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TURKEY'S
REPRESSION OF THE KURDS LAUNCHES A JOURNEY THROUGH HELL
The title of the film Journey to the Sun
(Günese Yoculuk) describes a trek by a young
Turkish man, Mehmet (played by Newroz Baz), with the body
of his Kurdish friend Berzan (played by Nazmi Quirix) from
the European side of Istanbul to Zorduc, a Kurdish village
near the Iraqi border. Although he takes various modes of
transportation (truck, train, bus, and horsecart), the story
is not really about the trek but instead about why he takes
the journey and what he sees. Kurds, including refugees from
Iraq, inhabit villages in the southeastern part of Turkey,
though many are assimilated if marginally employed into the
life of Istanbul. Some Kurdish villagers have become terrorists
in response to Turkish repression, which in turn has prompted
a westward migration of Kurds toward Istanbul. News stories
in the background of the film focus on a hunger strike of
imprisoned Kurds, framing the story. Mehmet has a Turkish
girlfriend, Arzu (played by Mizgin Kapazan); she and her parents
have returned as guestworkers from Germany. Mehmet works for
the city’s water department, identifying leaky pipes. One
night, as he walks along with Berzan, a young crowd of Turks
begins to attack a Kurdish motorist; when they believe that
the two friends are both Kurds, they try to defend themselves
and then run for their lives. Later, Mehmet is on a bus. A
bag next to him on the bus, left by a passenger who ran off
on seeing a police checkpoint, contains a gun. Mehmet is then
arrested, roughed up by police during a week of interrogation
(though more gently than in the 1978 film Midnight
Express), evicted from a one-room apartment, fired
by his employer because of the arrest, and shunned by Arzu’s
parents. After his release, Berzan helps Mehmet to find employment
and shelter. However, while interrogated, Mehmet is forced
to give information about who gave him his various possessions,
and in due course the police track down Berzan, who gave him
a free music cassette after the incident with the anti-Kurdish
crowd.
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Berzan then dies during interrogation, as he is a member of
the Kurdish terrorist underground. Nevertheless, Mehmet then
feels obligated out of friendship to take the body from the
morgue to Berzan’s hometown. En route, he sees the results
of the scorched-earth policy of the Turkish government toward
entire Kurdish communities. Mehmet, thus, plays the role of
a Turkish innocent who discovers what is really happening
to the Kurds in Turkey. One scene shows tanks entering a town,
looking for targets; other scenes show the results. Directed
and written by Yesim Ustaoglu and financed by Western European
sources, Journey to the Sun is a stinging indictment
of the Turkish government’s persecution of the Kurds, in stark
contrast with the idyllic picture in Steam
(1998). At the beginning of Journey to the Sun,
we see the Grand Mosque and the beauty of Istanbul, but by
the end of the film we have viewed cows grazing on a dump
where the poor scavenge for treasure, prostitutes, pushcart
hawkers, the poverty of the slums and the countryside, and
the desperate methods of the government, frightening even
small children carrying banned newspapers. Despite Turkey’s
ambition to join the European Union, Journey to the
Sun portrays an unacceptable level of police brutality
and human rights violations of the Kurds, yet censors allowed
filming in Turkey. Accordingly, Journey to the Sun
is the first film of 2001 to be nominated by the Political
Film Society for best film exposé, best film on human rights,
and best film on peace. MH
A
SCREENPLAY OF THE CANING OF MICHAEL FAY IS RELEASED ON THE
WEB
The
Caning, a screenplay by Michael Haas, is now available
for downloading on www.sgbooks.org.
Although the screenplay will probably never be made into a
film, the text provides new insights into why the American
teenager was unjustly punished in 1994 for a crime that he
did not commit in a repressive Southeast Asian country.
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