3
April 2006
2. "Kurdish protesters warn of further unrest", the PKK hasn't directed the protests but it supports them. Locals took the initiative, but they were disciplined.
3. "Week of violence revives fears of ethnic conflict in Turkey", ethnic riots in southeast Turkey this week left at least eight dead in the worst urban violence to hit the region in a decade, reviving bitter memories of the height of a Kurdish rebellion that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.
4. "Kurdish leader urges end of riots, calls on Ankara for reform", the leader of Turkey's main Kurdish party urged Sunday an end to deadly Kurdish riots in the southeast and called on Ankara to come up with far-reaching reforms to make permanent peace with its largest minority.
5. "EU Concerned By violence In South East Turkey", the European Union expressed serious concern on Friday over violent clashes which have killed six people, including two children, in southeast Turkey and urged Ankara to improve the rights of Kurds in the region.
6. "UN Expert Lauds Turkey’s Human Rights Effort But Urges Respect For All Groups", while hailing Turkey’s rights efforts and initiatives by noting that “significant progress” has been made, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and "counter-terrorism" called today for more to be done to investigate allegations of torture, and to respect the linguistic and cultural rights of all groups living in the country, including the Kurds.
7. "Turkey: 'Unique' Army Complicates EU Membership Bid", the continued influence enjoyed by the army in Turkish society and politics will soon become an issue that could hamper the country's movement toward EU membership. This is the main implication of a report discussed at an academic seminar in Brussels today.
8. "‘Valley of the Wolves’: Nationalism and conflict in a Turkish film", this paper looks at the film Valley of the Wolves, a film made after the arrest of some Turkish intelligence services in Northern Iraq (Kurdistan) by the US army.
1. - "Protester dies in Turkey clashes":
KIZILTEPE / 3 April 2006
TURKISH police fired into the air to disperse a protest march in mainly-Kurdish southeast Turkey on Sunday and one person was killed, officials said, in a weekend that saw unrest in several cities.
Security sources said additional troops were being deployed to Kiziltepe, a town of about 100,000 people south of the region's main city of Diyarbakir. In Ankara, parliament called a special session for Wednesday to discuss the violence.
The southeast has suffered its worst riots in many years since Wednesday's funeral of 14 Kurdish rebels in clashes with the army. Tensions reflect popular discontent over local conditions and resurgence of a Kurdish guerrilla campaign.
Police said Mehmet Sidik Onder, 22, received a bullet wound to the stomach after police fired in the air to stop a march in Kiziltepe, near the Syrian border. The protesters were heading for the home of another man shot dead in the town on Sunday.
Witnesses said the police fired at the man, the ninth to die in a wave of unrest that could stir serious strains in Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party and stoke tensions with the influential military. Events are watched closely by the European Union Turkey seeks to join.
A few hundred Kurdish protesters, some wearing masks, clashed with riot police in Istanbul overnight, throwing petrol bombs and setting fire to a truck.
Police said a man died when he was hit by a bus escaping a petrol bomb attack.
Youths have been fighting street battles for days with police in the region's main city, Diyarbakir. Yesterday, there were clashes in Silopi, near the Iraqi border.
Locals gathered under a canopy in Kiziltepe to express condolences to relatives of the two men killed in the town.
"The people are very angry and I think the trouble will continue. We are protesting because we want Europe to know what is happening. How can Turkey enter the EU when it is like this?" asked Mr Abdulkadir, a car salesman and friend of Mr Arac.
Mr Erdogan has promised firm action to thwart those he says seek to divide Turkey. Security forces, however, have shown far more restraint than would have been the case before his reforming centre-right government took power four years ago.
State-run Anatolian news agency said a total of 565 protesters were detained and 247 of them formally arrested overnight, bringing to 445 the total number of arrests in two days.
Political analysts and diplomats said the violence reflects local anger over high unemployment, poverty and Ankara's reluctance to grant more autonomy to the mainly Kurdish region.
Locals are disappointed more reforms have not emerged out of Turkey securing an EU go-ahead last October to begin accession talks, and pledges of economic improvements by Mr Erdogan.
Ankara has lifted restrictions on the Kurdish language and culture in recent years, hoping to further its bid to join the EU, but critics say it needs to do much more.
The streets of Kiziltepe were quiet today, still littered with the remnants of makeshift barricades set up by protesters. Armoured vehicles were parked in front of public buildings and at key crossroads.
Tension has been on the rise in Turkey, a country of 72 million inhabitants with a large Kurdish population, since 2004, when the guerrilla Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) called off a five-year unilateral ceasefire.
Ankara regards the PKK as a "terrorist group" responsible for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since it launched its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in 1984. But many Kurds sympathise with the PKK.
