in the past. Takva: A Man s Fear of God (Özer Kızıltan-2006) displays the profane affairs of a specific religious order and portrays an ordinary devout man who is entangled in the power games therein. Istanbul beneath My Wings (Mustafa Altıoklar-1996) exhibits the religious conservatism in the 17 th century Ottomans. Of the four films that represent Alevi identity, Summer Love (Barış Pirhasan-2001) and The Road Home (Semir 184

199 Aslanyürek-2006) draw attention to the Sunni prejudices against Alevi community, display their religious ritual and inform about their belief. When it comes to non-muslim identities, they have been represented neither in positive nor in negative ways by the filmmakers in the films, but rather neutrally depicted or backgrounded in accordance with the requirements of the stories Sunni Islam Alevism Christianity Judaism Fig. 20. The number of Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films in which diverse religious identities have been represented or problematised (minimum numbers out of 59 films). 185

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201 Chapter 6 GENDER IDENTITIES George L. Mosse argues that the nation was constructed according to the peculiarly heterosexual ideal of manliness, which acted as a basic signifying principle in the selfdefinition of bourgeois society and its nationalist ideology. Accordingly, manliness reinforced the class division of labour the prerequisite productive mode of bourgeois society not only in the economy but also in social and sexual life, as well as symbolising the nation s spiritual and material vitality (Mosse 1985, 23-24). The renowned statement of Simone de Beauvoir - one is not born a woman, but rather, becomes one (1979, 295) - can be seen as signifying the construction of gender identities by modernity s ideology of manliness. Besides womanhood, lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender (LGBT) identities are also subjected to and sublimated by masculine heterosexual morality in capitalist society: Nationalism and respectability assigned everyone his place in life, man and woman, normal and abnormal, native and foreigner; any confusion between these categories threatened chaos and loss of control (Mosse 1985, 16). Those who have trespassed beyond the limits of male and female activity have been considered as abnormal and as constituting a threat to society (24-25). Though nations and nationalism are by-products of capitalism, Turkey as a nation-state did not deploy this economic mode of production and its concomitant class structure in its early stage of establishment. The state was established and led by the military and bureaucratic elites, not the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, the conservative Islamic morality provided a clear focal reference point in the seclusion of women and the utter exclusion of non-heterosexuality in Turkish society. The bourgeoisie that later developed parallel to the strengthening of capitalism in the 1950s - that which dominated the state apparatuses and imposed a cultural hegemony - confirmed Mosse s determination: the heterosexual norm of manliness sublimated and replaced the earlier social structural normalcy and was reinforced by Turkish bourgeois morality. 187

202 The republican revolution granted a relative degree of emancipation to women, but the acquisition of further rights necessitated a second wave of feminism, just like the relative recognition of, and initial social space given to, LGBT identities was made possible thanks to their own struggles both against the popular ideology of manliness and its correlate morality. Therefore this chapter will focus on the two secluded and excluded identities in Turkish gender discourse, womanhood and LGBT identities. This chapter is not exclusory regarding men, for we are talking about women and/or LGBT identities and indeed of manliness and its ideology. Firstly the historical backdrop of women s status and emancipation in Turkey will be provided, with the Ottoman and republican periods separated so as to create a clearer picture of the status of womanhood in today s Turkey. This section will be proceeded by an outlining of the representation of women in Turkish cinema generally and in Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films specifically. Thereafter the severe discrimination, oppression and exclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender identities (and the struggles of their adherents against this discrimination) will be outlined, and this will likewise be followed by an analysis of their representation in Turkish cinema. Women in the Ottoman Period The Ottoman state turned into a theocratic one in the 16 th century, after the transfer of the post of Caliphate to the Ottoman sultan, Selim I. Thereafter, religious doctrine became the key reference point in the exclusion of women from economic and social life right up until the last few decades of the empire. The Empire s women were held under tight control by the decrees of the sultanate, stipulating injunctions on a myriad range of aspects of life, from their clothing styles to the days of the week on which they could leave the house. They were not provided with education and were obliged to live a secluded life that permitted contact with only close family members. A few examples of the sultanate s decrees that targeted women in these times are given here: The one dated 1580 forbidding women to ride in the same boat with men; banning women s entry into creamery shops [1573]; changing the model of ferace (formerly an outdoor mantle for ladies) of 1726; banning women from 188

203 going to picnic places [1752]; banning the wearing of ferace made of fine cloth, and the threat to seamstresses that if they repeated making ferace from such material that they would be hanged outside their workshops [1792]; allowing women to go out only on four days of the week (during the reign of Osman III [ ]); banning women completely from going out (the reign of Mustafa IV [ ]); banning women from going out even with their fathers or sons, or ride in a car or stay outdoors at the time of call to prayers [1862]; the ban on women going out in çarşaf (formerly an outdoor garment) and veil made of very thin material and the decision concerning the introduction of ferace. 84 (Özkaya 1981, 231) Women were secluded in a harem. From the 15 th century on, the concept was introduced in the imperial palace, wherein the space was divided into two - the harem (women s section) and the selamlık (men s section). Besides referring to the women s section in the palace and residences, the word harem also referred to the community of women who lived in that section. Şirin Tekeli informs us that the Ottomans adopted the harem system after the conquest of Byzantium, along with many other structures of the Byzantine state: The Byzantine Empire was a class society basically made up of slaves who worked on the land and the ruling classes who mainly indulged in governing. The women who belonged to the ruling classes and who lived in cities were secluded in the harem (1981, 294). In contact only with the male members of their families, women were principally left to deal with housework, the upbringing of children and embroidery in the harem. Though not officially, it was essentially a kind of social slavery, as Tekeli suggests in referring to what Friedrich Engels (2010) called the domestic slavery of women (295). When it came to the palace, a group of women was chosen because of the women s beauty and they were kept in the harem to serve as sex objects for the sultan; Leila Ahmed (1982) states that Turks, as the last Middle Eastern peoples to convert to Islam, were responsible for developing the institution of the harem. In addition, women members of the imperial harem learned about and were involved in dynastic politics (Peirce 1993). It is well known that (especially) the mothers of the sultans or şehzades (the sons of the sultans that are the candidates for sultanate) influenced the leading male 84 The original dates in the source book are in the Hegira calendar, which is the lunar year of Islam. I have converted them into the Gregorian calendar; there might be a year of disparity in conversion, depending upon the month of the decrees, which are not denoted in the source book. 189

204 political figures from time to time. The imperial harem was dissolved in the Second Constitutional Monarchy Period ( ) by a parliamentary decision. While the sexes were segregated in the cities, as we have seen in the decrees of the sultans and in the practice of the harem, the women of the rural agricultural land led a less oppressed life due to the conditions of production therein. Working in agricultural fields in conjunction with men, women in the countryside were not forced to cover their faces and hide themselves. In a similar vein, while the turban (a type of Islamic headscarf) has been popular amongst conservative circles in the towns and cities of Turkey over recent years, it has largely not been used in the villages and the headscarf used by peasants today is almost the same as the one used by women in the Anatolian countryside centuries ago. The status of womanhood and the emancipation of women was not questioned or proposed until the Reorganization Period ( ), when the issue of women was located at the centre of Westernization debates in newspapers and novels. The proponents of Westernization maintained that the superiority of the West was not only due to technological advancement but also to the rationalist and positivist worldview that underlay this technology. Thus there was no place for superstition in the Western world, and concurrently Islamic conservatism was the reason for the backwardness of Turkish society and the oppressed status of women. According to Islamists, on the other hand, the corruption and degeneration of society was due to Islamic creed not being fully exercised; a pan-societal Islamic ideology was to be the way forward, and while the military and economic systems of the West might be applicable in a Muslim society, issues over the status and rights of women should be muted by the dictates of Islamic law. When the debate touched on morality, even the most libertarian intellectuals could not go beyond their puritanism and, keeping in mind the predominant Islamic conservatism in the society, they tended to use the Koran as the chief reference point in terms of the rights of women. As the debate progressed over the years, the Islamist side had to admit some, minimal rights to women. All of these debates were, it must be said, partaken in by men, and women only had a direct political voice by the end of the 19 th century, when they were given limited educational rights. While the status of women was intensely debated during the Reorganization Period, the actions taken in favour of their emancipation remained 190

205 limited and piecemeal. The equal inheritance rights granted to daughters with sons and the abolishment of slavery and concubine practices were, nevertheless, important moments of progress in this period. Educational rights and opportunities have always been central issues in the discourse over women s status in society. Throughout the six centuries of the Ottoman Empire, women were excluded from education except for during the last few decades. Only daughters of the elite (e.g. the pashas, judges and professors) could receive private tuition. Among these women, the first female poet in Ottoman history, known as Zeynep Hatun, was born in 1474 (Afetinan 1962; Özkaya 1981). No serious legislative provisions in terms of women s education were made until the 1870s, when teacher-schools for women were opened (and a few high schools for girls were established in the big cities later on). Since male teachers were thought to be inconvenient in schools composed of female students, only elder teachers who were defined as being decent were appointed to work in the institutions at the beginning. The women who could access what little education was afforded were the daughters of the elite and of wealthy families, and many of these were later involved in literary productions and in the debate over women s social status at the end of the 19 th century, as alluded to above. More extensive educational provisions for women emerged during the Second Constitutional Monarchy Period, and were enacted under the rule of the Committee of Union and Progress. Both the demand for female education and the number of educated women significantly increased. A university for women (İnas Darülfünunu) was founded in Istanbul in 1915 and from 1919 onwards the female students therein could take courses alongside men (IUFL). The female students were permitted to lift their veil only during the lectures (Abadan-Unat 1981). Despite the advancements made during the Second Constitutional Monarchy Period, the expectations of women were not satisfactorily met. Following the oppressive rule of Abdülhamid II 85, women who were in hope of full liberty were frustrated in their ambitions, denotes Zülal Kılıç: in the celebrations of the fifth anniversary of the second constitution, Women s World [a journal] called this the national holiday for men (quoted in Altan-Olcay 2009, 177). Nevertheless, an ideological basis had been prepared in the 85 Following the Young Turk revolution, Sultan Abdülhamid II had to restore the constitutional monarchy and the parliament once again in 1908, which had been abolished by him in So the Second Constitutional Era was begotten. However, being involved in a counter-revolution eventually caused his deposition from the throne in

