Fatih Akin presents Law of the Border in Lyon

The theatre is full of people. Even I, with a press pass, have to sit on the floor. I must admit I didn't expect all this success for a Turkish film from French - and especially Lyonnese - people.

Fatih Akin (right) with Thierry Frémaux

It's October 4th. Fatih Akin is here, at the Institut Lumière, in Lyon, at the exact spot where cinema itself was born. The occasion is the Festival Lumière, a huge international event that Lyon people are rightfully proud of. The great German-Turkish film maker is here to present the restored version of Hudutların Kanunu (Law of the Border, 1966). The screenplay was written by Ömer Lüfti Akad, who also directed the movie, and Yilmaz Güney, the Kurdish popular actor and film maker author of the Cannes Palme d'Or winner Yol (1982).

This version of Law of the Border has been released this year by the World Cinema Foundation at Cineteca di Bologna. The restoration "was made possible - the World Cinema Foundation explains - through the use of a positive print provided by Nil Gurpinar, daughter of the film’s producer, and held by the Turkish Ministry of Culture. As this print is the only known copy to survive the Turkish Coup d’Etat in 1980 – all other film sources were seized and destroyed – the restoration required a considerable amount of both physical and digital repair. The surviving print was extremely dirty, scratched, filled with mid-frame splices and sadly missing several frames. Although the film was shot in black and white, it was also printed on color stock resulting in significant decay. The restoration work produced a new 35mm dupe negative".  It's pretty much what Fatih Akin tells us, adding that a full 15-second scene is missing as well.

Akin is introduced to the audience by Thierry Frémaux, manager of the Institut Lumière where the film is shown. When Frémaux thanks all the Turks present in the theater, the room is shaken by clapping and roaring. Which explains the success of this event.

Akin explain why this film is so important: "Before this movie Turkish cinema was just a sort of fairy tale cinema, with white skinned Turks and blond women. Law of the Border was the first film to show real Turks".

The role of the main character is played by Güney himself: "The film gives you an idea on how and why the Kurdish question started - continues Akin. - Güney was born here, and put much of his story in it".

Silence now. The film starts. And it is powerful.

The new French war on religion

It's the title of a column (hereby linked) published on April 15 on Hürriyet on line. The article could be the usual attack by a Muslim to a Western country, but when a Turk attacks France the issue is always larger than that, and in this specific case the author, Mustafa Akyol, shows a remarkably moderate tone, he makes his point without shouting, and with a certain amount of criticism towards Turkey itself.

The issue is, ça va sans dire, as follows:

The burqa, the all-covering face veil, which is worn by very few women in France, is now banned by law. So, French policemen are fining veiled women, or, far worse, dragging them to their headquarters to admonish them about the right way of life.

And Akyol's point is:

Meanwhile the zestful president of the French Republic, Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy, is enlightening us about the virtues of this ban. It is for upholding "French values of equality and secularism," he says. I bet it is. The problem is that those "French values" do not seem to honor the right be left alone from government interference. Alas, they even justify a tyranny, which mirrors that of the Taliban: while those Afghan despots force women to put the burqa on, their French counterparts force them to take it off.
Now, what you and I think about the burqa does not matter here. In fact, I am among those who believe that it is a bad medieval tradition, which has nothing to do with Islam, and should better be abandoned. So, if the women in that excessive veil asked my opinion, I would advise them to take it off, too. But advice is the furthest point that I, and anybody else, can legitimately go. We cannot use state powers to "liberate" those women from what they wear out of their genuine convictions – just like the fact that an ideological nudist cannot claim to forcefully "liberate" us from our shirts, pants and underwear.

The attack to Sarkozy goes even farther than that:

Mr. Sarkozy, whose il-liberalism is only matched by his arrogance, heralds even more fronts in this culture war. He says he wants “no halal food options in school canteens, no prayers outside and no minarets.” Just replace the word “halal” with “kosher” here, and the “minaret” with “star of David.” You will get the poisonous French anti-Semitism of a century ago – the times of Captain Dreyfus. The difference today is just the change in the composition of the hated Semites – now they are the Arabs, and, by extension, all Muslims.

For a country where anti-Semitism is a sort of taboo (you might end up being label as "anti-Semitic" just by criticizing Israeli's politics), this is quite a blow.