Turkey's main Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), has called for an end to the violence but has also asked Ankara to push through more reforms in the southeast.
The EU has expressed concern about the violence and urged
Ankara to do more to combat poverty in the southeast and to boost Kurds'
cultural rights. 
2. - Reuters - "Kurdish protesters warn of further unrest":
DIYARBAKIR / 2 April 2006 / by Daren Butler
Ayse, a mother of six, is ready to support her children if they decide to join Kurdish guerrillas fighting security forces in the mountains of the southeast of Turkey.
For now they are among thousands of Kurds, mostly youths, who joined street protests this week sparked by the funerals of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels killed in clashes with the military.
Eight people, three of them children, have died in five days of clashes with the police -- some of Turkey's worst civil unrest since the PKK took up arms against the state in 1984 -- and protesters warned that distrust of the state could trigger more trouble.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has said children were used in the unrest as "pawns of terrorism" and warned security forces could not guarantee their safety. But active participants in the unrest denied that militants were orchestrating the youths.
"The PKK hasn't directed the protests but it supports them. Locals took the initiative, but they were disciplined," said Ahmet, a moustachioed 36-year-old, as he sat drinking coffee.
He was among several protesters speaking in an area near to where the trouble began in Diyarbakir, the largest city in the mainly Kurdish region. Fearful of identification they gave assumed names. Their accounts could not be verified.
Ahmet said the violence was also a response to the state's failure to meet PKK demands to release its leader Abdullah Ocalan from jail, grant an amnesty to the rebels and hold talks with the group on resolving the Kurdish problem.
Turkey's southeast suffers high unemployment and many Kurds want political autonomy and more cultural freedoms. They feel the state is hostile to them and express sympathy for the PKK.
The state and most Turks revile the PKK as "terrorists". Youngsters taking part in the protests said they were motivated by sympathy for the rebels.
"Everyone went to show support for the guerrillas. Nobody told the people what to do. Our struggle is in the cities, not the mountains," said 19-year-old Mehmet.
"When Erdogan came to the southeast he recognised there was a Kurdish problem, but now he is showing a different face. We want peace but we are prepared to fight for it," he said.
Ankara has lifted restrictions on the Kurdish language and culture in EU-linked reforms over the past few years, but critics say it needs to do much more.
EXPLOSION OF ANGER
At the same table, Rojat said he helped set up barricades with rubbish bins and paving stones in the impoverished Baglar district to keep out thousands of police who ringed the area.
"This was an explosion of people's anger. We had no weapons but made a few Molotov cocktails. We threw stones to defend ourselves because the police were firing tear gas," said the 27-year-old, dressed in a leather jacket and T-shirt.
Economic hardship is seen as a factor in the trouble and many banks and shops were damaged by stone-throwing protesters. Similar violence has spread to other towns in southeast Turkey.
The conflict between the PKK and the state has killed more than 30,000 people and has mainly consisted in armed clashes in the mountain ranges bordering Iraq and Iran.
As a teenager, Rojat himself had left Diyarbakir to join the PKK after failing to win a university place but was captured and jailed. One of Ayse's sons had also tried to enter the PKK but the rebels sent him back, saying that at 12 he was too young.
Her family came to Diyarbakir a decade ago after soldiers burned down their village home, she said. Since then she has spent several months in jail for spreading PKK propaganda and has been detained repeatedly for joining pro-rebel protests.
On Tuesday, she went to the PKK funerals with her children and said she cried because she knew one of the dead rebels.
"I would support my children if they wanted to go
into the mountains. There are no opportunities to work or study here.
If they stay they may just end up as criminals or glue-sniffers."
3. - AFP - "Week of violence revives fears of
ethnic conflict in Turkey":
DIYARBAKIR / 2 April 2006
Ethnic riots in southeast Turkey this week left at least eight dead in the worst urban violence to hit the region in a decade, reviving bitter memories of the height of a Kurdish rebellion that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.
A ninth fatality was reported Sunday in the town of Kiziltepe, near the Syrian border, where violence flared anew after street battles between protestors and the security froces left another person dead Saturday.
Officials were not immediately available for comment.
On Saturday, an angry crowd in Kiziltepe torched a bank and vandalized public buildings, party offices and shops, prompting the security forces to fire warning shots and use tear gas.
Some 200 Kurdish protestors, some of them wearing masks, also took to the streets in Istanbul Sunday, setting fire to a truck and hurling stones and bottles at the riot police, who responded with truncheons and pepper.
Several demonstrators were detained, while others were beaten up by passers-by in the melee.
Turkey's main Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), urged an end to the violence and called on Ankara to come up with far-reaching reforms to make permanent peace with its largest minority.