206 debates that took place during and after the Reorganization Period, and women obtained and secured many tangible rights after the 1908 revolution. Besides educational reforms, the social space afforded to women increased in size and political weight. The continuous warfare from 1912 to 1922 caused a swathe of men to withdraw from the workforce and necessitated women s work. They principally served as nurses, in social welfare activities and in other roles acting as support to the army behind the front-lines. In 1915, women were permitted to unveil their faces during working hours. As women became part of the broader socio-economic arena, the number of women s journals which had been being published since increased in manifold proportions. While some of these journals focused on raising awareness amongst women of feminist causes and defended women s rights, some of them simply informed women as to how to be a good mother, a good wife and a good Muslim. The presence of more radical journals, however, was testament to a shift in public attitudes to women and the feminine. Women in the Republican Period In addition to entering into the workforce, women were actively involved in the War of Independence and contributed much to the eventual victory. They protested the occupation of Istanbul and Izmir by the allied powers and joined the resistance movement in Anatolia. Thus they were politicised as well as being a greater part of the country s socio-economic life. The new republic introduced many unprecedented women s rights and pushed for the emancipation of women not only insofar as they were involved in the struggle for liberation but as a deeper process of radical modernisation. The reforms that were most relevant to women were made in three domains: education, law and politics. As a first step, a law establishing a universal education system that rejected religious education was passed on the same day as the abolition of the caliphate (3 March 1924). The principles of a secular education system were adopted, and the new system granted equal educational rights to every citizen. Educational institutions on the one hand and girls schools in particular were set up across the country. Primary school education became obligatory and free for every citizen. All of the universities opened their doors to women. The higher education of women increased in time to a level that, as Feride Acar denotes, compared to developed countries in the West, women s participation in higher 192

207 education was significantly higher in the Turkish Republic (quoted in Toktaş and Cindoğlu 2006, 739). 86 Female graduates of these universities worked as teachers at the beginning, and then occupied all kinds of profession, as doctors, professors, opera singers and even as pilots. 87 Secondly, in terms of legislation, the civil code of Switzerland was adopted in 1926 with only some minor changes made, as it was thought to have thoroughly desirable secular characteristics. It replaced the old code, which was based on the theology of Shari a law and was weighted hugely against the favour of women. 88 The new civil code arranged marital relations and familial legal relations. Some of the improvements provided included the following: - Civil marriage became obligatory and official before witnesses and required registration on identification cards, instead of there being a religious ceremony; couples who wished to have a religious ceremony could also do that. - The principle of equality between woman and man was adopted in terms of inheritance, child custody decisions and divorce proceedings. - Polygamy was abolished. - The legal minimum age of marriage was raised to 18 (although this was later altered a few times). Although the new civil code constituted a milestone in the emancipation of women, it did not bring an absolute equality of the sexes, for, according to the Swiss civil code, man remained the head and chief representative of the family and a woman had to get the permission of her husband to obtain employment. Besides, the practical implementation of the new legal code could not be effectively enforced beyond the cities and thus could not change the life of women in the countryside and in the conservative cliques. Over time the civil code has been much improved in favour of women s rights and has become effective in the more remote parts of the country. 86 According to the statistical data of 2009, approximately 35% of people who have a doctoral degree in Turkey are women, which is probably one of the highest ratios in the world, if not the highest (TÜİK 2009). 87 Sabiha Gökçen, for instance, the adopted daughter of Atatürk, served as the first female pilot in the air force in the 1930s. 88 The Former Family Code, legislated in 1917, was the first one in the Muslim world (Kandiyoti 1989). Though it brought some improvements for women (such as making marital contracts obligatory, and requiring the consent of both sides for marriage and divorce), it also legalised polygamy despite demanding the consent of the first wife. 193

208 The third set of legal motions which favoured women s emancipation involved suffrage being granted to women and women being allowed to stand as electoral candidates. This right was given in the local elections in 1930, in the election of village heads in 1933, and in the parliament in Eighteen women were elected as deputies in the first election (1935) after suffrage was widened. According to Tekeli (1981), the granting of electoral rights to Turkish women at the beginning of the 1930s was not coincidental. After the closure of The Progressive Republican Party (Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası) in 1925 and dissolution of the Free (Liberal) Republican Party (Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası) in 1930, Turkey was still a single-party regime and Atatürk wanted to dissociate the republic from the fascist regimes of Europe that were excluding women from political life. 89 Thus, suffrage to women was a good sign of enlightenment and democracy in Turkey. Tekeli argues that: Atatürk was not satisfied with the formal recognition of women s political rights but went as far as to encourage women to participate as candidates in the 1935 elections, the result of which was the election of a high number of women deputies with no counterpart in the Western democracies (299). After the demise of Atatürk, the proportion of women in parliament, however, was not to be so high for several years (until recently, although the ratio is still in favour of men). 90 The Women People s Party (Kadınlar Halk Fırkası) was established at the beginning of the 1920s. Without approval from the government, it was turned into a federation and dissolved in 1935; the formal justification given was that the emancipation of women had been achieved after suffrage had been granted. The reforms made in the initial years of the republican period also called the first wave of feminism in Turkey gave women many unprecedented rights in a relatively short period of time, without a violent or difficult struggle, especially as compared to the experience of Western European women. Ahmed expresses this situation: thus by 1930 Turkish women had achieved legal and civil status equal to that of women in the more advanced European countries and against how different a background, how 89 The Progressive Republican Party was established in 1924 and closed in 1925, following Şeyh Said s rebellion that was mentioned in Chapter 5, as being against the principles of the republic on the basis of Islamism and having a role in the assassination attempt on Atatürk in Izmir. Free (Liberal) Republican Party on the other hand was established by Fethi Okyar, one of the fellow officers of Atatürk during the War of Independence, upon the request of Ataturk in 1930 to create a multi-party democracy. This new party found support in a short period of time especially among conservatives who were against the reforms of the new regime. Fethi Okyar was a supporter of the republic and he personally dissolved the party upon this new situation out of 395 deputies in the parliament were women in 1935 (4.5%). 78 out of 550 deputies in parliament were women after the 2011 elections, which makes up a total of 14.2%. 194

209 different a reality (1982, 157). Toprak states that: as early as the 1930s, Turkey stood as an anomaly among Muslim countries (2005, 170). The public visibility of women was profoundly increased and women were well educated and could occupy all kinds of professions thanks to the reforms. The women whose lives were radically changed in this way became staunch advocates of the republican revolution. Mina Urgan, for instance, who was a prominent English Literature professor, speaks about the sentiments that the Kemalist reforms invoked in women and why women have been strong advocates of the republican revolutionary reforms: Now, as the time has come, I would like to say that I am a Kemalist, a Kemalist to the bone. Mustafa Kemal danced with me, I am a Kemalist not because he treated an eleven-year-old child like an adult, but because if it weren t for Mustafa Kemal, I wouldn t have been I. It would be completely abnormal for an educated woman, past the age of eighty, not to believe in Kemalism in this country. I was very young then but I remember very well the curtain that separated the women s seats from men s in tramways. Mustafa Kemal, with his beautiful hands, tore that curtain and all other curtains that excluded women from public life and confined them to dark corners. And that s why there is no way for a woman who was about seven-eight years old when the republic was established, and, who [saw] with her own eyes all the revolutions, not to be on the side of Mustafa Kemal. (quoted in Altan-Olcay 2009, 168) The reforms had a complementary function in the projects of Westernisation and modernisation (which I outlined in Chapter 5) in that women s emancipation ensured the modernist image of the republic. The profundity of the changes brought about by the new regime was so great that Kemalism is perhaps the first movement in the world that set the alteration of the existing civilization as its primary objective (Göle 1996, 73). Kemalist reforms aimed to reverse the top-down theocratic rule of the Ottoman-state in the 16 th century, again in a top-down manner. In the establishment period of the republic the emphasis on women - who were the group most oppressed by the Islamic order of the Ottoman state - and on the pre-islamic period of the Turks can be seen as crucial moves towards modernity. 195

210 Most revolutions use gender to legitimate the new social order to make it appear natural or even inevitable, though the meanings of gender in nationalist, revolutionary, and anti-imperialist projects constantly shift, states Temma Kaplan (2004, 172). The women s role, in this sense, is defined by Nira Yuval-Davis (1997) as acting as a biological, cultural and symbolic reproducer of the nation. The women who experienced and actively participated in the War of Independence, as the core of the nuclear family, were to transmit republican ideals to their children; these were the oppressed women excluded by the former Ottoman state apparatus. Liberating women from that exclusion was thus vital for the total demise of the old, outdated regime. Moreover, the emancipation of women has always been at the heart of modernisation processes and projects in all places and historical stages. Women should not be kept at home but should be visible in the public sphere and encouraged by men (fathers and husbands) to be so. As Göle appropriately determines, the question of women did not emerge as a secondary issue on the agenda of Kemalism, but, rather, it enables us to comprehend the essence of this ideology (1996, 64) and it was the women who were the standard-bearers of Kemalist reforms (63). The arguments of Göle find their verification in the words of Atatürk: We have to believe that everything in the world is the result, directly or indirectly, of the work of women A country which seeks development and modernization must accept the need for change. The weakness in our society lies in our indifference toward the status of women We must have Turkish women as partners in everything, to share our lives with them, and to value them as friends, helpers, and colleagues in our scientific, spiritual, social and economic life (quoted in Abadan-Unat 1981, v) As mentioned in Chapter 4, the republican regime emphasised the pre-islamic period of the Turks both in order to distance itself from Islamic culture and traditions (paving the way for Westernising policies) and to provide a source of national identity which the individuals of the very young and ideologically embryonic republic could be proud of (the Turkish Historical Thesis). The issue of women s rights was approached in a similar vein, recalling the equality between the sexes in pre-islamic Turkish societies and stressing the oppressive character of the form of Islam that was embraced in the later period. Gökalp, for instance, was a representative sociologist of the new republican system. He emphasised the equal status of women and men in ancient Turkic civilisation and remarked on the adverse effects of Islamic ascetism in his reference book The 196

