 |
|
Belated
revenge for the humiliation of the Iraq War? Poster for Valley of the
Wolves
Iraq
(Kurtlar Vadisi Irak)
|
The
Turkish action film Valley of the Wolves Iraq is based on an authentic incident
– the detention of Turkish soldiers by American soldiers in Iraq. The action part, however, is not. Critics call the film extremely one-sided,
inflammatory and anti-American.
Even
the German film posters say Kurtlar Vadisi Irak; the German title, Tal der Wölfe,
tends to be nearly impossible to find. In short, the film is about an incident
that took place in
Northern Iraq
in July 2003. An American unit apprehended eleven Turkish soldiers, put bags
over their heads like terror suspects and detained them.
The
eleven soldiers were released again shortly afterwards. And no accusations of
torture were made. But at the time the television images left deep scars, or so
the Turkish-German writer Feridun Zaimoglu believes:
"In
a certain sense, the Turks want to watch this film to experience some on-screen
revenge for the humiliation which they feel, which all of them feel as Muslims,
whether they are real believers or not – for the humiliation in Iraq."
Affronted
by the Behavior of the USA
Traditionally,
relations between the USA
and
Turkey
have been good; there is less anti-American sentiment in Turkey
than in other states in the Islamic world. However, many Turks felt affronted
by the way their NATO ally, the USA, treated the Turkish soldiers: in their eyes, the soldiers were equated with
terrorists.
In
the film, the context for the incident is the Americans' claim to absolute power
in the region. Unable to cope with the stain on the honor of his troop,
Lieutenant Süleyman Aslan commits suicide.
Before
his death, however, he tells secret agent Polat Alemdar about the incident.
Alemdar takes a team to
Northern Iraq
to find the American commander who was to blame and shed some light on the
matter.
Of
course, that is not quite enough for a movie plot. The film also shows American
soldiers marching through Iraq
on a murder spree, abusing innocent people and blowing up the minaret of a
mosque. In the film, the USA
is also involved in trading organs from Iraqi prisoners in the notorious Abu
Ghraib prison, with a Jewish doctor pulling the strings.
America's Lost Credibility
However,
the film also uses shockingly graphic images to condemn suicide bombings and
hostage taking. According to Feridun Zaimoglu, most Turks see the film less as
an action picture than as a way of coping with the incident in Northern Iraq,
which most regarded as profoundly offensive.
"For
the overwhelming majority of Turks, the
America
they believed in, the
America
they knew and loved, lost its credibility in Iraq," says Zaimoglu.
In
Turkey
the film premiered in over 500 movie theaters around the country – on the
first day alone it was viewed by over 370,000 people. Turkish politicians even
referred to the film as a "historic event". The speaker of the Ankara
Parliament, Bülent Arinc, called the film "splendid", and the wife of
Turkey's Prime Minister, Emine Erdogan, publicly congratulated the filmmakers.
*
This
article was originally published on www.qantara.de
and has been republished with permission and without editorial changes.