"I urge all our people to stay away from violence," DTP co-chairman Ahmet Turk said in a television interview. "Violence causes only more violence."
The unrest erupted Tuesday in Diyarbakir, the largest city in the mainly Kurdish southeast, after the funerals of Kurdish rebels killed in fighting with the army, and quickly spilled over to other regions.
Three of the dead were children, one aged only three, and most of the injured were security forces in the clashes officials blamed on the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged an armed campaign against the government since 1984.
Turk said the riots were the explosion of entangled political, social and economic problems that have plagued the southeast, Turkey's most underdeveloped region, for decades.
"Those people do not have education, health services... they are hungry and deprived. How can one control such masses?" he asked.
Turk called on Ankara to come up with a comprehensive program for the southeast that would include the improvement of Kurdish cultural and political rights, economic and social development and a general amnesty for the PKK.
Fighting between the PKK and the army has ravaged the meager infrastructure and the mainstays of farming in the southeast, and forced already poor peasants to migrate in mass into urban slum areas.
The region had enjoyed relative calm in recent years as the PKK declared a unilateral ceasefire in 1999 and Ankara, under European Union pressure, granted the Kurds a measure of cultural rights, lifted emergency rule in the region and began compensating villagers who had suffered in the conflict.
Tensions have been on the rise, however, since June 2004,
when the PKK called off the five-year truce.
4. - AFP - "Kurdish leader urges end of riots,
calls on Ankara for reform":
DIYARBAKIR / 2 April 2006
The leader of Turkey's main Kurdish party urged Sunday an end to deadly Kurdish riots in the southeast and called on Ankara to come up with far-reaching reforms to make permanent peace with its largest minority.
"I urge all our people to stay away from violence," Ahmet Turk, the co-chairman of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), said in an interview with CNN-Turk television. "Violence causes only more violence."
Several DTP officials have been accused of fanning the unrest in the mainly Kurdish southeast, where angry youths torched government buildings and banks, vandalized shops and attacked the police with petrol bombs and stones.
The violence has resulted in eight deaths.
Turk admitted his party did not have full control over the local population as many remained under the influence of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been encouraging the violence.
He said the riots, which erupted Tuesday in Diyarbakir after the funerals of PKK rebels killed in fighting with the army, were the reflection of entangled political, social and economic problems that have plagued the southeast, Turkey's most underdeveloped region, for decades.
"Those people do not have education, health services... they are hungry and deprived. How can one control such masses?" he asked.
Turk called on the government to come up with a comprehensive program for the southeast that would include the improvement of Kurdish cultural and political rights, economic and social development and a general amnesty for the PKK.
"How can you resolve the problem only with the stick, with repression and silencing? We want this mentality to change," he said. "The (Kurdish) people believe they are still regarded as a kind of quasi-citizens."
Fighting between the PKK and the army since 1984 has claimed nearly 37,000 lives, ravaged the meager infrastructure and the mainstays of farming in the southeast, and forced already poor peasants to migrate in mass into urban slum areas.
The region had enjoyed relative calm in recent years as the PKK declared a unilateral ceasefire in 1999 and Ankara, under European Union pressure, granted the Kurds a measure of cultural rights, lifted emergency rule in the region and began compensating villagers who had suffered in the conflict.
Tensions have been on the rise, however, since June 2004,
when the PKK called off the five-year truce.
5. - Reuters - "EU Concerned By violence In South East Turkey":
BRUSSELS / 31 March 2006
The European Union expressed serious concern on Friday over violent clashes which have killed six people, including two children, in southeast Turkey and urged Ankara to improve the rights of Kurds in the region. Stone-throwing Kurds have been clashing with riot police in Diyarbakir since Tuesday, turning the city of one million people on the River Tigris into a battle zone.
It is the worse violence in the Muslim nation since it began accession talks with the 25-nations European Union last October. "We are very concerned by the latest tensions in the southeast of Turkey and the violence which have resulted in casualties," said Krisztina Nagy, spokeswoman for the EU's Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn.
"We are aware of the serious terrorist problem in the region but it is a much wider problem than just a security issue."
More than 30,000 people, most of them Kurds, have been killed since the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) took up arms for a Kurdish homeland in Turkey in 1984.
Turkey, the European Union and the United States all see the PKK as a terrorist organisation, but the EU has also repeatedly urged Ankara to grant greater cultural and linguistic rights to its 12 million Kurds. Under pressure, Turkey's government has passed some reforms, but implementation has remained patchy.
Nagy urged the Turkish authorities to address "urgently" the lack of economic development and cultural rights in that region.
"The region needs peace, economic development and real exercise of cultural rights for Kurds," Nagy said, adding that this was not a new problem and was raised constantly by the European Commission in its talks with Turkey.