211 Principles of Turkism, first published in Afet İnan, similarly, suggested that Turkish Muslim women - under the influence of non-islamic national custom - led a distinctly different life to Muslim women in other communities at the beginning of the Ottoman Empire, and argued that this explains the later shift to a more oppressive type of Islam: this was due not only to Islam but also to the influence of the customs of other nations who embraced Islam (1962, 21-22). 91 As we have seen, the modernising nation-state project of the republic worked towards the liberation of women on the one hand, and referred to the virtues of the pre-islamic period of the Turks in its legitimating ideology this had been a period in which women were not subjected to the oppression of Islamic rule. Despite the emancipation of women being enacted at previously unimaginable levels, these reforms did not escape criticism. The first point of objection was that the reforms in education, law and politics were unable to go beyond the elite circles of the big cities and pervade in the countryside, especially within conservative social segments in the rural areas. The second criticism was that the main objective was the formation of a modern nation-state and the emancipation of women was only of instrumental use in reaching this sublime objective; the pressure on the Women s Republican Party that had to cease its functioning can be seen as evidence of this according to certain critical scholars. Other criticisms point to the system being a form of state feminism (in terms of Tekeli) in which all that was required by women was granted by the state such that there was no need for further demands or radical reorganisation. Thirdly, it is sometimes argued that the role appropriated by women was motherhood: they were seen as the transmitters of republican nation-state ideals to the next generations in a domestic setting and this was the sole motivation for educational reforms being made. This recalls the argument of Yuval-Davis that women were biological, cultural and symbolic reproducers of the nation. The fourth criticism was that the role of religion in establishing the unequal status of women was not fundamentally questioned and the reforms only made limited changes to the quintessentially patriarchal order of Turkish gender relations. Traditional familial and social gender oppression was not easy to 91 Afet İnan ( ) was an adopted daughter of Ataturk and one of the first professors of history in the republican period. She was also one of the founders of Turkish Historical Society and proponents of Turkish Historical Thesis (was explained in Chapter 4) which emphasised pre-islam Turkism in order to serve the modern-secular-nationalist republican ideology of new Turkey. 197

212 overcome in this more subtle sense, even for the better educated women of that era. Two films covered in this section, Graduate of Insanity, and Bliss, provide evidence that verifies this criticism. The Second Wave of Feminism The second wave of feminism in Turkey started in the depoliticised atmosphere of the post-coup period in the 1980s, more than a decade later than its Western counterpart. The people who organised this autonomous movement came mainly from the leftist organizations of the 1970s wherein the issue of women was secondary to the struggle for socialism. Tekeli, one of the organisers, narrates the outset of the second wave: In those days, political parties were outlawed, but we were talking political issues. It is a miracle that we had the courage, and were tolerated by the military. Many women came from leftist political parties or groups and were Marxist oriented. This was the first time they were able to think from a women s perspective and shake off Marxist concepts, not only on the issue of who is being oppressed by what, but also on forms of (democratic) organization. We discovered just how thoroughly Turkish society was permeated by patriarchal and sexist concepts and the fact that daily private life is the real arena of patriarchy. (quoted in Grünell and Voeten 1997, 225) The concepts these feminists deployed in their analysis included patriarchal domination, sexism, gender inequality, and sexual discrimination (Tekeli 1992, 140). The personal is political was their motto. Upon the approval of a judge regarding domestic violence against women in 1987, a demonstration was organised to protest against the hidden suffering of abused women, in which three thousand women participated. This was the first demonstration in Turkey organised by women struggling for their own rights (Grünell and Voeten 1997; Diner and Toktaş 2010). Many other events followed this one, and the women s movement strived towards raising awareness about the unpalatable practices extensively faced by women in Turkey. These included: both domestic and social oppression and violence against women; exploitation of women s sexuality; rape; issues around sexual freedom; the practice of virginity tests (in 198

213 cases of sexual assault before marriage, or by the administrators of some dormitories for university students); discrimination against women in the workplace; the civil code, which requires the permission of the husband for the wife to be able to work, and that orders the wife to bear the husband s surname, and establishes the husband as the institutional head of the family. The struggle was fought by a range of women s organizations, the number of which exceeded 350 in the 2000s (by 2004 specifically) while it was less than 10 in the 1970s (Diner and Toktaş 2010). 92 As their numbers increased, these organisations became involved in more and more activities aimed at educating women and improving their social status. Some of them accessed funds from the European Union and the United Nations. There were cleavages in the feminist movement in the 1990s, wherein different approaches to feminism were posited from the standpoints of Kurdish, Islamist and gay-lesbian movements. Kurdish women stressed the double victimisation they are exposed to: by the state because of Kurdish question and by the tribal system of the Kurdish populated regions, which is based on a firm notion of patriarchy. Islamist women, referring to Islamic law, attached central importance to the domestic roles of women as wife and mother. They supported the protests against the constitutional clause that is the source of the ban for their entrance to universities while veiled or covered with a turban. Socialists, as the initiators of the second wave of feminism in Turkey, criticised the reproductive role assigned to women in developed global capitalism and emphasised the necessity of a revolution for the emancipation of not only women but of men. Kemalist women laid claim to the reforms brought in by the republic, and struggled to protect and revise them. Gay-lesbian movements brought in new approaches to the issues of gender identity, such as the gender-sex distinction. Many other organizations undertook protesting activities without a finite political-ideological stance. The issue of women s rights and social status has often held a pivotal position in the country s socio-political agenda thanks to the activities of feminist groups and women s organisations. The status of women has improved in the past two decades. The Directorate General on the Status of Women, affiliated to the office of the prime minister, was established in The aforementioned clauses of the civil code which 92 The authors refer to: Altınay and Arat 2008,

214 legitimise the supremacy of the husband in the family that require the husband s permission for a woman to work and the changing of the woman s surname, and that have placed the husband at the symbolic and legal head of the family - were changed in favour of more equal codes. The articles were those which received the most criticism in the civil code originally adopted from Switzerland s code in In addition, the sentence for sexual harassment of women has been increased, and intra-marital sexual harassment and honour killing have been included in criminal law. Shelters have been opened providing support services for women exposed to domestic violence. The volume of academic research on the question of women has increased, and institutes dedicated to women studies have been founded in many universities; a women s library was also opened in Istanbul. In brief, the gender hierarchy has been challenged to a great extent. Nevertheless, a plethora of research testifies to the extensive oppression of women. Among this body of works the research by Toprak et al. (2008, ) - which I also referred to in the previous chapter - succinctly shows that severe oppression takes place in Anatolian cities: many Anatolian cities are more conservative now compared to years ago and it is not easy for women to dress as they wish to or to go out especially at night time, as they become vulnerable to molestation by men; oppression of women has increased, including pressure on women to cover and veil themselves (which comes largely from other covered women), even for Alevis whose religious beliefs do not necessitate this injunction; there is pressure on women not to work; various interferences in single women s lives come from neighbours; some women resort to committing suicide because of incest or sexual harassment in the family [the film Bliss, which I will address in the following pages, focuses on this issue]; the conservatism oppresses men and leads a series of problems, and women and men share less and less public space; all this oppressive discourse is founded on the concepts of sin, shame and decency. Another recent piece of research, the most comprehensive one hitherto, made through face-to-face interviews with more than twelve thousand women all over Turkey, shows some strikingly worrying figures about the violence that women are exposed to (DHA 2010). 41.9% of women have encountered physical or sexual violence and 48.5% of those have kept officially silent about it. 33.7% of Turkish women who have been 200

215 exposed to violence have thought of committing suicide, and 12.4% of them have indeed tried to do so. To sum up thus far, women of the Ottoman period were secluded from social life in the name of Islamic doctrine for centuries, and gained only limited educational and working rights in the last few decades of the Empire. The republican regime brought them educational, legal and political equality with men (to a great extent) without necessitating a women s struggle as Western counterparts had had to engage in. Those reforms, however, were not sufficiently effective throughout the country. The second wave of feminism, initiated and organised by women s organisations, contributed to the acquisition of many more rights over the past two decades. Nevertheless, oppression of and violence against women is still an unresolved issue. I will now proceed to covering women and films in Turkey and address the representation of women in Eurimagesbacked Turkish-initiative films. Women and Films The status of women has advanced from the initial years of the cinematograph in Turkey and various aspects of cinema, namely audience demography, acting, filmmaking and representation, have seen radical changes in terms of women's status in cinema over time; their numbers insofar as their being actresses, directors, characters, audience members etc. have markedly increased. While representations of the diverse ethnic and religious identities and/or the problematisation of their status on screen is what films can do for those groups, the participation of women in cinema - either on the side of film production or as audience members is an indicator of women s emancipation too. Therefore their significant participation in film needs to be emphasised. Cinema was a fundamentally male form of entertainment at the beginning, and Muslim women were prohibited from going to movie theatres due to religious injunctions. To overcome this obstacle, some dressed as men or as Christian women (Lüleci 2009). In the last few years of Ottoman Empire, in parallel with its gradual secularisation, theatres were arranged to segregate the sexes so as to enable women to be spectators, and matinees for women were scheduled. Though it became possible for 201

216 women and men to watch films together thanks to the republic s measures, it was not until the 1950s that the number of female audience members increased dramatically, along with the mass popularisation of cinema in the country. I mentioned in Chapter 1 that Muslim women were not permitted to act in films until the early 1920s, and all of the female roles were performed by non-muslim actresses. Bedia Muvahhit and Neyyire Neyyir became the first Muslim actresses in Turkish film history, in their roles in Shirt of Fire (Ateşten Gömlek) by Muhsin Ertuğrul, which was screened in 1923, approximately six months before the declaration of the republic. It is well documented that the local rural people reacted belligerently to the crew of this film during the shootings on location, due to Muslim women acting in it. People soon got used to Muslim Turkish women acting in films and Cahide Sonku became the first female star of Turkish cinema in the 1930s. She is also famous for being the first female producer and director in her film Homeland and Namık Kemal (Vatan ve Namık Kemal) in Nonetheless, the share of women filmmakers has been a very small one in Turkish film history, wherein Bilge Olgaç is the most prominent name. She made thirty-eight films in total, the biggest number among women directors (Özgüç 2003, 157). Lynching (Linç-1970) by Olgaç, for instance, is one of the most outstanding films in Turkish cinematic history, somewhat paradoxically involving a narrative of solely male characters in prison. Regarding Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films, the proportion of women directors is even higher: 11 films out of the total of 60 have been directed by 7 different women. This does not mean, however, that women directors have necessarily focused on women s issues or have problematised gender dynamics in their society. Among the eleven films only two, Rosa I Love You (1992) by Işıl Özgentürk and Bergen or Love is Colder than Death (1995) by Canan Gerede, focus on the lives of women who experience problems because of their gender and their society. The other nine films narrate a variety of different stories and themes. The representation of women in early Turkish cinema was surprisingly contradictory for a society in which Islamic morality and rules were hegemonic. For instance, it is known that The Claw (Pençe) by Sedat Simavi, the first Turkish feature film, conceived of marriage as a claw which grabs the individual, and questioned its oppressive character and took a stand in favour of free love, as early as This film 202

