Turkey as a “Willing Receiver” of American Soft Power: Hollywood Movies in Turkey during the Cold War

Abstract

Defining the relationship between the US and Turkey as one in which Turkey was a “willing receiver,” this study illuminates the general question of how Turkey's foreign policy orientation is relevant to the analysis of the success of US soft power in Turkey during the Cold War. For this purpose, it focuses on the centrality of Turkey's foreign policy orientation in facilitating the popular reception of Hollywood movies in Turkey by looking at how Turkey interpreted its regulations on films in favor of original or remakes of Hollywood movies. The paper concludes that while setting the scene for both the popularity of American movies and the effective use of US soft power strategies, Turkey's foreign policy orientation had far-reaching consequences for the development of the Turkish movie sector.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Assistant Professor Dr. Nur Bilge Criss for encouraging her to study the subject and Dr. Behice Özlem Gökakın, Dr. Zeyneb Çağlıyan İçener and Berivan Eliş Türkmen for their insightful comments on the earlier drafts of this essay.

Notes

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Özön (1995), p. 54.

For a detailed account of American films examined by the Turkish Board of Censorship and the grounds of decisions from 1950 to 1970, see Nezih Erdoğan and Dilek Kaya, “Institutional Intervention in the Distribution and Exhibition of Hollywood Films in Turkey,” Historical Journal of Film and Television, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2002), pp. 55–8.

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Ali Gevgilili, Çağını Sorgulayan Sinema (İstanbul: Bağlam Yayınları, 1989), p. 276.

Gürata (2007), pp. 333–47.

Özkan Tikveş, Mukayeseli Hukukta ve Türk Hukukunda Sinema Filmlerinin Sansürü (İstanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları, 1968), p. 154; Gürata (2007), p. 345.

Erdoğan and Kaya (2002), p. 52.

Erdoğan and Kaya (2002), p. 53.

Ibid. The IMG was known as the informational side of the Marshall Plan and provided a federal guaranty for Hollywood distributors and producers to get their money if they faced difficulties in receiving payment because buyers could not find US dollars.

Gürata (2007), pp. 333–47.

Giovanni Scognamillo, Türk Sinema Tarihi (1896–1997) (İstanbul: Kabalcı Yayıncılık, 1998).

Nilgün Abisel, Türk Sineması Üzerine Yazılar (Ankara: İmge Kitabevi, 1994), pp. 100–1; Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Dünya Sinema Tarihi (İstanbul: Kabalcı Yayınevi, 2003), p. 741.

Michael Cullingworth, “On a First Viewing of Turkish Cinema,” in Christine Woodhead (ed.), Turkish Cinema: An Introduction (London: SOAS.11, 1989), pp. 11–8.

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Feroz Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 79; Erik Jan Zürcher, “Ottoman Sources of Kemalist Thought,” in Elisabeth Özdalga (ed.), Late Ottoman Society: Intellectual Legacy (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 23.

Kılıçbay and İncirlioğlu (2003), p. 241.

Başak Yeşil, “‘The Rich Girl and the Poor Boy’: Binary Oppositions in Yeşilçam Melodramas” (unpublished Master's thesis, METU, 2004); Behice Pehlivan, “Yesilcam Melodramatic Imagination and Its Influence on the New Turkish Cinema” (unpublished Master's thesis, Sabancı University, 2007).

Nezih Erdoğan, “Ulusal Kimlik, Kolonyal Söylem ve Yeşilçam Melodramı,” Toplum ve Bilim, Vol. 67, No. 3 (1995), p. 183.

Erdoğan (1995), pp. 178–96; Jackie Byars, All that Hollywood Allows: Rereading Gender in 1950s Melodrama (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 107–10; Rogin (1984), pp. 1–36; Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: Patriotism, Movies and the Second World War, from Ninotchka to Mrs. Miniver (New York: Tauris Parke, 2000).

Especially during the 1960s and 1970s, when the search for the fundamentals of Turkish cinema peaked, there were independent attempts to make movies with “national” characteristics, alternative plots and political messages. Such films were called Milli Sinema, and included Yılanların Öcü (1962) and Susuz Yaz (1963), which won the Golden Bear in 1963. Yılmaz Güney's movies have a special place in Turkish filmmaking historiography because of their different stories and storytelling techniques. Güney's Yol (1982), which was banned in Turkey until 2003, shared the Golden Palm Prize with Costa Gavras at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival. It is possible to argue, however, that Milli Sinema never reached the audience as freely as their American-inspired counterparts. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Dünya Sinema Tarihi [The Oxford History of World Cinema] (İstanbul: Kabalcı Yayınevi, 2003), pp. 740–50.

Giovanni Scognamillo and Metin Demirhan, Fantastik Türk Sineması (İstanbul: Kabalcı Yayıncılık, 1999), p. 91.

Savaş Arslan, “Hollywood Alla Turca: A History of Cinema in Turkey” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, 2006).

Scognamillo and Demirhan (1999), the Internet Movie Data Base.

Iain Robert Smith, “The Exorcist in Istanbul: Processes of Transcultural Appropriation within Turkish Popular Cinema,” Portal Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2008), pp. 1–12.

Scognamillo and Demirhan (1999), p. 387.

Directed by Osman F. Seden in 1959. Available at http://www.sinematurk.com/film_genel/3104/Dusman-Yollari-Kesti (accessed February 2, 2011).

Özön (1995), p. 170.

Burçak Evren, Türk Sinemasında Cinsellik ve Erotizm (İstanbul: Ad Yayıncılık, 1995), pp. 26–37.

Melis Behlil, “Close Encounters?: Contemporary Turkish Television and Cinema,” Wide Screen, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2010), p. 2.

Although the Turkish cinema sector will likely not return to its heyday levels due to the proliferation of private television channels signs of the sector's revival began to be seen in the early 1990s and Turkish movies started to gain considerable popularity in the 2000s.