Asked whether the EU executive was critical of Turkish police actions, Nagy said she was worried by the whole situation.
The clashes first erupted on Tuesday after funeral ceremonies for 14 PKK rebels killed by troops last weekend.
An eight-year-old child died overnight in hospital. A man and a child were shot dead on Wednesday and a second man was crushed under a police armoured car. It was not immediately clear when or how the other two people died.
Political analysts say the clashes reflect local anger
over high unemployment, poverty and Ankara's refusal to grant more autonomy
and cultural rights to the mainly Kurdish region.
6. - UN Newws - "UN Expert Lauds Turkey’s Human Rights Effort But Urges Respect For All Groups":
NEW YORK / 31 March 2006
While hailing Turkey’s rights efforts and initiatives by noting that “significant progress” has been made, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism called today for more to be done to investigate allegations of torture, and to respect the linguistic and cultural rights of all groups living in the country, including the Kurds.
Following his visit to Turkey from 16 to 23 February, a UN statement said that Martin Scheinin, who is an independent expert serving in his individual capacity, has now issued a preliminary report, putting forward a series of recommendations including the need to narrow the definition of terrorism, so as to make “the fight against such crimes more targeted and effective.”
The Special Rapporteur noted “with great satisfaction that the many efforts undertaken by the Government in the area of human rights, such as intensified human rights training, a zero-tolerance policy vis-à-vis torture and a considerable improvement in physical conditions of places of detention have led to significant progress, which is widely recognized by the civil society.”
At the same time he said he has “not found convincing evidence that independent and impartial mechanisms to investigate allegations of torture and ill-treatment of terrorism suspects are in place.” He also voiced regret that “no functioning monitoring system for places of detention by independent human rights institutions or non-governmental organizations exists in Turkey.”
Mr. Scheinin reminded the Government that while a law on compensating victims of terrorism was a “very laudable step in the right direction” it nevertheless falls short of full restitution and rehabilitation.
He also stressed that respecting economic, social and cultural rights helps to eliminate the risk that individuals make the “morally inexcusable decision to resort to acts of terrorism.”
He emphasized that for all inhabitants of Turkey to fully enjoy their human rights without discrimination, “persons belonging to different cultural and linguistic groups, including the Kurdish population, should enjoy protection of their cultural and linguistic rights.”
Mr. Scheinin accepted the appointment as first Special
Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism on 8 August 2005. He
previously served eight years as a member of the UN Human Rights Committee.
He is Professor of Constitutional Law and International Law and Director
of the Human Rights Institute at Abo Akademi University in Finland.
7. - RFE/RL - "Turkey: 'Unique' Army Complicates EU Membership Bid":
The continued influence enjoyed by the army in Turkish society and politics will soon become an issue that could hamper the country's movement toward EU membership. This is the main implication of a report discussed at an academic seminar in Brussels today.
BRUSSELS / 31 March 2006 / by Ahto Lobjakas
The conventional view in Turkey is that the country's army has been a bulwark of Westernization and democracy. The army has intervened in politics, but never questioned democracy -- only politicians.
For the EU, however, there is only one way a country that aspires for membership can organize the relationship between its government and the army. The country's civilian government must be in full, undisputed control of its military, with the army at the receiving end of a strictly one-way chain of command.
That the Turkish government and military do not appear to fully appreciate the seriousness of the EU's views on the matter is the main conclusion of a report drawn up by the Dutch-based Center for European Security Studies.
Presenting the report in Brussels, its author, David Greenwood, said that in December 2004, when an EU summit approved entry talks with Turkey, it had also found the military's powers unacceptable.
"The EU said that while Turkey was clearly en route to alignment with European policy and practice, the Turkish high command continues to enjoy greater authority and greater autonomy in security matters than is normal in EU member states; and the extent of legislative oversight and wider democratic oversight of the military in Turkey remains inadequate," he said.
Greenwood said he has observed a tendency toward complacency among the Turkish military in the wake of that decision, which was reaffirmed by the opening of talks in October last year.
Guarding the State From The Politicians
The army in Turkey enjoys the status of the guardian of a unitary and secular state. It has thwarted attempts by Islamic radicals to assume power. Many in Turkey argue that the revival of the Kurdish insurgency in the southeast and neighboring Iraq's slide towards civil war mean the army must not be weakened.
Greenwood noted that Turkish and EU interpretations of recent reforms differ, too. When Turkey made the army's chief of staff answerable to the prime minister, Ankara argued this gave the head of government direct political control over the army. The EU sees privileged access for the chief of staff to the highest level of civilian government, bypassing the defense minister.