217 is known for including the first erotic representations of women. Similarly The Governess (Mürebbiye-1919) by Ahmet Fehim is known for its obscenities for its time. As Gönül Dönmez-Colin states: about half of the first fiction films made in Ottoman Turkey were about women, although women s representation in these films is far from favourable, the most common image being the seductress with loose morals and an unappeasable sexual appetite (2010, 91). While women were constrained in terms of going to movie theatres due to Islamic imperatives on the one hand, they were represented as sex objects for male audiences of the same community on the other. Of course those unfavourable women on the screen were non-muslims, for Muslim women were not permitted to act in films until 1923, a solution which can be said to relieve ( ) the scruple of Muslim men. On the other hand, these erotic representations of women verified the male gaze-female object gender relation that feminist scholars point to in the narrative of classic cinema. Laura Mulvey (1985) set about using psychoanalytic theory to demonstrate how the unconscious of the patriarchal order formed the phallic-centric film structure of Hollywood and also of the cinematic traditions that fell within its sphere of influence. In that representational project woman is the image and the man is the bearer of the gaze, i.e. the to-be-looked-at-ness of the female object stands in primordial opposition to the empowered spectator-ness of the male subject. She becomes an object of scopophilic pleasure and instrumental value. Accordingly, the spectator identifies with the powerful male protagonist who controls the film s fantasy and makes things happen, but at the same time bears an anxiety regarding imminent castration. For the sake of escaping it, the female object is either devalued punished/found guilty - or fetishised. In words of B. Ruby Rich (1985), that type of narrative is the Cinema of the Fathers. I mentioned in Chapter 1 that the classic narration of Turkish cinema which began in the 1950s was especially influenced by Hollywood and its films, a great majority of which were either melodramas or comedies, mainly representing women as passive objects, secondary to the active male characters. As Asuman Suner (2010, 165) argues, the female characters in Turkish cinema were divided into two categories, virtuous and vicious. A virtuous woman was loyal, devoted, honourable meaning a virgin and worthy of love. A vicious woman on the other hand was the one who 203

218 invoked sexual desire and engaged in extramarital sexual practices. Virtuous or vicious, the women were by and large subjected to and sublimated by the leading male characters. Amid the thousands of narratives that do not address female subjectivity, a few counter-films have been made. Metin Erksan s The Well (Kuyu-1968) is probably the first feminist film in Turkish cinema with its treatment of a rural woman s struggle for the freedom to live with a man of her own choosing. For her own will, she opposes the traditional values of village life and even her mother. Throughout the film, as spectators, we identify with the female protagonist and follow her in resistance and making things happen. The narrative style does not serve the visual pleasure of the male gaze. The final scene is impressive in that, after killing her tormentor (the undesired man) by throwing stones at him, she mounts the top of the stones, hangs herself on the crane of the overhead well, and leaves her body in the space left. The more emancipated female characters in Turkish cinema emerged in the 1980s, when a series of feminist-orientated films were made that overlapped with the aforementioned second wave of feminism in those years. Particularly the films of Atıf Yılmaz are worthy of note. Among these films, The Woman Has No Name (Kadının Adı Yok-1988), for instance, is based on the renowned novel of feminist writer Duygu Asena. It problematises the struggle of a woman to be a free and independent individual in her society. Flashing back to her childhood, puberty, university years and then to the marriage and working life of her story as an author-to-be, the film questions the uncontested gender roles assigned to women and men. The film demonstrates that she had to struggle all her life against her father, boyfriend, husband, boss, friends and neighbours because of her society s unequal gender relations and her sexuality. Eurimages-backed films, as well as other Turkish cinema output, have sustained a focus on women in the post-1990 period. While problematic features of the gender roles assigned to women have been exhibited as an element of the background in some Eurimages-backed films, several have narrated stories that have centred wholesale on women and their social status. 93 Among these, I will concentrate on two, Graduate of 93 Various representations of women can be seen in Appendix-I. 204

219 Insanity (Tunç Başaran-1998), and Bliss (Abdullah Oğuz-2007). The former, while focusing on an urban educated woman, draws attention to the fact that the patriarchal order women face throughout their lives never ceases, no matter how educated or emancipated they are. The latter, narrating the tragic story of a rural woman who survives an honour killing attempt at the last moment, justifies the criticism that the republican reforms in favour of women could not spread throughout the country sufficiently, and failed to reach the rural social periphery. I chose these two films, for they show the ongoing dominance of patriarchy in Turkish society in showing two women from two different educational and class backgrounds. Graduate of Insanity This film is based on the true story of a woman who is treated by the psychiatric service of a hospital for her manic-depressive (bipolar) disorder. Nur, the protagonist, is the daughter of a mother who is from a rich landowning family and of a father who is a parliamentarian member of the ruling Democratic Party in the 1950s. Though in appearance she has everything in childhood she could need, Nur thinks that compared to her two brothers she is not loved enough by her parents. Her father in particular treats the sons of the family more lovingly, and her mother seems careless and neglectful. Thus she is not affected much when one of her brothers dies because of a heart condition, as she expects the parents will hence be attached to her more. Nevertheless, the father s cruel and insulting attitude does not change. He continuously denies her emotional sustenance. She grows up and gets married to Murat, whom she met during her university years. Murat, contrary to Nur s right-wing conservative father, is a socialist. Suna, a close friend of Nur, says to her about him: he is just the type for you. He will keep you busy all your life. You ll never get bored. She was right, thinks Nur years later, in the hospital. However, Murat is an irresponsible husband. Once, when talking to Nur s mother, he is advised to treat his wife well: Murat: The only way for that country is socialism. There is no way out for all the world. In socialism everything is shared. There is no abuse. 205

220 Nur s Mother: No abuse? What is this that you do to your wife? Start socialism first in your own house, my boy. After that conversation Nur s voice tells us: for the first time Murat helped me to wash the dishes. He started socialism in his house. It was the first time and the last time. In addition to the problems in their marriage, they lose their only child in a traffic accident, which contributes to things becoming worse. Something was happening to me but I couldn t understand what it was - Nur describes her state of mind at the beginning of her mental trouble. In her book The Seed and the Soil based on research of the rural centre of Anatolia, Carol Delaney, speaking of married woman, says this: she is socially invisible; her identity is fluid and passes between two men, her father and her husband (1991, 152). Whereas Delaney addresses the rural woman, her observation is verified by Graduate of Insanity, except with regard to social invisibility, for Nur is an urban woman and leads a visible life. We hear from Suna speaking to Murat: People are driven crazy by the ones closest to them. Women, especially, by their husbands. In a similar vein, Nur, as the narrative voice, says: What carries a person to insanity? Another person? Her genes or the surrounding system? Or all of them? Then there is no reason for me not to go crazy. Because I have had all the causes. First my husband Murat. Although her father and husband hold contrasting political views; both men contribute to the formation of Nur s disorder as two of the closest men to her in different stages of her life. Her husband even rapes her on one occasion. A third man comes later into her life. Her narrative voice tells us after her recovery: When I look back now, I see that three men have an important place in my life. One is my father. The other is my husband. If you ask about the third, I haven t chosen him. I haven t touched him. The third man is Atatürk, the founder of Turkey. Because of his father-figure position in the national history, Nur sees him an affectionate father and a loving man in Atatürk; he fills the gap in her world that is ignored by her father and husband. We owe everything to him said her father. She believes that Atatürk was a magnificent man, and we watch her reading his Speech: Gentlemen The one and only decision we should take under these circumstances is to establish an independent and free Turkish state. Wonderful. Only Atatürk could have uttered these things. The primary principle for our 206

221 nation is living an honoured and respectable life. Is there anybody left honoured and respectable? He told us years ago but who listens now? In this sense, the latter of these three men is expected to have a rehabilitative impact. After the deteriorating experiences begot by first two on her personality, the final one, the liberator of the land and emancipator of women, should surely liberate and emancipate her? She talks to him, to his portrait and to his statue, and often reports back to him about events in her life. She sings the national anthem before his monument. Neither of these strategies works in her favour in the end. She joins a competition over research on Atatürk but does not win. Moreover, she believes that she is the leader of an organisation of Kemalists. Her hallucinatory communication with Atatürk emerges as one of the symptoms of her manic-depressive disorder. When Murat says that she is a maniac, Nur declares her husband to be one of many enemies of Atatürk. The film also seems to be critical of a type of Kemalist mentality that, symbolised in Nur, does not honour the revolutionary spirit of the ideology, and instead strives to put Atatürk in every aspect of life, such that the main boulevard of every town is called Atatürk or by a title that is associated with him. Not only boulevards but also schools, buildings, bridges, airports, parks and many public places have been named like this. Various statues and monuments of Atatürk have been erected in many public spaces. That type of Kemalism is a product of the 1980 coup and while paying lip service to Atatürk and his ideology on the one hand, it also worked for the revival of Islam through the imposed Turkish-Islamic synthesis, as mentioned in the previous chapter. The susceptibility of this type of alleged Kemalism perceives hostility against the state in many acts of its citizens, to the extent that the state becomes systematically paranoid. This relates to the thought of Deleuze (2007, 15) regarding the great imperial formations. In such structures there is the great signifier at the top, and beneath it exists a network of bureaucrats, priests and messengers, whose mission is to circulate, explain, interpret and ultimately reify it this paranoid regime is independent of the great signifier him/herself. The meaning and interpretation of the signifier is coupled in this dissociated way. Such social formations also need followers who receive and obey the messages, and carry out tedious assignments. Nur seems to resemble that type of bureaucratic mentality when she complains to Atatürk her perceived and imaginary hostilities against Kemalism. The film provides a clue as to its critical dimension 207

