Crossroads (1970) and the origin of Islamic Cinema in Turkey

Abstract

This article focuses on Birleşen Yollar/Crossroads (Yücel Çakmaklı, 1970), which pioneered the Islamic National Cinema Movement in Turkey. The film discursively constructed Turkish secularist modernization as cosmetic Westernization and promoted the Islamic way of life as the only means to true happiness—a popular theme of Islamic cinema in the late 1980s and 1990s. Although the film-makers discursively posited it as an ‘alternative’ film, they followed the narrative conventions of melodrama, the most popular genre of the time. Moreover, they worked with famous mainstream stars. In other words, the film-makers chose to communicate the then marginal message of Islamism by reconfiguring and Islamicizing the mainstream rather than rejecting it all together. In this respect, Crossroads was an early example of the Islamist project to Islamicize modernity in Turkey that would gain momentum in the 1990s. The article attempts to reconstruct the film’s historical and continuing significance by locating it within a broader discursive context and by exploring its historical development from its production through to its passage through censorship and public reception. The article also discusses the continuities between the film’s discourse and current debates on secularism and Islamism in Turkey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Kenan Çayır, Islamic Literature in Contemporary Turkey From Epic to Novel (New York, 2007); Hilmi Maktav, ‘Kuran’dan kuram’a İslami sinema [Islamic Cinema from Koran to Theory]’, in Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce: İslamcılık [Political Thought in Modern Turkey: Islamism], ed. Tanıl Bora and Murat Gültekingil (Istanbul, 2004), 989–1019; and Seda Özdemir, ‘Modern müminin kodları, simgeleri: Türkiye’de İslami sinema [The Codes and Symbols of the Modern Believer: Islamic Cinema in Turkey]’, in Türk Sağı: mitler, fetişler, düşman imgeleri [The Turkish Right: Myths, Fetishes, and the Images of the Enemy], ed. İnci Özkan Kerestecioğlu and Güven Gürkan Öztan, (İstanbul, 2012), 377–406.

2. Yeşilçam is the name of a street in the Beyoğlu district of Istanbul where film companies were located. The term refers both to a locality and to a mode of mainstream film production.

3. For various case studies on the Islamicization of modernity in 1990s Turkey, see Nilüfer Göle, ed., İslamın Yeni Kamusal Yüzleri [The New Public Faces of Islam] (Istanbul, 2000). See also Ayşe Öncü, ‘The Banal and the Subversive: Politics of Language on Turkish Television’, European Journal of Cultural Studies 3 (1995): 296–318; Ayşe Saktanber, ‘We Pray Like You Have Fun’: New Islamic Youth in Turkey Between İntellectualism and Popular Culture’, in Fragments of Culture: the everyday of modern Turkey, ed. Deniz Kandiyoti and Ayşe Saktanber (London, 2002), 254–76; and Yael Navaro-Yashin, ‘The Market for İdentities: Secularism, Islamism, Commodities’, in ed. Kandiyoti and Saktanber, 221–53.

4. Maktav considers Crossroads an example of National Cinema, which he claims, is different from the Islamic cinema of the 1990s.

5. Umut Azak, Islam and Secularism in Turkey: Kemalism, Religion, and the Nation State (London, 2010).

6. H. Bayram Kaçmazoğlu, Demokrat Parti Dönemi Toplumsal Tartışmaları [Public Debates of the Democrat Party Era] (Istanbul, 1988); Şaban Sitembölükbaşı, Türkiye’de İslâm’ın Yeniden İnkişafı (1950–1960) [Redevelopment of Islam in Turkey (1950–1960)] (Ankara, 1995); and Muzaffer Taşyürek, İslamın Sisli Yılları [The Misty Years of Islam] (İstanbul, 1995).

7. Article 163 of the Penal Code of 1926 and its 1949 amendment imposed prison sentences for the founding of associations which aimed at applying religious principles to the social, political or judicial systems. It also spelled out sanctions for abusing religion as a means of political propaganda [Binnaz Toprak, Islam and Polictical Development in Turkey (Leiden, 1981), 154; Sulhi Dönmezer, ‘Dini cemiyet teşkili ve din propagandası (ceza kanununun 163. Maddesinin analizi) [Religious Society Organization and Religious Propaganda (the Analysis of the 163rd Article of the Penal Code)]’, İ.Ü. Hukuk Fakültesi Mecmuası [İ.Ü. Faculty of Law Journal] 17 (1951): 24–43]. Articles 241 and 242 of the Turkish Penal Code also dealt with prohibitions on the use of religion for political purposes. Furthermore, Article 9 of the Law of Associations (Cemiyetler Kanunu), enacted in 1938, outlawed all associations formed on ‘principles of religion, creed, and religious orders’.