Turkey made its National Security Council, which provided the interface for the military to influence government policy, an advisory body. The EU feels the military's unofficial influence over security policy and spending remains strong.
Greenwood said his contacts with the Turkish military leader suggest the army's future intervention in politics "appears highly unlikely." However, he noted, the EU is not convinced.
"In the European Union [...] the history is, we felt, read rather differently," he said. "And many across the [EU] believe that the Turkish high command remains able and might in certain circumstances be willing to contemplate intervention again in that sense is out of line with what is considered the norm across the EU.”
In the end, it is the EU's views that matter. However, Greenwood said, the EU has no formal blueprint for how civil-military relations should be shaped.
'Reform Fatigue'
Turkish officials have attempted to argue that the situation is unique to the country. That view appears to be shared by some of the country's academics.
Metin Heper, the dean of the economics faculty at the University of Bilkent in Ankara, argued that the Turkish army is unique in its dedication to modernization and democracy. He said the army has never questioned democracy and has always set its interventions a self-imposed deadline.
Ali Karaosmanoglu, chairman of the university's international relations department, noted that there is "reform fatigue" in the army and it must be given time before further changes.
"This is particularly important for several reasons," Karaosmanoglu said. "First, previous reforms in civil-military relations have been successful thanks to a continuous and effective dialogue between the government and the DGS, this dialogue should be maintained without interruption. This is important for the success of the coming reforms."
This is an issue that exposed deep and visceral divisions between Turkish and European attitudes.
Greenwood sharply criticized what he described as widespread "deference" among Turkish lawmakers and society at large to the army.
"One of the important messages, I think, is that in the European Union when a voice says, 'But the military have accepted this,' the answer comes, 'And so they damn well should!' The military have acquiesced in this? Well of course they have -- because they are servants of the state, they are subject to overall civilian executive direction," he said.
Greenwood went on to say that the very use of such deferential
language, often used by what he called "distinguished Turkish voices,"
signifies that crucial EU values have yet to be fully understood in
Turkey.
8. - Kurdish Media - "‘Valley of the Wolves’:
Nationalism and conflict in a Turkish film":
3 March 2006 / by Kameel Ahmady
This paper looks at the film Valley of the Wolves, a film made after the arrest of some Turkish intelligence services in Northern Iraq (Kurdistan) by the US army.
On its release, the film has caused a lot of controversy not only within the Middle East countries which it portrays, but also in communities as far a field as London. The film is also abounding in an underlying symbolism and cultural meanings which allow us to examine the role of cinema in shaping identity and the way consumption of popular culture plays a role in this. Many believe the film was trying to restore honour and pride for Turkey, and is based on true story where a small group of Turkish intelligence army going to Iraq in order take their revenge against American and Kurdish authorities they saw as degrading them. Therefore, this paper also explores how cinema can become a language of politics which can be used to draw support within the general population and as an external pressure in international relations between countries.
In the light of recent political developments in Middle East, and the role of mass media, with the world public taking an interest within this, such cultural and political elements are extremely important within even popular cinema. As the region is now reported with almost daily information about war, insurgency and constant clashes between east and west over supposed religious and cultural values, the meaning and perceptions of nationalism in this new era of Middle East history will undoubtedly change alongside such new developments. I also want to demonstrate that Turkey is currently in a unique position with respect to its relations with the western powers and observations on its human rights record, thus making mass media and its popular consumption all the more relevant as a means of expressing nationalist sentiments. The first scenes of Valley of the Wolves Iraq, the most expensive Turkish movie ever made, starts from a location described to be the Kurdistani town of Suleimani, where eleven undercover Turkish spies were arrested by US forces in 2003.
On July 4 of that year in the Ashti district of Suleimani in Southern Kurdistan (Iraqi Kurdistan), American forces raided a compound of the pro-Ankara Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF) and arrested eleven Turkish undercover intelligence officers who were arming the ITF and plotting to assassinate the Kurdish mayor of Kirkuk. The eleven Turkish spies were hooded and handcuffed and transferred to the Abu Ghareb prison.
If we accept the allegations of involvement from the Turkish state and armed forces as promoting the production of propaganda in such films as Valley of the Wolves, the movie seems to be a reaction to the Suleimani event. The directors and producers of the Turkish movie seem to be expressing a widely held Turkish view about the difficulty in dealing with the fact that Americans do not want the presence of Turkish intelligence officers in Kurdistan, taking into account that the Kurdistan regional government is officially in charge of the region. Themes of honour and its loss seem to be ever-present in the film. For example, one of the Turkish intelligence officers commits suicide to save his honour. His farewell letter reaches Polat Alemdar, an elite Turkish intelligence officer who travels to Kurdistan with a small group of men to retaliate for the “humiliation”.
