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. 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
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