222 regarding Kemalism in the scene where Nur purchases a statue of Atatürk to position in the garden of her family s house, but the order is cancelled by her brother. As the pickup truck of the sculptor moves rapidly, the statue falls down on the ground and the head breaks. This is probably the first time in Turkish cinema we have seen any form of deformation of a statue of Atatürk. Throughout the film, we see manic, depressive and then yet more manic states in Nur s suffering personhood. During the manic periods she is inclined to struggle against society to cause trouble for herself and other people, as her doctor says, and feels energetic, carefree, irresponsible. She even feels like touching the stars in the sky. For Nur, this does not sound like a disorder. When she is in a depressive mode, she feels exhausted, wants to cry all day, doesn t want to do anything and cannot move from her seat, indeed she longs to die. Nur thinks she is not mentally ill and that what she needs is someone to talk to her, to understand and to treat her like a human being. So she creates a man who is a psyche-projection of herself. He always tells her what to think about. He talks to her extensively about love. After Nur s recovery, her doctor says that she has learned to love herself. Fig. 21. Graduate of Insanity (Kaçıklık Diploması): Nur and her husband Murat (Dir. Tunç Başaran, 1998). Turning now to the argument that a woman s identity passes between two men (Delaney) and people are driven crazy by the ones closest to them (Suna, close friend of Nur in the film), these statements are validated by the story of Nur. She only recovers 208

223 after gaining the courage to get divorced from her husband, or in the words of Suna: she s thrown away the disease from her soul. Thus Graduate of Insanity, while questioning gender roles and oppressive male dominance in Turkish society, promotes the power of the female protagonist by producing an autonomously arrived-at solution, i.e. divorcing her husband. Bliss Bliss addresses honour killing, the aforementioned vital issue affecting mainly rural women in Eastern Anatolia. Honour killing involves the execution of a girl (in general it tends to be women) who is believed to have had premarital sex, and the decision to enact such a killing is underpinned by the patriarchal ordering of the family. Despite the general advances made in terms of the social status of women thanks to the republican revolution, this custom is still practised in some rural districts of Eastern Anatolia; a gap has remained, as mentioned earlier, between the more emancipated urban women and their rural counterparts. In Bliss, the duty of killing the girl is assigned to one of the younger males in the family and she is posed as having committed suicide. Abdullah Oğuz (2007), the director of the film, informs us that 64 dead bodies of girls, the majority of whom were aged between 13 and 16 years old, had been found in the past year and a half (before the film was made) and all of them were posed as suicides. However, the reality, usually, is that it stemmed from a case of incest or rape committed by an elder in the family a father, grandfather, elder brother or uncle. Before proceeding to the film, I have to introduce the concept of honour killing with particular reference to the honour of male dominance and the shame of female subjectivity in patriarchal groups. The work of Victoria Goddard in her essay exploring various aspects of gender relations and sexuality in Naples, Italy, offers helpful information also applicable to rural Turkey. Goddard argues that: Women s honour is an element, a resource, which is controlled and manipulated by men (1987, 168). In a similar vein, Aylin Akpınar (1998, 156), in her doctoral dissertation on the construction of gender and ethnic identity amongst Turkish immigrant divorcees in Sweden, in reference to Delaney whom I spoke of in the previous section on Graduate of Insanity - argues thus: [a] male/female 209

224 hierarchical dichotomy lies implicitly in gender constructions according to the honour/shame complex whereby honour is apprehended as an attribute of males and shame of females. To turn to Goddard: Women may also be seen as the guardians of the secrets of the group. By the very process of their control by men and their relegation to and identification with the domestic sphere, women are in a unique position to provoke a crisis within the group (1987, 180). However these crises are either repressed by threat or managed against women by the elder men of the group. Meenakshi Thapan states that: Feminists have tried to show the link between shame and sexual violence, i.e., a woman s experience of shame is a form of patriarchal control as a man can violate a woman s body and then throw the blame back on her. A woman who has been raped is seen as having lost her honour, that of the family, and even the community. In that lies the power of shame (1997, 25). That is exactly what the story of Meryem in Bliss tells us. From the beginning of the story, the discourse of the family is the pollution of Meryem s body due to her violation and hence shame. Though she consistently repeats that she has not committed a sin, she cannot recall who did it. She is therefore found guilty for the loss of the family s honour and is to be killed according to custom; the blame is thrown entirely on her. The patriarch of the family, Meryem s uncle, insists on her impurity and on the execution. As we learn in the final scene of the film showing Meryem s sudden recall, her uncle is the actual violator of her body and he is thus killed by his younger brother, Meryem s father. We see the young Meryem violated by the coast of a lake at the start of the film. The shame and the pressure placed on her by the neighbourhood and felt by the family intensifies daily, and the soiled Meryem (the name corresponds to the virginal Maria of Christianity) is told she will receive the death penalty. It is inflicted upon her by the patriarchy of the family in order to clean up this business. She is told to kill herself because it is her sin and only in this way may she go to heaven. Since Meryem s birth was not registered, as is the case for many girls in the region, the death of a non-existing citizen does not present a problem with the official authorities. The verdict is given and the custom is to be applied. Thus she is convinced to hang herself by a rope in the barn she is locked in. Realizing she is being watched by her step-mother, she resists her fate at 210

225 the very last moment and quits her suicide attempt. The task of execution is then assigned to her cousin, Cemal, who is close to completing his military service and expected to arrive home shortly. According to the narrated plan, they are to go for a train journey to Istanbul it will be announced to the neighbourhood that she is going to be married there during which Cemal will kill his cousin. However, he cannot do it either. Their runaway thus starts, and they flee from the men and from Cemal s father, who is the patriarchal head of the family. They therein meet a retired professor at the Aegean coast who has left everything behind and chosen to live a new life in his boat. The two work for this man for sustenance. Cemal herein realises his love for Meryem kin marriage is not uncommon in rural areas. Fig. 22 Bliss (Mutluluk): Meryem (Dir. Abdullah Oğuz, 2007). The axial issue in the story is honour killing. At a different level, however, we also witness many examples of the clash between the two sets of values of East and West, rural and urban, uneducated and intellectual, in Turkey, especially after Meryem and Cemal meet Professor İrfan Kurudal, who represents of the latter set of values. Before their acquaintance with Kurudal, they stay in a lodge by the sea; Cemal sits at the table for dinner and Meryem waits standing until an order to be seated is given by her cousin. However, while they are working in the boat, Kurudal asks Cemal to prepare the 211

226 table for dinner. Surprised at this request, Cemal replies: but it s a woman s job. It s not right. Similarly, in a conversation between the two men about love affairs, we see how different the values of the two participants are: Cemal: Prof. Kurudal: Cemal: Prof. Kurudal: İrfan Abi, I don t know what the deal is with girlfriends. They re an invention of where you came from. Where I come from, everyone knows their place. Women know what it is to be a woman, men what it is to be a man. Fine, but then you kill women when they have done nothing wrong. Who? Isn t that right? It s in the papers every day. Bliss, while narrating the escape of two cousins from the traditional honour killing system of the countryside, exhibits the difference that exists between the approaches to gender relations and gender hierarchy that two segments of the same imagined community adhere to. The film exposes the fact that the educational reforms made in the civil code in favour of women have not been sufficiently effective throughout the country and throughout all the classes. They have not produced and protected the absolute emancipation of women; the case of Meryem clearly shows that the republican project failed to achieve universal improvement. When it comes to narration, although the men are depicted as the most powerful characters in both the aforementioned films, Graduate of Insanity stresses a strong female subjectivity after a certain pivotal point, and thus the female character makes things happen on her own initiative. Hence it can be seen as a quintessentially feminist film. Bliss, on the other hand, problematises the honour/shame dichotomy in patriarchal families in rural Turkish districts. Therefore both films contribute to feminist consciousness as they uncover and are critical of the oppressive nature of the patriarchal order and its effect on women. As I have stated, these two films are not the only Eurimages-backed ones to narrate stories that centre on women. I will briefly mention a few others before proceeding to the next section. 212

227 In Nude (Ali Özgentürk-1994), two women from a low socio-economic background pose nude for students in an art class at a university. They are worried about their husbands possibly brutal reaction if their truth comes out, as they are supposed to be cleaning houses, not modelling in the nude. The women expect violence, battering, even to be killed by their powerful husbands; they nevertheless think that their husbands love them. After learning the truth, the two men feel shame over their wives actions and cannot tell of them to anyone. They visit prostitutes, and in the process they speak of their wives actions. Then they try to steal the paintings on which their wives appear nude. Finally, instead of sustaining their feeling of shame, the two men start modelling nude too, in an act that demonstrates that they do not perceive it as shameful behaviour but rather as a laudible profession both women and men can engage in. They realise their equality with their wives. Bergen or Love is Colder than Death (Canan Gerede-1995), based on the true story of a famous singer killed by her husband in 1989, conveys the vulgar treatment of a wife by her beloved husband. Bergen is saved by Ali from a police station where she is under arrest after a police raid of the nightclub in which she works. Ali owns another nightclub. They fall in love, and promptly get married, and Bergen starts singing again and becomes famous in a short time. Ali becomes jealous of his wife and treats her brutally, to the extent that one day he burns her face with nitric acid. 94 After this action he shouts: no longer will any man look at your face. She loses one of her eyes but does not give up fighting and continues to sing. She proceeds to divorce Ali. Nevertheless, she is still in love with her ex-husband. Ali eventually stabs her, after his release from jail. Harem Suaré (Ferzan Özpetek-1999) depicts the life of women, and their devotion to the sultan and the imperial harem in Istanbul, and traces those women s tragic downfall thereafter. The harem is dissolved by the parliamentary decree after the declaration of the Second Constitution (1908) and the women become free, which means being obliged to live a life of cold and hunger, in the words of Safiye, who is one of the women left desperate and homeless. Years after (in 1924), life imposes upon Safiye no choice but to dance in a nightclub in Italy named The Harem Soire, which presents her 94 Canan Gerede, the director of the film, stated that the story of Bergen is a typical woman problem especially for Mediterranean countries and only in Tunisia nine hundred men took revenge by burning faces of their beloveds with nitric acid in 1994, the year before this film was released (quoted in Basutçu 1995, 67). 213