The film has been understandably controversial, not least within Kurdish groups and media outlets and was banned in Canada on claims of its racist content. I was asked to write review about the film for a film magazine, and making my way to a north London cinema, a crowd of people opposite the cinema and the presence of some TV cameras attracted my attention. As Anderson’s study of nationalism and mass media has shown, popular culture for a mass audience was effective as a nationalist strategy partly because it promoted mass consumption by audiences ‘and simultaneously mobilized them for politico-religious purposes’ (Anderson, 1999:40). In the same way, today’s audiences, consuming more technologized visual rather than print media, can take part in this without any direct feelings of it being a political experience. At the same time, my observations during screenings of this film in London among diverse audiences shows that it also sparks extreme views and strong sentiments not only at a nationalist level, but in terms of more personal, even emotional responses. Depending who the audience is and how films and cinema generally are viewed and consumed in that given society, it will become a tool that government and interest groups can use as one of their important means of propaganda.
They can do so through a process of promotion and demotion, or what Robert Scholars calls in The Protocols of Reading “cultural reinforcement,” that is, reassuring the viewers that the values and beliefs they hold are superior to those held by others. This form of reinforcing ethnocentric values is of course nothing new, but it is interesting to examine how film and visual representations can reinforce these ideologies in a way that state institutions never could, because film and popular culture are much more accessible to the common man. Despite this however, state interests may still be reflected in such popular manifestations.
As to the issue of the Kurdish involvement, this complicates matters even more, where the neighbouring countries to Iraq are concerned that the presence of some Kurds in the international spectrum may harm the stability of their relations with or management of Kurdish inhabitants in their lands, which itself has been far from calm. Now as Middle East has become an increasingly narrow focus of the foreign media, it seems the era of oppression by reliance on arms has been put on hold.
I believe that while violent conflicts do exist, some powers are using media instead as a way to silence dissent and support consensus around nationalist ideologies. It has been long since media been used and installed by governments, for example the Kurdish populations in Turkey, despite being nationals of that country, do not have the freedom of broadcasting in their mother tongue, since it is seen to violate the nationalist ideals of the Turkish state. Therefore, the involvement of the Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan within the incident that gave rise to Valley of the Wolves no doubt plays a part in its extreme approach to events. With respect to international relations, Turkey’s policy on Iraq has been changing constantly as to how to deal with the rapid political changes in areas of Iraq which are of special concern to Turkey to the extent that the country still does not have a set policy for example in relation with Kurds of Iraq in the north. Due to the shifting post war political and strategic balances in northern Iraq (Kurdistan), Ankara has reportedly decided to revise its policy on Iraq.
Accordingly, instead of confining its policy mainly to Ankara’s security concerns in northern Iraq, Turkey is to assume a wider perspective taking in a broader picture of the country’s situation. Presumably, this will also include less official approaches to such things as popular attitudes and ideas within the general public, as well as generating media projects, films and television which can reflect the concerns of the Turkish state. Moreover, Ankara is planning to relax its so-called ‘red lines’ regarding Kurdish parties in the region and adopt a more flexible position aimed at alleviating Iraqi Kurdish concerns that ‘Turkey could intervene in northern Iraq at any moment’. However, Ankara has no intention of wavering from its steadfast opposition to any independent Kurdish state being formed in the region and has repeatedly accused the Kurdish regional government of ignoring the rights of minority Turkmen in oil rich Kirkuk. Iraq's constitution creates a fully self-governing Kurdistan and includes a procedure to resolve the status of Kirkuk. Some within the Turkish government has tried to accept that it is the sovereign right of Iraq to organize itself as the peoples of Iraq choose. But as Turkish nationalism is alive and has a powerful impact in side the government and in particular in the army, we must recognize that Ankara has only a few alternatives. There is no military option.
A Turkish intervention in northern Iraq would be much more difficult than its domestic 15-year war fought against the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), and would lead to international condemnation and possible sanctions. The timing would be poor, particularly since the accession talks with the EU are so keenly pursued by Ankara. An intervention in Iraq would also endanger Turkey's chances of joining the European Union. Given such a situation, and the current Turkish policy on Iraq, it seems that Turkish media and cinema have been increasingly supported by the army and government in order to represent Turkish interests, and especially with respect to Iraq. With the eyes of the world now on Turkey’s attitudes towards human rights, stability in the Middle East and its own minority populations, military force is an increasingly risky option, even with respect to control over its own Kurdish insurgency with the PKK.