8. Gökhan Çetinsaya, ‘İslamcılıktaki milliyetçilik [Nationalism in Islamism]’, in ed. Bora and Gültekingil, 420–68.

9. The term ‘millet’ originally referred to religious communities (such as Jewish millet, Greek millet or Armenian millet) recognized by the Ottoman sultan and who lived under his dominion while keeping their autonomy in their communal affairs. The meaning of the term was transformed with the emergence of Turkish nationalism as a reaction to rising waves of separatist nationalism within these religious communities. The term gradually began to refer to the ‘Turkish nation’ imagined as both Muslim and Turkish speaking since the era of Young Turks, whose nationalist policies of demographic engineering contributed to reshaping the Anatolian population in the 1910s for the sake of creating an ethnically and religiously homogenous nation.

10. Gönül Dönmez-Colin remarks that Milli Cinema was actually İslamic (Islamist) Cinema, but that it was against the law to state this ‘truth’ openly. Kadın, İslam ve Sinema [Woman, Islam, and Cinema], trans. Deniz Koç (Istanbul, 2005), 50–1.

11. Tarık Zafer Tunaya, İslâmcılık Akımı [The Movement of Islamism] (Istanbul, 2003), 176–89.

12. Translation is ours. Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, ‘Bunlar mektep ve aile kızlarımızdır [These are our School and Family Girls]’, Büyük Doğu [The Great East] 31 (1946): 18. Also quoted in Cihan Aktaş, Tanzimattan Günümüze Kılık Kıyafet ve İktidar 1 [Dress and Power from Tanzimat to Today 1] (İstanbul, 1989), 204. Kısakürek’s obsession with women’s legs had begun much earlier, as reflected in his poem ‘Kadın Bacakları [Woman Legs]’ which ends with these lines: ‘kör olsam da açılır gözüm, ona sürseler/isa'nın eli diye, bir kadın bacağını’ (even if I were blind, my eyes would see again if a woman’s leg would touch them instead of Jesus’s hand).

13. Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, ‘Beyaz perde [White Screen]’, Büyük Doğu [The Great East] 1 (1943): 9; Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, ‘Beyaz perde [White Screen]’, Büyük Doğu [The Great East] 2 (1943): 9; and Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, ‘Beyaz perde [White Screen]’, Büyük Doğu [The Great East] 3 (1943): 9.

14. Şerif Mardin, ‘Super Westernization in Urban Life in the Ottoman Empire in the Last Quarter of the Nineteenth Century’, in Turkey: Geographic and Social Perspectives, ed. Peter Benedict (Leiden, 1974), 403–46.

15. Nijat Özön, Karagözden Sinemaya: Türk sineması ve sorunları 1 [From Karagöz to Cinema: Turkish cinema and its problems 1] (Ankara, 1995), 388.

16. For examples of this type of criticism, see the issues of Yeni Sinema (New Cinema) journal throughout the 1960s. See, for example, Nijat Özön, ‘Türk sinemasına eleştirmeli bir bakış [A Critical Review of Turkish Cinema]’, Yeni Sinema [New Cinema] 3 (1966): 12 and Ali Gevgilili, ‘Çağdaş sinema karşısında Türk sineması [Turkish Cinema with Respect to Contemporary Cinema]’, Yeni Sinema [New Cinema] 3 (1966): 17.

17. Among the exemplary films of the Movement of Social Realism are Gecelerin Ötesi/Over the Nights (Metin Erksan, 1960), Gurbet Kuşları/Birds of Nostalgia (Halit Refiğ, 1963), Karanlıkta Uyananlar/Those Awakening in the Dark (Ertem Göreç, 1965) and Bitmeyen Yol/The Unending Road (Duygu Sağıroğlu, 1965).

18. Yücel Çakmaklı, ‘Milli sinema ihtiyacı [The need for Milli Cinema]’, Tohum [The Seed] 11 (1964): 3.

19. Salih Diriklik, Fleşbek: Türk sinema—TV’sinde İslami endişeler ve çizgi dışı oluşumlar [Flashback: Islamic Anxieties and Unconventional Formations in Turkish Cinema and TV] (Istanbul, 1995), 21.

