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WATCHING TURKEY

Latika Padgaonkar

The very title of Gonul Donmez-Colin’s book Turkish Cinema: Identity, Distance and Belonging is a pointer to the orientation principle of her study. Films in Turkey have been closely linked to the country’s chequered socio-political path: from the founding of the secular republic in 1923 to the military coups of 1960, 1971 and 1980; from the fierce urge to join the European Union to the loss of traditional setups; from the exile and exodus of minorities to other lands to the massive migration of Turks to cities, from uneven social development to the central place that Istanbul holds in the popular and cinematic imagination. For better or worse, all of this has played upon a people and endowed it with multiple identities, so much so that "Who is a Turk?" remains a key question in the country. This review attempts to sketch some of the major cinematic concerns the book tackles and the somewhat uneasy cinematic journey the author traces.

While Gonul Donmez-Colin, a film scholar, does not embark on a chronological pursuit of Turkish cinema, her analysis of how the identity question in cinema changed over the years and how the idea of distance — physical and metaphorical — followed tortuous currents becomes, inevitably, a timeline of Turkish cinema history.

Donmez-Colin’s approach to her subject is methodical, her research wide-ranging, her observations incisive. Every argument is reinforced by apposite examples from films and from comments by directors and critics. Take the case of Istanbul itself, that has cradled the highs and lows of Turkish cinema. This is where Yesilcam (the popular Hollywood-style cinema of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s) was located; where migrants from rural Anatolia flock; where a cosmopolitan culture thrives whose elite proudly proclaims its European heritage. Yet this is also where cultural isolation is most acute in those who don’t belong. The city, which bears the burden of balancing East and West, is at once a "beautiful dream" (Atif Yilmaz’s Oh Beautiful Istanbul) and a "horrible nightmare" (Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Distant), where "old identities are discarded and new ones formed"; where the "distance between past and present widens" and the "home loses its sheltering function".

The films of Zeki Demirkabuz, like those of Ceylan, deal with just this, and with the deception their protagonists face in this lovely yet alienating metropolis. Istanbul, with its "minarets, bridges, hilltops and the Bosporus is an integral part of every film." But its "legendary charm", so widely reflected in Turkish cinema, is replaced today by an "atmosphere of fear and terror in films of the new generation".

Part of the dichotomy in the national psyche harks back to the republic’s founding by Kemal Ataturk. His vision for his country was one of Turkishness. But in its effort to assume a European identity, it proscribed the "separate and public manifestation of ethnic groups — Kurds, non-Turkish-speaking peoples and non-Sunni Muslims." Yesilcam, with its "gilded studio sets, its star system, formulaic narratives, clichéd constructions and an eye on the box office," perpetrated the official line. Such homogenisation meant that Kurds could not be depicted on the screen up to the ’90s. Yilmaz Guney’s films, The Bride of the Earth and The Way, suffered the censor’s scissors for their inclusion of Kurdish names and songs. Reason stretched to the extreme became a form of madness.

Early Turkish cinema, especially the films of Muhsin Ertugrul, backed Ataturk’s social reforms, writes the author. It banned the fez and upheld the social mixing of sexes, Western music and the liberated woman. But the new government of the ’50s, after its initial successes, reversed the principles of secularism and began favouring conservative religious organisations. It was around this time that Yesilcam was born, and over the next 20-odd years produced 250-350 films annually, spinning entertaining tales and dishing out "good" moral values, tales that had little to so with everyday life, and much to do with "nationalism, conservatism and Islamism", and with diverting people’s attention from the worsening economy. The exception was the great director Atif Yilmaz, who used parables and allegories to tell local tales. Where experiments with social realism were made (Lutfi Akad’s The Law of the Borders), the censor was quick to wield his weapon. And even as debates rages in the ’60s over what constituted true national cinema — Yesilcam or the New Cinema (with its auteur-ship and alternative modes of production) one outstanding artist married in his work these polarised values to give the world films of political intent and mass appeal: Yilmaz Guney. His film, The Hope, marks a turning point in Turkish cinema.