Thus it seems not far-fetched that they are redirecting their oppressive tactics, and especially extreme nationalist discourse, through such media as film, television and other forms of popular culture. My main argument is that the physical exertion of force in previous eras of Turkish state nationalism is being replaced by a more acceptable and sanitised propaganda war. This is in evidence through such films as Valley of the Wolves, and in a general environment of proliferating media production, including three newly established satellite TV channels set up by Turkey in recent months to air programming in Turkish and English for Iraqi Turkmen in order to strengthen their political position and the leverage that they provide to the state in negotiating rights in Iraqi Kurdistan, namely Kirkuk. As a means of transposing conflict into new expressions, cinema can perhaps at first glance seem to have transcended the interests of particularist national rhetoric, bringing the issues visually represented to a broader audience.
This situation can be deceptive, because even transnational phenomena of visual culture and mass media are still, as Shryock (2000) rightly shows, based on the regulations, ideals and conditions of the nation-states from which they originate. As a site of cultural reproduction, the nation-state no longer seems big enough; its peculiar resources – industries, workforces, currencies, identities, ideologies – are constantly spilling across its boundaries. This is certainly true of “popular culture”, the vast network of information, narratives, and artistic performances conveyed by television, VCR, CD, cassette tape, film and print technologies (Shryock, 2000:33) He therefore reminds us that so-called ‘transnational media’ hides many social, political and material realities based within nation-state systems, a reality which those who viewed the film from here in London and whom I interviewed for this paper seemed to understand perhaps better. At the north London cinema where the film was screened, a small but vocal group of Kurdish activists were distributing flyers to those who were queuing to see the movie and trying to persuade others not to pay to see the movie, as they claimed it will provide funds to the Turkish army “to kill innocent people in Kurdistan. Giving an interview to one of the assembled TV crews, a young protester expressed his harsh view as to how the film is Turkish government propaganda and is designed to destroy the image of the Kurds and in fact to insult them. A young man who was leading the protest told me that there is no Turkish move made that doesn’t portray and show the flag of Turkey and picture of Ata Turk, you cant see a movie that talks about or event illustrates any sign of existing other cultures besides Turkish, what this move does is exactly this and more, it insults its Kurdish population as well as Iraqi Kurds, showing them like puppets of the foreign powers.
Of course, much of this project of reclaiming lost pride and dignity of an imagined nation is about, as Anderson (1999) has shown, imagining certain aspects of the nation’s or the people’s history while forgetting others. In the case of Turkey since the republic founded by Kemal Ataturk, this has sometimes contributed to a tension between a desire to acknowledge and celebrate the history and identity of the Turks, and an equal wish, according to Kemalist doctrine, to align Turkish culture, if not history, with European influences. This is true not only at the level of state declarations and official discourse, but in the more prosaic aspects of daily life and popular consumption including film and forms of material culture. Stokes says that:
Turkish modernity has, since 1923, been framed by the state’s nation-building project, which, like others, has struggled to reconcile national with global imperatives. The production of a distinctly national social and cultural reality, rational, secular, functional, gendered, and ethnicized, has throughout been uneasily aware of its Other, rendered in Turkey in pathologized terms as Oriental, “Islamic”, irrational, and transgressive (Stokes, 2000:225)
Of course a film like Valley of the Wolves, not to mention the enthusiasm it has generated within Turkish audiences both in Turkey and Europe, contradicts this rational and functional view wholeheartedly. By depicting cultural others, including Jews and Americans, with such gusto as vicious and blood-thirsty, the Turkish film-makers are contributing to a nationalist project which is anything but rational, and indeed transgresses many boundaries of its own, as is evident from the controversy it has created not only for Kurdish audiences offended by its portrayals, but even within liberal Turkish circles. European Parliamentary MP Cem Ozdemir, a German Turk, gives a complex diatribe against the content of the film and the harmful effects it may well have on the Turkish state in a recent column for popular German weekly Der Spiegel. From his point of view:
The main theme of the movie is revenge (and maybe even the reason for the movie itself). The film follows a Turkish intelligence agent as he seeks to avenge the officers and restore their honor. This wouldn't be so bad if the film didn't portray the opponents of Turks and Muslims so brutally -- the bad guys in this black and white world are the Americans, the Kurds, the Christians and the Jews.Giving a specific ethno-religious or national background to the antagonists in a movie is nothing new and allows filmmakers to pander to clichés and racist sentiment…but it doesn't make it easier for me to tolerate "Valley of the Wolves". (Der Spiegel 22 February, 2006 http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,401565,00.html, accessed 18/03/26)
Despite the high attendance rates that Ozdemir describes taking place in German cinemas where the film screened, a low turn-out in the hall gave plenty of choice for where to sit in the north London cinema where I viewed the film few times. This was in marked contrast to the display of protests and hype of the news cameras outside the cinema itself. This viewing proved to be an interesting exercise in participant observation in its own right. In front of me on the day I saw the film were a family who seemed to be Kurdish from Turkey. Throughout the screening they were constantly making remarks as to how the film is racist, and chose to ignore all aspects of Kurdish life and language by its portrayal of Kurdistan. They had clearly come to the film prepared to be annoyed. The Head of the family was frequently looking upset, making statements about the film being ‘an insult’, complaining that all locals in the film were wearing long, Arabic dress and the street signs and the images of the towns being either Arabic or Turkmen. The younger female members of the family, on the other hand, were crying during a scene where a young Turkmen girl is knifed down by the US army general, and the main Turkish actor comforts her in her last moments by saying he will always stay in love with her.