228 as the loveliest flower of the Sultan s Palace and The pearl of the Orient! The last Favourite! In terms of other Eurimages-backed films, Rosa, I Love You (Işıl Özgentürk- 1992) shows that while life is a game for Rosa during her childhood, wherein she is the princess of a richly enlightening tale, Rosa is frustrated as she grows up because life in general and men in particular do not meet her expectations. In Miracle (Atıf Yılmaz- 1997), Erol s dead mother, Suzan, returns to life as a woman keen on promoting Erol s freedom. Balalaika (Ali Özgentürk-2000) demonstrates the tragedy experienced by women from the ex-soviet republics who come to Turkey to work but are forced to serve as prostitutes by a women-trafficking mafia. In Angel s Fall (Semih Kaplanoğlu-2005), a young girl lives with her father and works as a housekeeper in a hotel; she occasionally gets molested by her father at night and he assumes that she is asleep, and the abuse is so tormenting that she kills him one day in such a violent way that one would not expect it from a young girl. 95 Borrowed Bride (Atıf Yılmaz-2005) demonstrates an interesting practice of the past in Denizli, a city in Western Anatolia, in which a woman called a borrowed bride stays with a young to-be-groom for some time (several days or weeks) and teaches him about sex, how to treat a woman, and the particulars of marriage, before he gets married to his real wife; the borrowed bride is paid for her service. In Destiny (Zeki Demirkubuz-2006), we see a fallen woman, Uğur, who is unlike classical cinema s heroines who tend to be the objects of male eyes. She chooses to follow the man she truly loves - he is in prison and moves to a different jail from time to time and she has to stand up to many difficulties that arise from this decision. Another man, on the other hand, is in desperate love with Uğur and this leads him to follow her from city to city. Justice (Ali Özgentürk-2009) narrates the struggle of a group of women to establish justice ninety years after the murder of a midwife by the bully of the district this murder was represented as a kind of honour killing at the time. My Only Sunshine (Reha Erdem-2009) depicts the experiences of a girl who is in early puberty, and addresses her mother s reaction to her first menstruation and to the molestation she is exposed to by the local grocer in their area. 95 Semih Kaplanoğlu (2009) stated that he tried through this film to bring a different point of view to the constructed roles of women in Turkish society, especially to the hidden domestic violence, incest problem and its approval in silence. 214

229 As I have shown, many Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films at least 28 out of 59 films, to my observation - focus on, question or display the problematic aspects of womanhood in patriarchal society, which is woven together by an ideology of manliness according to Mosse. This high number of such films verifies the notion that the Eurimages criteria ensure that projects reflect and promote the Eurimages aspiration to have contributions made from a diverse range of the ethno-national components of Europe s overall cultural identity. Women and womanhood make up a significant part of the Turkish national identity, especially in terms of their emancipation and the gender dynamic in the republican nation-state. LGBT Identities This section of the chapter will address lesbian, gay, bisexual, transvestite and transsexual identities in Turkey another series of identities that have been subject to the manliness ideology in addition to women. It explores their representation in cinema, more specifically in Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films. Before that, the difficulties that LGBT individuals have faced and the history of their struggle for rights and visibility in Turkey will be outlined. It has been claimed that homosexuality was relatively tolerated and respected in pre-islamic Turkish societies, for instance the shamans - priest-like leaders - were homosexual (Tezel 2009, 52). That respectful attitude was replaced by intolerance after the adoption of Islam, for the Koran forbids same-sex relations. Nevertheless it is known that male homosexuality was not uncommon during the Ottoman era (53-57). For instance, the sultans dispatched their soldiers to newly conquered lands in order to capture beautiful boys (Lutes 2000). Similarly, sultans and wealthy pashas kept male dancers sometimes in their harem - in women s clothes (Janssen 1992). Those were mostly young boys and some were castrated. In this sense Mehmet Ümit Necef states transvestism plays a much bigger role in Turkey (and Southern Europe) than in the North or the USA (1992, 75). Notwithstanding the Ottoman Empire being one of the first states in Europe to decriminalise same-sex consensual acts between adults as early as in 1858 (Hammarberg 2011), Metin And denotes that public performances of those köçeks (male dancers in women clothes) were forbidden by the sultan in 1857, to 215

230 preserve order in the army (quoted in Janssen 1992, 84). Homosexuality turned into a taboo in the country during the corresponding Reorganization period (Hoşcan 2006). The influence of religion was decreased by the gradual secularisation that was brought about by the republic. Same-sex relations have not been a subject of law during the republican period; this means that on the one hand it has not been prohibited but on the other hand LGBT identities have not been legally protected by the state. An exception to the negligence suffered by these identities occurred during the post-coup period: transvestites and transsexuals were prohibited from taking to the stage in 1981 (Yıldız 2006), but this ban was lifted in A change in the law that same year permitted surgery aimed at sex change. The current constitution neither prohibits nor even mentions the protection of a diversity of gender identities. A new constitution is being debated in Turkey currently and it is expected to be prepared in the very near future. I will turn to this point later. Though not prohibited, LGBT identities have been subjected to various forms of oppression and exclusion from the state, society and family institutions in Turkey, as in most of the world. It is something that (it is thought) should be hidden and LGBT individuals feel forced to act as heterosexual normal others. Those who are in towns and small cities where the social oppression is much greater feel obliged to migrate to big cities, especially to Istanbul, to lead a relatively relaxed life. They are subjected to discrimination in education and working life, and to ill treatment in official institutions such as police stations and courts. A few recent instances reflected in the media expose the ways in which LGBT identities are either excluded or degraded by state institutions: the Minister of State Responsible for Women and Family declared homosexuality as a hazardous disease in 2010; the reply of Presidency of Religious Affairs upon questioning by the gay-lesbian periodical Kaos GL in 2008 was that homosexuality is a kind of perversion and an outrageous sin according to Islam (Homoseksüellik 2008); the Radio and Television Supreme Council (Radyo Televizyon Üst Kurulu) gave a warning to a broadcasting company in 2010 because of its displays of a gay couple in a TV series (Olay 2010). These are only a few from a number of cases against in which the identities that fall outside heterosexuality have been slandered. 216

231 An examination of national audio-visual and print media done by Ali Özbaş (2009) provides significant information on media representations of LGBT identities. Özbaş divides Turkish media history into three eras. The first era is the early 1980s when the military coup intervened into almost every aspect of social life. It was a time when LGBT identities were a kind of imaginative entity that could not be described and anyone who did not fit in with the normal were named homosexual in those days. The discrimination, oppression and torture of the individuals who were named homosexual was at a peak. The identities were assigned a criminal status in the news and in papers. In the second era homosexuality was represented as transvestism and transsexuality, for transgender individuals were the more visible forms of identification compared to lesbians, gays and bisexuals. Kaos GL, the first gay-lesbian periodical in Turkey, started its publishing during this era, in September The third era begins, according to Özbaş, with the participation of the Kaos GL group in the May 1 st celebrations of 2001 with posters and flags. The slogans such as We are gay, we are real, we are here! ( Eşcinseliz, gerçeğiz, buradayız! ), Compulsory heterosexuality is a humanity crime! ( Zorunlu heteroseksüellik insanlık suçudur! ) and The emancipation of gays will free heterosexuals too! ( Eşcinsellerin kurtuluşu heteroseksüelleri de özgürleştirecektir! ) that accompanied their march with the workers were a turning point for everyone. It was headline news in most of the printed and audio-visual media; the appearance was of LGBT individuals who were no different to the other marching workers and university students but were different from the homosexuals represented in the media. In this third era the news related to LGBT people has been rather mundane and LGBT individuals have been striving to convey their struggle more accurately to the media. Despite the advances made in terms of the approach of the media to LGBT identities, as pointed to by Özbaş, another piece of research on the media portrayal of homosexuality between 1998 and 2006 posits that for the media LGBT people are marginal and it is difficult to accept them: Turkish Daily Press covers news items on homosexuals only when they are the actor or the topic of a sensational event. In addition, when homosexuality is mentioned in the press, it is portrayed as a marginal and unaccepted phenomenon (Hoşcan 2006, 92). 217

232 A comprehensive content examination of newspapers and magazines by Kaos GL group in 2010 provides a general picture of the attitude of today s Turkish media towards LGBT individuals (Alacaoğlu et al. 2010). 201 national and local papers were scanned in the first ten months of Accordingly, the media news was evaluated according to eighteen positive and negative categories (9). The positive categories were as follows: the ideas of LGBTT associations and experts were represented; sensitive to and respectful of human rights; positive role models related to homosexuality took place in ( ); the identity of the victim is hidden; portraying LGBTT individuals positively; the ideas of LGBTT individuals regarding non-lgbtt related subjects took place in ( ). The negative categories were as follows: LGBTT individuals were shown as sexual objects; LGBTT individuals and issues were criminalised; the stereotypes relating to LGBTT people were fuelled; homophobic use of language; legalising of violence against LGBTT people; LGBTT individuals were caricaturised; ( ) includes images which humiliate the victim; the news includes the statement of the attacker only; the words used feed prejudice; the words used are incorrect; hate speeches are spread; homosexuality is used to discriminate against other groups. The scanning covered the news that included words such as gey, gay, lezbiyen, transseksüel, travesti, eşcinsel, biseksüel, ibne, sevici, queer, cinsel yönelim, cinsel tercih, cinsel kimlik, i.e. Turkish and English words that might be used in relation to LGBT identities. 3,606 news items were conveyed in the printed media in 2010, approximately 20% more than the previous year (Alacaoğlu et al. 13). The number of negative news items (70%) was more than the number of positive ones (30%); the number of positive news items was less than the previous year s (38%) and that was the case for every positive news category (24). There was a marked increase over the year in the negative news items that fuelled stereotypes relating to homosexuality, along with homophobic language, which spread hate speeches and promoted violence against LGBT individuals. The perception of LGBT identities is not any more positive at the individual level, as a research of university students senior year students of a faculty in Ankara in 218