20. Akif Can, ‘Oynatılan bir film hakkında: Gavur İmam (İmamın Gazabı) [About a Film Exhibition: The Infidel Imam (The Wrath of Imam)]’, Tohum [The Seed] 31 (1967): 28–9; Akif Can, ‘İslamın emrinde sinema [Cinema at the Service of Islam]’, Tohum [The Seed] 32 (1967): 26–7; Yücel Hekimoğlu, ‘Sinema silahtır [Cinema is a Weapon]’, İslam Medeniyeti [Islamic Civilization] 1 (1967): 36–7; and İhsan Koloğlu [Ali Emirosmanoğlu], ‘Sinema ve cemiyet’, İslam Medeniyeti [Islamic Civilization] 16 (1968): 43–4.

21. For example, see Salih Gökmen’s essay that debates the prohibition of visuality in Islam and discusses how a ‘moral cinema’ can serve ‘holy interests’. ‘Dini görüş açısından sinema [Cinema from a Religious Perspective]’, Tohum [The Seed] 67 (1972): 34–5.

22. Çakmaklı avoided social-reality directors because, he explains, he did not want to be influenced by their Marxism. Bilim ve Sanat Vakfı, ‘Yücel Çakmaklı ile Milli Sinema üzerine [Yücel Çakmaklı on Milli Cinema]’, Notlar [Notes] 8 (2008): 15.

23. Büşra Sönmezışık, Sinemacı olmak için fetva aldım [I received a Fetva (Religious Permission) to become a Filmmaker], Yeni Şafak [New Dawn], 18 January 2009, http://yenisafak.com.tr/Pazar/?t=25.01.2009&i=163469#.

24. Diriklik, Fleşbek, 26; M. Nedim Hazar, ‘Tevazuun dizginlediği bir cesur yürek: Yücel Çakmaklı [A Brave Hearth Restrained by Modesty: Yücel Çakmaklı]’, Aksiyon [Action] 769 (2009).

25. ‘Film hikayesi yarışması [Film Story Contest]’, İslam Medeniyeti [Islamic Civilization] 15 (1968): 40.

26. Burçak Evren, ‘Milli Sinema’nın isim babası: Yücel Çakmaklı [Name-father of Milli Cinema: Yücel Çakmaklı]’, Antrakt [Entr'acte] 72 (2003): 23.

27. Diriklik, Fleşbek [Flashback], 30.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid., 31.

30. Ibid., 37.

31. Muharrem Coşkun, Şule Yüksel Şenler ‘gerçekleri’ anlattı [Şule Yüksel Şenler told the ‘Truths’], Akit [Contract], 7 February 2008. www.belgehaber.com/haber.pfp?haber_id=3753.

32. Hatice Babacan, the aunt of Ali Babacan (the current Deputy Prime Minister for Economic and Financial Affairs), was the first woman who had attempted to attend Şenler’s course with her headscarf at the Theology Faculty of Ankara University in February 1968. Two students of the same faculty were also expelled from the school in April 1968.

33. Emine Erdoğan gözyaşlarını tutamadı [Emine Erdoğan could not Stop her Tears]. Internet Haber [Internet News], 19 October 2012. http://www.internethaber.com/emine-erdogan-basbakan-recep-tayyip-huzur-sokagi-sule-yuksel-senler-turgev-kiz-o-470044h.htm.

34. Ali Osman Emirosmanoğlu, ‘Elif Film yolculuğunda Yücel Çakmaklı [Yücel Çakmaklı in the Journey of Elif Film]’, in Türk Sinemasında Yerli Arayışlar [Domestic Pursuits in Turkish Cinema], ed. Abdurrahman Şen (Ankara, 2010), 303.

35. Çayır, 35.

36. Bilim ve Sanat Vakfı, 19–20.

37. Diriklik, Fleşbek [Flashback], 44. Çakmaklı explains that Şoray did not accept his offer immediately due to the issue of the veil and that it took her six months to accept the role. For details, see Bilim ve Sanat Vakfı, 38–9 and Mustafa Doğan, ‘Kendi dilinden Yücel Çakmaklı ve sineması [Yücel Çakmaklı on his own Cinema]’, in Şen, 354.