Interestingly, every change of government and every military coup, the author says, resulted in new laws that had repercussions on cinema. Never, naturally, to cinema’s benefit. Paradoxically, the coup in 1980 (which brought in a period of depoliticisation) had filmmakers turning inwards and expressing their angst (Omer Kavur’s The Secret Face and Motherland Hotel). But these films, far too removed from the known, had little success with the public. And so production dwindled in the early ’90s to a mere 10 films a year. And then the wheel of history turned full circle. "Religious cinema revived with the rise of fundamentalism." Attempts were even made to "Islamise cinema" (often little more than blatant religious propaganda), challenge the official version of the history of the Turkish Republic and "reclaim the Muslim self". But after the first flush of success, this artistically poor cinema petered out.

Migration has taken two forms in Turkey: internal and external (especially to Germany). All films within this thematic framework show the painful change in the lives of migrants, their new identities in new locations, the loss of something deep inside and their dream of returning to their homeland (although this is no longer true of second and third-generation Turks living outside). By way of approach to this subject, however, Turkish films set abroad have moved away from the sense of "victimhood". Filmmakers now see the position of "not-knowing-where-to-belong" as an advantage and multiple identities as a virtue.

One of the most interesting chapters is Denied Identities. Turkey has a mosaic of ethnic and religious minorities within its borders — Albanians, Armenians, Assyrians, Azeris, Bosnians, Circassians, Georgians, Greeks, Jews, Kurds, Laz, Pomaks, Tatars, Yoruks etc. And yet the official ideology of the country’s "imagined community" is "one nation, one state, one religion, one language." This move to make uniform what is essentially a rich matrix has been decried by some intellectuals. The author quotes from a columnist, Gunduz Vassouf, who asks if Turks are racist. "Not only our attitude against the minorities or the Kurds but also our traditional stand against the Alevis is exclusionist. When we say ‘we’, we do not include them, despite all their efforts not to be different."

Till the ’90s, cinema used the Kurds for its own decorative or exotic purpose, almost with an "orientalising gaze". It never gave the Kurds a name or a language. It was left to Yilmaz Guney, a Kurd himself (whose film The Way was the joint winner of the Golden Palm in Cannes in 1982), to draw them in flesh and blood, suffering under state and other oppressions.

But with the censor around, he did this indirectly, through circumlocution. Yet his films were banned. Another prominent Turkish director, Kazim Oz, writes stingingly that "Turkish cinema has been doing to the Kurds what Hollywood has done to American Indians." Also, frighteningly, he points to an ideological revival of feudalism through TV serials — "opulent lifestyles of landlords, honour killings and archaic gender relations".

As for the other minorities, their identities in cinema had to be masked, and they were mostly shown as one-dimensional. Jewish characters, for instance, were always linked to commerce, Armenian women were westernised, and often known as "Madame". Another issue the Turks faced was the one of forced migration. Yesim Ustaoglou’s Waiting for the Clouds refers to the uprooting of lakhs of Greeks who had settled around the Black Sea region and it leads her to ask: "What is a homeland? Who is a foreigner?"

Donmez-Colin also discusses the role of women in cinema. Conservative in the early years, the space for women (particularly Muslim actors) opened up gradually, even if locked in stereotypes. Today, however, women are no longer "victims, sexual non-entities or sexual toys". They are full-blooded human beings and the filmmakers’ attitude is far more honest and non-judgmental. And after years of twists and turns, Turkish cinema itself is now a flourishing art, reaching out to the world with its strength of themes and openness of approach.

Turkish Cinema is a serious and open-minded study, thoroughly documented and researched, illustrated with summaries of films that support its many contentions. To be sure, it is essential tool for the study of Turkey’s cinema, but it is equally vital to an understanding of the ideologies that shaped it: why certain kinds of films were made and what led to their demise; how nation-building exercises are mirrored in cinema; how reigning ideologies and rhetoric give rise to new forms and how relationships between films and viewers build or undo new archaeology in the Seventh Art.