But here comes the real issue, the one that Turks are sick of having to swallow all the time:

We in Turkey very well know that this rampant Islamophobia in France is the main reason why the majority of French society is categorically against Turkey’s accession into the European Union. That’s why we are not terribly impressed by the French critiques of our democracy, such as Ms. Marland-Militello, the parliamentarian who questioned Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on religious freedom in Turkey in Strasbourg early this week. Erdoğan’s rhetoric was indeed a bit harsh in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, or PACE, meeting, and a few of his arguments were really not convincing. But his reaction to the self-righteous and overbearing attitude Turks have being facing from some Europeans, especially the French, was understandable.

Here comes now the self-criticism, and the reason why every attack to France from Turkey, and vice versa is more like the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

We in Turkey are also realizing these days that some of our misfortunes in the past century stem from our big mistake of taking France as a beacon of modernity. We imported the fanatically anti-religious laicite of the Third French Republic, which not only brought oppression to our believers, but also paranoia to our seculars. Similarly, we imported the assimilation-focused nationalism of successive French Republics, and were drawn into a madness that our Ottoman ancestors would have never dreamed of: banning languages and cultures other than Turkish. Hence we created our own “Kurdish problem.”

Read the rest of it here.

Turkey going nuclear: is it wise after what happened in Japan?

I have just stumbled into this article:

Turkey reportedly plans to decide as early as this month the winner of a nuclear power plant tender. Japan had been seen ahead of its rival South Korea in the race.
As Turkey is also prone to earthquakes, the Japanese government and companies made a strong appeal based on their own quake-resistance technology. Although South Korea had enjoyed an early lead in the bidding race, Japan reversed the tide by signing a document with Turkey in December to cooperate in the development of human resources and other areas for the construction of nuclear power plants in Turkey.
But Friday's earthquake likely will cast a shadow over Japan's bid to take part in the Turkey project, sources said.

So, Turkey is going nuclear. Is it wise, knowing what just happened in Japan, a conscientious and prepared country? Turkey is one of the most seismic places in the world. While right now in France - the second biggest nuclear country in the world after the US - the discussion on the safety of nuclear installations is raging, the European Parliament on March 9th released a not-so-flattering report about Turkey where, among other things, it "Considers it regrettable that no progress has been made on limiting the immunities of Members of Parliament in respect of corruption-related offences", which sounds creepy, considering the role corruption often plays in tenders attribution. Even more creepy is the fact that Turkey has a long tradition as terrorism-striken country.

Will the Japan tsunami sweep away Turkey's dreams of nuclear glory? Will the civil society react? Or will the Turkish government just go on with its projects - just as it is doing with the GAP project in Southern-Eastern Anatolia -, ignoring the dissenting voices inside and outside the country, in the name of energy leadership in the region?

We'll try to understand it next week, at the International Tourism and Media Conference in Bursa, where we are going to meet, among others, the Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız. Keep following us.

French genocide bill prompts Turkey to suspend pipeline talks

From the International Herald Tribune:

ANKARA: Turkey has suspended talks with Gaz de France over a pipeline project that would bring Caspian natural gas to Europe in reaction to a French bill on the mass killings of Armenians during Ottoman rule, senior Turkish energy officials told Reuters on Thursday.

Nabucco is a 4.6-billion euro ($6.14 billion) project to transport natural gas from Turkey to Austria, passing through Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. The planned pipeline would reduce Europe's dependency on Russian gas.

France angered Ankara last year when its national assembly passed a bill making it a crime to deny that the mass killings of Armenians during the fall of the Ottoman Empire amounted to genocide.

"We will suspend partnership by Gaz de France until the French presidential elections. We will decide according to policies to be followed after the elections," a senior energy ministry official, who declined to be named, said.

Full story

Journalists Without Borders ranks Turkey 100th in "media freedom"

According to the Paris-based media organization "Journalists Without Borders," Turkey ranks 100th in the world in the arena of "freedom in the media." A list published yesterday by Journalists Without Borders puts Finland, Iceland, Ireland, and the Netherlands in a tie for first place in this category. Other noteable placements on the list were Armenia, which ranked immediately before Turkey at 99, and Denmark, which gained notoriety for the caricature crisis earlier in the year: Danish media ranked 20th. The US was ranked at 56th, while North Korea came in last at 168.

Full article (Hürriyet)

See also:

• A prize affair - Orhan Pamuk, the French parliament and the Armenian massacres (The Economist)
• Freedom of expression and the European Union (Zaman)
• Pamuk is not invited for the October 29 (Sabah)
• All eyes turn to observe trial of Sumerian expert in Turkey (Hürriyet)
• French Radio Halts Broadcasting in Turkish (Zaman)
• TÜSİAD invites Armenian businessmen to Istanbul (Turkish Daily News)
• Freedom of speech under continuing attack in Turkey (IndyBay)