38. Ertan Tunç, Türk Sinemasının Ekonomik Yapısı [The Economic Structure of Turkish Cinema] (Istanbul, 2012), 92–7.

39. In 1967, Şoray was paid 50,000 TL per film and her annual income from films amounted to 650,000. Two other famous female stars of the time, Hülya Koçyiğit and Fatma Girik, were each paid 30,000 TL per film. See Tunç, 100.

40. Doğan, 354–5.

41. Diriklik, Fleşbek [Flashback], 37, 86.

42. Bilim ve Sanat Vakfı, 26 and Tunç, 122.

43. Diriklik, Fleşbek [Flashback], 45 and Emirosmanoğlu, 305.

44. Çakmaklı explained his attraction towards melodrama as follows: ‘this [melodrama] is not a conscious choice. It is rather an outcome of my personal character. Turkish society is an eastern society. It is a painful society; a society that had forgotten to laugh. It is a society that is familiar with pain and suffering. Melodrama, as a traditional attitude, exists in our arts’. Atilla Dorsay, ‘Yücel Çakmaklı ile konuşma [Interview with Yücel Çakmaklı]’, in Sinematek/Eskişehir İtia, ed. Yılmaz Güney, Yücel Çakmaklı, Ömer Kavur, Süreyya Duru ile Konuşmalar (Eskişehir, 1975), 44.

45. For further discussion of Turkish melodramas of the 60s and 70s see Nezih Erdoğan, ‘Narratives of Resistance: National Identity and Ambivalence in Turkish Melodrama Between 1965 and 1975’, Screen 3 (1998): 259–71; Dilek Kaya Mutlu, ‘Between Tradition and Modernity: Yeşilçam Melodrama, its Stars, and Their Audiences’, Middle Eastern Studies 3 (2010): 417–31; and Barış Kılıçbay and Emine Onaran İncirlioğlu, ‘Interrupted Happiness: Class Boundaries and ‘The Impossible Love’ in Turkish Melodrama’, Ephemera: Critical Dialogues in Organization 3 (2003): 236–49.

46. Diriklik, Fleşbek, 38.

47. Maktav, 990.

48. Gülcan Tezcan, ‘Yeşilçam’da milli bakışın mimarı: Yücel Çakmaklı’, in Şen, 323.

49. Diriklik, Fleşbek [Flashback], 39.

50. For several case studies on this topic, see Nilüfer Göle, ed., Islamın Yeni Kamusal Yüzleri [The New Public Faces of Islam] (Istanbul, 2000).

51. For a broad discussion of film censorship in Turkey in the 60s and 70s, see Dilek Kaya, ‘Film Censorship During the Golden Era of Turkish Cinema’, in Silencing Cinema: Film Censorship Around the World, ed. Daniel Biltereyst and Roel Vande Winkel (London, 2013), 131–46.

52. For a detailed discussion of censorship of religion in Turkish films, see Dilek Kaya Mutlu and Zeynep Koçer, ‘A Different Story of Secularism: The Censorship of Religious Elements in Turkish Films of the 1960s and Early 1970s’, European Journal of Cultural Studies 1 (2012): 71–89.

53. Turkish Ministry of Culture, Directorate General of Cinema, Film Censorship Files, 91122/4818.

54. Mustafa Uzun, ‘Türk sinemasında bizden çizgiler: Birleşen Yollar [Our Traces in Turkish Cinema: Birleşen Yollar]’, Tohum [The Seed] 59 (1971): 25–7; Salih Gökmen, ‘Birleşen Yollar’, in Bugünkü Türk sineması [Turkish Cinema Today] (Istanbul, 1973), 125–7.

55. A. Salih Diriklik, ‘Milli sinema [Milli cinema]’, Tohum [The Seed] 60 (1971): 25.

56. Salih Gökmen, ‘Geçen mevsimin filimleri [The Films of the Past Season]’, Tohum [The Seed] 62 (1971): 30.

57. Ergun Göze, ‘Bir Türk filmi [A Turkish film]’, Tercüman [Interpreter], 26 February 1971, 5.

58. Kami Suveren, ‘Haftanın filmleri: Birleşen Yollar [The Films of the Week: Birleşen Yollar]’, Son Havadis [The Latest News], 26 February 1971, 6.

