link link 2 Audiences cheer film's anti-U.S. message By Nicholas Birch THE WASHINGTON TIMES February 15, 2006 ISTANBUL -- A new film riding on a wave of anti-Americanism is attracting record audiences in Turkey and has drawn approving comments from the wife of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Gum-chewing U.S. soldiers shoot Iraqis in cold blood at a wedding in one scene from the movie. In another scene, set at that the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, a Jewish-American doctor harvests Iraqi prisoners' kidneys for sale to Israel and the West. "What this film shows is that the Americans won't always have it their way," said Serdar Yagci, a student outside a theater in central Istanbul. Minutes earlier, he had been one of many in the audience who stood up and cheered when the film's dour hero, Turkish agent Polat Alemdar, tracked down and killed a villainous U.S. Army officer who said he was guided by God. "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq" fictionalizes the arrests of members of a Turkish military mission in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2003. Suspected of plotting to assassinate a Kurdish politician, the 11 men had sacks placed over their heads by U.S. soldiers before being taken to Baghdad for questioning. In real life, Turks could do nothing but fume at what they perceived as a grave insult to their country's most respected institution: the army. In the film, Alemdar takes single-handed revenge on the perpetrators of the slight before bringing peace to Iraq. "It sounds laughable -- an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a sack for sack," wrote Alin Tasciyan, one of several critics to pan the film for its "clunky, didactic dialogue" and bad acting. "Valley of the Wolves" is not the work of independents or amateurs. With a budget of $10 million, it's the biggest-spending Turkish film in history. The international cast includes Hollywood actor Billy Zane of "Titanic." Within three days of its release, the movie had been seen by 1.2 million people, a 40 percent increase on the previous viewing record. At a gala performance earlier this month, the actors rubbed shoulders with Turkey's elite. "I feel so proud of them all," said Emine Erdogan, wife of the prime minister, comfortably ensconced in a seat next to the actor playing Alemdar. Although Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul insisted that the film was no worse than some of the productions of Hollywood studios, Turkish parliament leader Bulent Arinc praised its "realism." U.S. officials in Turkey laugh off the significance of the film, but a senior Washington official interviewed by the Turkish daily Milliyet last week expressed concern about its success in a secular Muslim country with a U.S. alliance since the early 1950s. "Can you imagine the first lady or the head of the House of Representatives going to the gala performance of a film that could incite anti-Turkish feeling among Americans?" the official asked. "Wolves" has caused a media/blogging stormlet because of its timely setting (Northern Iraq), because two "name" U.S. actors (Billy ZaneBilly Zane, Gary Busey) play the American villains, and because the pic is getting more than normal exposure through the overseas Turkish circuit. interesting.....
Screw Turkey. They should have kept their asses out of Iraq. They weren't asked to be there and in fact were warned not to intrude.
The US actually asked Turkey to allow US troops to enter Iraq from the north and offered a lot of aid and loans. Turkey turned the US down. A destabalized Iraq is not exactly making life easy for anybody over there, especially nations they share borders with. But, yeah, screw Turkey...
Big deal! By now, almost every nation in the world has had a few anti-American movies/books out. Turkey is no exception.
Remember all those American movies from the 80's where the Russians and/or the Vietnamese were always the bad guys? And now the TV shows always have Arabs as the bad guys... It stands to reason that Americans are being cast as the bad guys in some other country's films.
America had recently fought a war against Vietnam, and was involved in the Cold War with the Soviet Union in the '80s. America has recently been fighting a war against an Arab insurgency in Iraq and a terrorist group led by an Arab. It stands to reason that those would be the villains used in the movies, just as the Germans and Japanese were used during/after WWII. On the other hand Turkey is allied with the US, so it is odd that the Americans would be the enemy in a Turkish film, just like it would be odd to have the British be the enemy in an American film.
I don't think the Turkish government has much say in what movies are produced. But yes, you're right, each society has the tendency to portray those whom they dislike in a negative light. Reality today is that most countries in the world (democratic or not, Western or not) view the USA in a bad light, so it comes as no surprise that their movies/books/newspapers would reflect that sentiment.