233 exhibits: with a more negative attitude towards homosexuality amongst their same sex, approximately 53% of the participants were strictly against male homosexuality and 38% were against female homosexuality and they proposed penalties for such identities and actions (Ceyhan 2005, ). Another piece of research conducted in the same year by the Lambdaistanbul LGBT organisation among 393 gay, lesbian and bisexual participants living in Istanbul found that 36% of them had had negative opinions of homosexuality or gay-lesbian individuals in a period during their life (quoted in Çolak 2009, 32). According to the same research 67% of the participants have been subjected to negative treatment or practices by psychologists or psychiatrists they have visited, and some had been forced to become heterosexual, subjected to medical cures, or misinformed about the issue of sexual orientation; 87% experienced at least one type of social violence such as being subjected to verbal remarks, ignored, or cutoff because of their sexual orientation, and 23% had experienced physical violence; 83% hid their sexual orientation from all or some of their family members (Lambdaistanbul 2011). Psychological and physical violence follows the coming out of the individual, and may manifest in forms of exclusion as the sexual other, wholesale rejection or in some cases hate crimes. Hate crime is defined thus: It is stated that if the impetus behind a crime against a person or property is the victim s race, colour, ethnic origin or nationality, religion, sex or sexual orientation, gender identity, age, physical or mental disabilities, then this particular crime constitutes a hate crime. Accordingly, the way hate crimes are perpetrated can be summarised as verbal abuse, threatening, name-calling, causing disturbance via post or , causing disturbance via telephone, causing disturbance via messages, graffiti, physical assault, robbery, theft, extortion, abuse, rape, molestation, intimidation, violence, violence in the family, damaging properties or belongings, arson, neighbour disputes, aggressive brochures and posters, disposing garbage in front of residences or in mailboxes, bullying in schools or workplaces, offensive jokes, gestures or other ways of damaging. (Doğanoğlu 2010, 10) 219

234 The victims subjected to such violence tend not to inform the authorities either because they do not believe that justice will be done or because it will lead to greater stigmatisation. Another piece of research conducted with 116 transgender women in Istanbul by the Lambdaistanbul (2010, 25) organisation, for instance, has found out that 90.5% of them have been subjected to physical violence by the security forces (police, military, security guards etc.) and 92.2% have been subjected to mocking, humiliation, insults and cursing by authority figures. The LGBT movement in Turkey needed to be organised to struggle against this extensive discrimination, and for their rights and social visibility to be enhanced. The first attempt was announced in the newspapers at the end of the 1970s and Bülent Ersoy, the popular singer, was named as the possible leader of such an organisation (Sofer 1992). This suggestion was not a serious one (Yıldız 2006). The key moments in their struggle and the consequent advances that have been made are as follows (Yıldız 2006; 2007a; 2007b): - The first gay-lesbian publication in Turkey was the centrefold of the Yeşil Barış (Green Peace) periodical in , titled Gay Liberasyon (Gay Liberation). That was the publication of the officially non-established political party, Radical Party (Radikal Parti) later named Radical Democratic Green Party (Radikal Demokratik Yeşil Parti) or Green Radical Union Party -, an organization which besides gays contained anti-militarists, atheists, greens and feminists (Sofer 1992; Tapinc 1992). The first gay-lesbian periodical started to be published in 1994, named Kaos GL which was underground until 1999 and then became legal. The second gay-lesbian periodical, named %100 GL, followed that in The first bilingual (Turkish-Kurdish) LGBT periodical, named Hevjin, has been started to be published in Arslan Yüzgün published a book titled Türkiye de Eşcinsellik (Dün, Bugün) (Homosexuality in Turkey, Yesterday and Today) in 1986, which was classified as detrimental to youth and could only be sold in sealed plastic bags (Sofer 1992). 220

235 - The first LGBT organisation, Lambdaistanbul, was established in 1993 and it became an association in Lambdaistanbul was followed by the first lesbian organization in 1995, named Venüs ün Kızkardeşleri (Sisters of Venus). Many other LGBT communities and opening of cultural centres followed those. They organised activities such as Gay Pride Week in Istanbul and Meeting against Homophobia in Ankara. Around 40 people joined the first open air Gay Pride in 2003 and the number of participants increased in time, to reach 3,000 in 2009 (Lambdaistanbul, n.d.). - The first radio program focusing on LGBT themes was broadcasted by Açık Radyo (Open Radio) in 1996; the program was prepared and presented by Lambdaistanbul. - The first time LGBT identities and their rights were mentioned by a legal political party, in the manifest of socialist-oriented Freedom and Solidarity Party (Özgürlük ve Dayanışma Partisi) established in For the first time, this party proposed a transgendered activist, Demet Demir, as a candidate for municipal council of Beyoğlu, Istanbul, in These periodicals, organisations and radio programs have often been exposed to hindrance, obstruction and restraint from state authorities. Nevertheless, all their efforts have served in favour of the awareness and visibility of LGBT identities in the country. Today, the LGBT organisations endeavour to contribute to the preparation of the projected new constitution I mentioned this before - in a way that recognises and protects diverse gender identities as well as advancing other legal codes in the same direction. The LGBT Rights Platform, composed of six organisations, wrote a report in 2010 that recommended new articles relevant to human rights and the rights of LGBT individuals in the new constitution. Some of their legal demands, to be included in the constitution, are as follows (2010, 6): sexual orientation and gender identity must be acknowledged in the article on equality in the constitution and must be added to all articles in the legal system; protocol no. 12 in the European Convention on Human Rights must be ratified; an anti-discrimination law must be passed; hate crimes must be acknowledged within the penal code and such crimes against LGBT persons must be 221

236 punished; terms that tend to the criminalisation of LGBT persons, such as general morality, obscenity, exhibitionism and unnatural sex acts must be clearly defined and must not be used against LGBT individuals; all of the regulations about human rights and anti-discrimination measures must be made in consultancy with the United Nations, the Council of Europe and the European Union. Thus far by referring to several surveys I have drawn a general picture of the extensive prejudice, exclusion and oppression of LGBT identities in the Turkish media and amongst individuals and state institutions. This was followed by a brief history of the pivotal moments in their struggle against this negative attitude and their demands for legal recognition and protection. I will now proceed to the representation of LGBT identities in Turkish cinema and in Eurimages-backed Turkish-initiative films. LGBT Identities and Films In broadly Marxian terms, and recalling Mosse once more, cinema is located in the realm of the cultural superstructure of our class-based society, and concomitantly functions as an extension of or parallel to bourgeois morals and ideology. Accordingly cinema has by and large represented gender identities in terms of binary oppositions through mainstream films and has served to reinforce heteronormativity. Melodramas, which constitute the bulk of film history, are narratives that reproduce heterosexual norms by marking the female and male bodies as gender identities and drawing an essentialist line between them (Arslan 2007). Turkish cinema is no different. Aiming themes and content at a Muslim-majority audience has further reinforced this function of cinema. Nonetheless, LGBT people have occasionally appeared on screen in secondary roles since the early 1960s and their neutrality or positive visibility has increased in recent years, both in world cinema and Turkish cinema specifically. Earlier in this chapter I focused not only on the representation of womanhood per se but also addressed women as actors, filmmakers and audience members, for advances in these aspects of cinema might be indicators of emancipation writ large. When it comes to LGBT identities, I will cover only their representation on screen and not explore other aspects of the cinema industry, because they tend not to be open and 222

237 for that reason it is not possible to discern their role as LGBT actors or filmmakers. Firstly I will convey the representation of LGBT identities in Turkish cinema overall, and this will be followed by an analysis of Eurimages-backed films. The first of the LGBT identities to find representation in Turkish cinema involved lesbians. The first films in which two women kissed were Istanbul Give Me Your Hand (Ver Elini İstanbul) by Aydın Arakon in 1962 and Two Ships, Side By Side (İki Gemi Yanyana) by Atıf Yılmaz in Four Women in the Harem (Haremde Dört Kadın) by Halit Refiğ, filmed in 1965, depicts lesbianism as a reality of the harem space during the end of the 19 th century. The sex comedies in the second half of the 1970s mentioned in Chapter 1 - frequently depict lesbianism, however these representations are better understood as exploitations of female sexuality. Lesbian relations or characters continued to appear in a few films of the 1980s and 1990s, such as: Passion (İhtiras Fırtınası) by Halit Refiğ in 1983, A Widow (Dul Bir Kadın) by Atıf Yılmaz in 1985, Balcony (Denize Hançer Düştü) by Mustafa Altıoklar in 1992, Walking After Midnight (Düş Gezginleri) by Atıf Yılmaz in 1992, The Eighth Hour (Sekizinci Saat) by Cemal Gözütok in 1994, The Bug (Böcek) by Ümit Elçi in 1995, The Ordinary Man (Sokaktaki Adam) by Biket İlhan in 1995, The Dancer (Dansöz) by Savaş Ay in Of these films, Walking After Midnight focuses on the lesbian relationship between two women, however in the other films lesbian relationships feature as part of a subsidiary theme (Özgüç 2006, ). The first gay-themed film in Turkish cinema was made by Eser Zorlu in 1989, and was titled Deep Pain (Acılar Paylaşılmaz). The film focuses on the problematic relationship between a lawyer and his gay son. In addition to this, The Night, Angel and Our Gang (Gece, Melek ve Bizim Çocuklar) by Atıf Yılmaz (1994) represent the relationships of gay characters (Özgüç 2006, 389). Many sources describe Lola+Bilidikid (1999) by Kutluğ Ataman as a gay-themed Turkish film. It is true that the film narrates a gay environment and focuses on their relations, but the milieu is the Turkish minority in Germany wherein mostly the German language is spoken. Therefore I would argue that it is more appropriate to regard Lola+Bilidikid as an example of German cinema. A recent film, The Luxury Hotel (Lüks Otel) by Kenan Korkmaz (2011) features a gay couple as main characters. The representation of gay individuals in films 223

238 is not limited to the films mentioned herein. Gay characters have occasionally featured in mainstream films as well, however these tend to be quite negative representations, for example ridiculing or caricaturing them as funny types. Non-mainstream films, produced in recent years, tend to depict gay individuals in a more neutral manner rather than as objects of ridicule. From the beginning Turkish cinema has presented cross-dressing male actors to make the audience laugh. Some women actors have been dressed like men as well. However, it was not until the Whistle If You Come Back (Dönersen Islık Çal) by Orhan Oğuz (1993) that an actual transvestite character appeared on the screen. That film focuses on the friendship between a transvestite and a midget, and displays the various forms of oppression the transvestite character is subject to. The Night, Angel and Our Gang is another film that displays a similar oppression by the police (Özgüç 2006, 68). Other Angels (Teslimiyet) by Emre Yalgın (2010) focuses on the love affair between a transvestite and a man and her relations with three other transvestite flatmates. In terms of representation of transsexuals, the first film to cover the sex change of a man to a woman is likely to be Boy Dancer (Köçek) by Nejat Saydam in Damn (Beddua) by Osman Seden and Melih Gülgen is another film focusing on sex change. In this film Bülent Ersoy, the famous singer, plays the transsexual character who becomes a woman. Bülent Ersoy actually received surgery for sex reassignment approximately two years after the film was made. The representation of LGBT identities has been much greater in Eurimagesbacked Turkish-initiative films than elsewhere in Turkish cinema. While some of those films depict them in a neutral manner as a reality in daily life and may even focus on their relations, others display a negative perception of them and show a ridiculing attitude of heteronormativity toward them in the negative category, to refer to the classification of Kaos GL that I mentioned before. Robert s Movie (Canan Gerede-1991), Istanbul beneath My Wings (Mustafa Altıoklar-1996), Steam: The Turkish Bath (Ferzan Özpetek-1997), Graduate of Insanity (Tunç Başaran-1998), Wound (Yılmaz Arslan- 2000), Encounter (Ömer Kavur-2003) and Our Grand Despair (Seyfi Teoman-2011) display or mention LGBT identities in positive or neutral manner. Bergen or Love is Colder than Death (Canan Gerede-1995), The Bandit (Yavuz Turgul-1996), Cholera 224