At the end of the movie, its impact on the viewers evidently differed according to the positionality, as a small group of Turkish youth provocatively chanted ‘long live Turkey’ while another group of angry looking Kurdish men and women were clearly upset about the film. In an interview afterwards, they told me they found the film very politically motivated, and suggested it was designed to mislead the non Kurds/Turks outside the region by showing how the US army is treating Muslim Arabs in Iraq. One Kurdish woman said it is so easy for most people to believe the account of this movie if they don’t know Turkish media, and how Turkish films are ‘manipulative and nationalistic’. According to her, this film tried to take advantage of what is happening in Iraq, and manipulate the Arab and Muslims across the world. She said how strange it was from her point of view that the supposedly ‘secular’ Turkish cinema has become popular as a form of ‘Muslim’ cinema in order to attract Muslim viewers. Leaving the cinema this group were telling each other how wrong they felt about having ‘paid to be insulted’. Two young English men and a woman were discussing the recent American Gulf War movie Jarhead while the were leaving the cinema, and said that while Jarhead and what they had just seen were both war movies, at the same time it was very interesting to see how each portrayed the war the way they want it to be. Jarhead was about the Gulf War and group of soldiers at war showing the human side of the people and their lives back home. ‘But what we just saw was very political, trying to show everyone as the bad guys apart from defenceless Arabs and loyal Turkish soldiers and those who were loyal to them’.
Shafik (1998) shows us how efforts have been made within Arab films to develop a cinematic tradition which is responsive to the imperatives of globalisation, but cautions that like Turkey as described by Stokes above, “…it has not always been successful in erasing binary antagonisms such as past and present, tradition and modernity, East and West” (1998:210). Of course, the same can clearly be said of American (and probably all) cinema that portrays cross-cultural encounters, particularly in times of conflict, in an “us/them” format. Such expressions in the Turkish Valley of the Wolves were clearly designed to send such a message to viewers, portraying the Turks as heroic victims of the villainous Americans and Kurds, and the Arabs as their dehumanised victims.
At a time when the spotlight is on Turkey for its treatment of difference and human rights, films such as this send a clear message of intolerance, and as Mr. Ozdemir points out, can hardly promote the interests of the Turkish state in joining the EU and westernising. At the same time, such ‘unofficial’ methods of putting forth an extreme nationalist agenda can be more successful as they are easy for the mass audience to digest on the one hand, and cannot in fact be directly linked with the state, despite the rumours. In any case, the Turkish army has always been a somewhat renegade section of political process in Turkey, and cannot always be seen as aligned with Ankara’s official policies and statements. Whatever the situation, we must remember that the power of a film can precisely lie at times in its distance from official discourses, despite the propaganda elements it involves. Makers of a film have no power, once it is released, over the act of viewing, and my own experience of the film even in one small cinema in north London proved the diversity of views which such an experience can generate. These different acts of viewing by different people, is no doubt influenced by their past experiences, so that they add their own stereotypes and prejudices (whether of race or politics) to those being presented by the film makers. In the postmodern world where people have connections to experience and memory that reach across borders, there are also many unpredictable factors shaping our cultural consumption of popular culture such as films.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Shafik, V. (1998) Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity Cairo:American University of Cairo Press
Stokes, M. (2000) ‘’Beloved Istanbul”: Realism and Transnational Imaginary in Turkish Popular Culture’ in W. Armbrust ed. Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond Berkely: University of California Press pp. 224-242
Shryock, A (2000) ‘’The 6/8 Beat Goes On: Persian Popular Music from bazem-e Qajaryyeh to Beverly Hills Garden Parties. Culture’ in W. Armbrust ed. Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond Berkely: University of California Press pp. 61-87
Armbrust W. (1996) Mass Culture And Modernism in Egypt Cmbridge: UK press Sydicate of the university of Cambridge
Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism ,New york Verso press
Der Spiegel 22 February, 2006 http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,401565,00.html,
accessed 18/03/26.