59. Quoted in Sezai Solelli, ‘Yine yerli filmlere dair [On Domestic Films Again]’, Ses [Sound] 10 (1971): 10.

60. Ibid.

61. Quoted in Sezai Solelli, ‘Birleşen Yollar hakkında [On Birleşen Yollar]’, Ses [Sound] 16 (1971): 10.

62. Ibid.

63. ^’Birleşen Yollar TRT’de geçen haftanın da başlıca konusu idi [Birleşen Yollar was the Prime Topic of Past Week too]’, Cumhuriyet [Republic], 9 February 1976, 10.

64. Aygören Dirim, ‘Televizyon’da Birleşen Yollar ve yasaklamalar [Birleşen Yollar on TV and Prohibitions]’, Akşam [Evening], 23 January 1976, 8; Tekin Erer, ‘Fesat Kutusu [Box of Malice]’, Son Havadis [The Latest News], 25 January 1976, 3; ‘TV’de gösterilen iki filmi savcı bilirkişiye verdi [The Prosecutor Submitted Two Films on TV to Experts]’, Milliyet [Nationality], 13 January 1976, 1, 9; and ‘TV’de yayından kaldırılan filmin görülmeden yasaklandığı saptandı [It is Determined that the Film was Banned on TV without being seen]’, Milliyet [Nationality], 9 January 1976, 1, 10.

65. ‘Televizyon’da sansür hatası mı? [Mistake of Censorship on TV?].’ Cumhuriyet [Republic], 11 January 1976, 10.

66. Aygören Dirim, 8.

67. Mümtaz Soysal, ‘Ayrılan yollar [Splitting Roads]’, Milliyet [Nationality], 3 February1976, 2.

68. Çağatay Okutan, Bozkurt’tan Kur‘an’a MTTB [MTTB from Bozkurt to Koran] (Istanbul, 2004).

69. MTTB Sinema Kulübü, Milli sinema: açık oturum [Milli Cinema: Panel] (Istanbul, 1973).

70. Mesut Uçakan, Türk sinemasında ideoloji [Ideology in Turkish Cinema] (Istanbul, 1977), 163, 165–6 and Diriklik, Fleşbek [Flashback], 86.

71. Quoted in Diriklik, Fleşbek [Flashback], 87.

72. Salih Gökmen [Diriklik], ‘Milli sinemanın muhasebesi [An Account of Milli Cinema]’, Milli Gençlik [Milli Youth] 4 (1975): 45–6.

73. Quoted in Maktav, 995.

74. The Bridge of Youth tells the story of six youth representing different social circles. While the film condemns those who have adopted westernized/‘degenerate’ life styles as well as the leftist youth, it idealizes those youth who have adopted an Islamic way of life.

75. Salih Gökmen [Diriklik], ‘Mücadele sineması [Cinema of Struggle]’, Milli Gençlik [Milli Youth] 12 (1976): 62–4.

76. Diriklik, Fleşbek [Flashback], 176.

77. For an overview of Islamic cinema in the post-1990 period, see Yalçın Lüleci, Türk Sineması ve Din [Turkish Cinema and Religion] (Istanbul, 2009), 92–5.

78. Maktav and Özdemir.

79. Serkan Akkoç, ‘Başbakan Çakmaklı'nın cenazesine katıldı [The Prime Minister attended Çakmaklı's Funeral]’, Hürriyet [Freedom], 25 August 2009.

80. Fethi Açıkel, ‘Kutsal mazlumluğun psikopatolojisi [Psychopathology of the Holy Synthesis]’, Toplum ve Bilim [Society and Science] 70 (1996): 191.

81. In June 2013, Turkey experienced the largest popular revolt against the government in its Republican history, starting in Gezi Park in the centre of Istanbul and quickly spreading all over Turkey. The Gezi Park protest arose from a spontaneous grassroots environmentalist opposition to the prime minister’s construction plans in the Park and turned into a mass movement, reacting to the extreme violence of the police force. Various groups (from anarchists to Kemalists, liberals to Marxists and anti-capitalist Muslims, feminists to gay and lesbian groups) came together in Gezi Park (and beyond) to resist the increasingly authoritarian and top-down rule of the AKP, which has been in power since 2002. In turn, they were exposed to more police violence fuelled by the prime minister’s speeches which attempted to frame protestors as a minority group in conflict with the ‘nation’ and the ‘national will’. The June 2013 protests all over the country were also a reaction against such a homogeneous and antagonistic view of society, which has its roots in a discourse shared by both nationalist and Islamist ideologies.