TURKEY: Turkish movie "Valley of the Wolves - Iraq" depicting American violence in Iraq

Record ID: 810213

  • Title: TURKEY: Turkish movie "Valley of the Wolves - Iraq" depicting American violence in Iraq
  • Date: 7th March 2006
  • Summary: ISTANBUL, TURKEY (MARCH 01, 2006) (REUTERS) TRAM DRIVING PAST CINEMA CINEMA EXTERIORS CINEMA-GOERS BUYING TICKETS (2 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 22nd March 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Turkey
  • Country: Turkey
  • Reuters ID: LVA8QM2XT842S4KT54Y6Q43GMIXK
  • Story Text: Set in current day Iraq, the Turkish action movie "Valley of the Wolves - Iraq" pits a Turkish hero, Polat Alemdar against U.S. military forces.
    Polat, played by Turkish actor Necati Sasmaz, initially takes on the U.S. military to avenge mistreated detained Turkish commandos and restore his country's honour.
    Along the way, the protagonist uncovers a string of atrocities committed by U.S. forces, including a wedding massacre, the torture of prisoners and genocide.
    The film also stars American actors Billy Zane, as a powerful U.S. intelligence agent who is determined to create tension among Iraq's Arabs, Kurds and Turks and Gary Busey as a Jewish-American doctor who performs surgery on unwitting Iraqi casualties, selling their organs to black markets in Israel and America.
    After three weeks of screening at cinemas across the country, the film is still a popular talking point in Turkey. Many of those who have seen the film say it rings true.
    "I found it very convincing, they acted like how a Turk should act," said one cinema-goer. Asked whether he found the movie realistic, he said: "yes, very realistic, I was already hating Americans, now I hate them more."
    'Valley of the Wolves' capitalises on a rise in anti-American sentiment in Turkey since the Iraq war and turns the spotlight on the relations between the NATO allies.
    The two countries enjoy warm ties but many Turks are ambivalent about the United States, enjoying its culture and products while distrusting its foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East.
    Haluk Sahin, an academic and an author, says the movie is a Rambo movie in reverse. He thinks any Westerner who will watch the movie will be surprised with the plot that has the usual good guys become bad.
    He says movie has big box office prospects in Latin American and Middle Eastern countries regarding the anti-American sentiment in those regions.
    Many other academics also expect nationalist movements to gain more momentum as a reaction to the impact of globalisation and neo-liberal super power policies.
    However, Sahin adds that in 'Valley of the Wolves', the objections have gone too far.
    "In this movie we see a combination of anti-European and anti-American feelings forming some kind of a nationalistic religious objection what has been going on, but I am afraid objection goes too far and it serves the purpose of not sincere nationalists but those who have other axes to grind" said Haluk Sahin.
    A host of Turkish celebrities and politicians joined the film's stars at its Hollywood-style premiere last month in Istanbul and Turkish guards in fake U.S. military uniforms maintained security.
    The movie, which had a Turkish record budget of 10 million U.S. dollars, opens with a depiction of the real-life arrest of Turkish special forces officers in northern Iraq in July 2003.
    The image of U.S. troops putting hoods over the commandos' heads stirred public anger and at the time Turkey's military chief condemned it as an attack on the nation's honour. One newspaper dubbed it the "Rambo Crisis".
    "This attack is not against us, it is against the Turkish nation," says one of the soldiers in the film's depiction of the incident, which occurred three months after Ankara refused the U.S. army permission to use Turkish soil for its Iraq invasion.
    More recently, Ankara criticised Washington's failure to act against Kurdish rebels who attacked Turkey from northern Iraq.
    But the film comes at a time of improving bilateral relations and a U.S. diplomat brushed aside the film's significance, arguing relations between the two nations were returning to normal.
    The film is directed by Serdar Akar and based on a popular TV series in which Alemdar, played by Necati Sasmaz, infiltrates Turkey's mafia in order to destroy it.
    Scenarist Bahadir Ozdener says they felt the need to make a movie about Iraq after seeing constant human rights abuse on TV and newspapers.
    Ozdener says this time they got a chance to tell their message in a Hollywood style and insists all they wanted was to do their part as artists to stop atrocities in Iraq.
    "We say we have no intention to make politics, as movie makers and media we must say that politics only cause conflicts. We say, forget about nationalism, forget about being anti-anything, let us first stop this torture. in Vietnam media and movie makers managed it, but after tens of years, don't you think that we shouldn't be that late for Iraq?" said Ozdener.
    Some 3,900,000 Turks and 450,000 Europeans saw the movie within the first four weeks of its release. Distributors are working on a distribution deal with cinemas across Arab nations and Australia.
    According to some media reports say a U.S. army memo warns U.S. soldiers to stay away from cinemas with Valley of the Wolves - Iraq.
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