239 Street (Mustafa Altıoklar-1997), Miracle (Atıf Yılmaz-1997), Balalaika (Ali Özgentürk- 2000), Toss Up (Uğur Yücel-2004), Destiny (Zeki Demirkubuz-2006) and The Road Home (Semir Aslanyürek-2006) depict homosexuality in a negative manner or as a subject of ridicule. Thus LGBT characters show up or are orally mentioned in 16 of 60 films, (if we include the as yet unreleased Saint Ayşe by Elfe Uluç). Displaying a negative perception and a ridiculing attitude towards LGBT identities makes this representation open to criticism and can give the impression that the film affirms heteronormativity, even if the filmmaker does not intend to do so. The representations that fall into this category can be found in Appendix-I. Positive or neutral portrayals of LGBT identities need to be mentioned here. In Robert s Movie (Canan Gerede-1991), we see Robert s gay friend kissing his partner John Kelly, a New Yorker artist, when he goes to visit him. The scene is not represented as an extraordinary action to the spectator. Besides, we understand Robert, who is together with a woman today in Istanbul, is bisexual that they talk about a gay relationship of him with a man called Savage in the past in New York. Istanbul beneath My Wings (Mustafa Altıoklar-1996) displays the Ottoman sultan Murat IV as a bisexual individual that we witness both his relationship with a young boy, named Musa, and we also see him sleeping with two women on different occasions. As I mentioned in Chapter 3, this film received negative reactions within conservative circles, for portraying an Ottoman sultan as a bisexual. In the same film we also see a köçek, a transvestite dancer of the time, in a tavern. In Graduate of Insanity (Tunç Başaran-1998), the new neighbour of Nur and Murat is mentioned as a lesbian. In Wound (Yılmaz Arslan-2000), the affair between Hülya and Neriman, though not explicitly mentioned in the film, give the impression that they are lesbians. In Encounter (Ömer Kavur-2003), two transvestites pass by Sinan and Mahmut as they walk along the street. Our Grand Despair (Seyfi Teoman-2011) focuses on the close relationship of two male flatmates and a young girl the sister of their friend - who becomes a part of their life when she loses her parents. Some dialogue in the film suggests the two flatmates are bisexual, but this is not openly portrayed. For instance Ender, one of the flatmates says that the relationship between himself and Çetin was something else, because it was love, there were girls they had loved but they did not have girlfriends and he searched for Çetin in the women he met, and even in the men. Furthermore we learn from Ender that once when Ender went to 225

240 Istanbul to visit Çetin - Çetin proposed to his girlfriend that they make a flatbed for Ender in their room, explaining that he would be very upset if they didn t; his girlfriend was surprised and later reveals this to Ender. It was announced that Saint Ayşe, which received backing by Eurimages in 2005, will portray the life of a transvestite character who lives on money made from collecting garbage in Istanbul. However, as mentioned, this film has not yet been released. Among those films which display LGBT identities in a positive or neutral manner, Steam: The Turkish Bath is the only one that has a gay theme, i.e. the film focuses on a gay relation. Therefore I will address this film separately. Steam: The Turkish Bath Since it focuses on the emergence and development of an unexpected relationship between two males, Steam: The Turkish Bath (Ferzan Özpetek-1997) can be considered a part of the gay film genre. The film starts with the death of Madame Anita, an Italian who had been living in Istanbul for many years; the bath she owned is inherited by Francesco, her nephew in Italy. Francesco is experiencing problems in his marriage with Marta. Almost one year after the death of his aunt, Francesco flies to Istanbul to sell the property he has inherited, at this stage he is not aware that it is a bath, believing it to be old real estate. However, his experience in Istanbul will be different from his expectations. While walking along a street, Francesco encounters an old man who needs his help to go to a bath, the old man insists that he try the bath if he has not done so before. Francesco follows the man s advice and is greatly affected by the ambiance of the bath. Francesco then discovers that the property he has inherited is also a bath and the intention of the potential buyer is to own all of the properties in the district in order to transform the region into a shopping mall complex. Furthermore the family which host him are tenants of his aunt and they are anxious about their future if the house is sold. Francesco abandons the sale of the property and decides to operate the bath following renovation. In the meantime, he discovers letters written by his aunt written to his mother that had not been sent after the first one did not reach the intended address. In her letters Madame Anita describes how she voyeuristically watches the males and their pleasures 226

241 in the bath, who are respectable patriarchs of their families. Since she knows their secrets, these respectable patriarchs show great respect for her. At this point, one can claim that the film reverses the male s gaze on the female object of classic cinema, as analysed by feminist approach in psychoanalytic terms. It is the female gaze on the male object mentioned here, at least verbally. In a mood influenced by the ambiance of the bath, learning of the homosexuality experienced there from the letters of his aunt and what with a failing marriage in Italy, Francesco falls in love with the family s son, Mehmet, and their relationship develops in the bath. His wife Marta, after coming to Istanbul to end her marriage with Francesco, one night witnesses her husband and Mehmet making love there: another instance of female gaze on the male object, visually this time. In addition to those, in one scene before they become lovers, Francesco and Mehmet voyeuristically watch the women bathing; the director s intention here may be to balance the male and female gazes. It is the first time that Francesco has fallen in love with a male. Marta also has a relationship with somebody else, Paolo, in Italy. During the quarrel Marta says that it is not the same thing because she has slept with a male and Francesco replies that it is the same thing. Interestingly, after learning about his relationship with Mehmet, Marta gives her wedding ring to a poor woman she encounters in a courtyard, signifying that she has totally abandoned her marriage. However, the ring of Francesco is removed from his finger and given to Marta after he is killed by a hired assassin of the real-estate mafia. Thus we understand that Francesco has not embraced the gay identity totally but rather remains bisexual. Steam: The Turkish Bath is important in Turkish film history, for focusing on same-sex male relationship as the main theme. Nevertheless, the film is open to criticism for displaying Istanbul and Turks in an orientalist way as I discussed in Chapter 3, despite its theme. I will now discuss another film, Toss Up, as a counter example which portrays a gay individual as a side character, but this time the extensive prejudice and negative attitude against LGBT individuals is foregrounded as well. 227

242 Toss Up Toss Up (Uğur Yücel-2004) depicts the parallel story of two young men who complete their military service in the South Eastern Anatolia, and have had to engage in armed clashes with PKK militants. The story begins after they return to their hometowns. Neither Rıdvan nor Cevher are able to overcome the trauma they experience during their military service. Furthermore, Rıdvan has lost one of his legs due to an exploding mine and Cevher is unable to hear in one ear. I discussed aspects of Rıdvan s life in Chapter 4. This section will focus on the relationship between Cevher and his brother. Cevher s dream was to establish a kiosk in Istanbul but he has to engage in ambiguous business in order to actualise this dream. The big earthquake takes place in Marmara region in 1999 and he loses his uncle. Following this, his father s ex-wife in Greece, Tasula, visits them with her son Teoman, who is the elder brother of Cevher, since Cevher and Teoman share the same father. Cevher cannot accept Teoman as a brother and refuses to talk to him because he is gay. His father reacts to Cevher s attitude: Cevher: Father: Cevher: Screw my fate. I lost my ear at war, then I get back and there s an earthquake, my uncle dies and God knows what else. And now this brother comes from Greece, who is more woman than man. Watch your mouth. He is your brother. My brother? My sister, more like! Then two brothers have an opportunity to talk in a bar. Teoman tells Cevdet that their neighbour, who was taking him on his lap and telling stories, later raped him: One day he fucked me. I didn t know anything. I was a kid. I thought that was the way life is. I m a queer and you are a man, yeah. Ok?. Teoman asks for a lipstick from a woman in the bar, applies it to himself and kisses his brother. He turns Cevher s face to the mirror and asks him: Now we look alike, don t we? I will now discuss the significance of this speech and behaviour in reference to queer theory, which I will briefly introduce. Coming into play in feminist and LGBT studies by the beginning of the 1990s, 228

243 queer theory advocated the approach that gender identities are socially and culturally constructed, which was immanent to the sex-gender distinction that was raised in the 1970s. Accordingly, it is sexual identity which is biological, based on from anatomy and essential. Gender identity by contrast is non-essential and non-fixed, as Judith Butler states: Originally intended to dispute the biology-is-destiny formulation, the distinction between sex and gender serves the argument that whatever biological intractability sex appears to have, gender is culturally constructed: hence, gender is neither the causal result of sex nor as seemingly fixed as sex (1990, 6). Queer theory in this sense also objected to the traditional binary sex and gender categories and puts forth that gender is floating and might be flexible, in the words of Butler: When the constructed status of gender is theorised as radically independent of sex, gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one (6). Fig. 23. Cevher in Toss Up (Yazı Tura), Fig. 24: Teoman in Toss Up. Dir. Uğur Yücel, Teoman s first question I m a queer and you are a man, yeah. Ok? and then applying lipstick, kissing his brother and asking the second question Now we look alike, don t we? draws attention to what queer theory argues: gender itself becomes a freefloating artifice. Although the film text makes an unnecessary connection between rape in childhood and the queerness of Teoman, I think it is important in criticising the generally negative attitude against LGBT individuals and in conveying queer theory through the conversation between the two brothers. In this way the film questions the heteronormativity prevalent in Turkish society. 229