C OPINION The Michigan Daily Page 4 Wednesday, February 15, 1984 0 Irony and imprisonment in Turkey By Nilufer Hayat Yilmaz Guney's Yol, perhaps one of the most controversial films ever made, was at long last shown onour campus a week-and-a-half ago. The panel discussion and. the floor debate that followed the showing, however, fell far short of fulfilling this declared goal of bringing to the attention of the audience some of theubtler points that hake the film a stunning piece of art ,and social analysis - points which are easily lost to an audience unfamiliar With the language and the cultural set- ing. Yol was written and directed by uney while he was in prison in Turkey. it was filmed in Turkey and smuggled Pout of the country piece by piece. After ,his escape from prison, and eventually from Turkey, Guney edited the film in Europe, where it was first released. It subsequently shared the "Palme d'Or" ,ward with Gavras' Missing at the 1982 ;.annes Film Festival, and was viewed py large audiences all over the world parrying with it the atmosphere of con- troversy and electric tension that was deeply felt by the University audience ipn Saturday. "BUT WHY the tension? one might ask. To those of us who have an in- timate understanding of Turkish reality, it was not at all unexpected. Af- 4er all, in the words of a University an- $hropologist who has been working in South-Eastern Turkey for years, "the 'film is controversial, and so is Turkey." This article is meant as a film review. Although much can be said about the :political situation in Turkey, none of ,which, incidentally, would have been grrelevant or out of place considering Guney's overall political stance, I will restrict myself to the very difficult task of interpreting some of the socio- political implications of the film, in -Which not even the smallest detail was oarbitrary or trivial. The film traces five convicts who are granted a week's leave from the Imrali open prison to visit their families, through their journey across Turkey, and all the way to their respective homes. Guney gives us a glimpse of a human reality so harsh and unrelenting that the audience is left with a strong desire to "search for a culprit". Ironically, it is Guney himself who provides obstacles to that search - for- cing the audience to search even deeper. The power of the film perhaps stems from the fact that we are ac- customed to being given political messages in the form of a description of a human crime followed by a clear statement as to those who are to be blamed. Guney takes the opposite ap- proach: He shows us who is notrespon- sible, leaving us to grapple with the rest of reality. ONE OF THE convicts never makes it home. He loses his leave permit, is held up by the military authorities at a check-point, and will probably spend his leave under police surveillance. The canary that he had meant as a present to his wife will probably be delivered to his village by one of his friends. The bird-in-a-cage kept by the man-in-a- prison is the first of many ironies woven into the film, and in a sense, carries with it the central theme. The second convict goes through the frustrating experience of trying to have a meaningful interaction with his fiancee while constantly haunted by the two chaperones provided by her family. Nobody, not even his male friends seem to understand or to acknowledge his problem, so he takes. his anger and frustration to a brothel. The dynamics of the "sexual mob" outside the brothel were perhaps dif- ficult for the non-Turkish audience to identify. There is a lot of anger and hostility, each man angry at his own personal antagonist; there is rivalry and hostility towards each other, towards the women inside, and towards the walls and doors separating them. As the men strain and push to get inside or to get a better look at the half-naked women lined up as if in a shop window, there is also elation, expectation, and defiance. Inside the brothel, the camera momentarily focuses on an of- ficially sealed tariff: The brothel is state-operated and the fee is 250 liras (approximately one dollar). The third episode is the story of a Kurd, convicted of attempted robbery. He had been with his brother-in-law, and had panicked and ran, leaving him behind to be shot and killed by the Kurdish village near the Syrian border. here, the non-Turkish audience should be alerted to the human tragedy com- mon to all Kurdish communities on both sides of the border. When the border was established after World War I, the Kurdish people in the area found them- selves separated from loved ones in neighboring villages by barbed wire, mine-fields and patrols. It is this tragic reality that one of the Kurds voices when he looks over the mine-fields and comments, "It is ten meters away and yet we cannot go across. Still we keep trying and getting ourselves blown up." 'There are no easy villians in Yol. Instead, there are prisons within prisons, and everyone is at once a prisoner and a jailer. clear the family's honor: She has become a prostitute in his absence. He loves her but has to fulfill his duty to the clan. The most powerful scenes of the film are those that depict Seyid Ali's in- ner conflicts, set against a harsh and merciless physical and social environ- ment. Hard to believe, as it might seem to Western audiences, nothing in this episode is an exaggeration. Both Seyid Ali's tenderness toward his son and the unrelenting determination with which his male in-laws urge him on to perform his duty ("Don't let your hand shake when you pull the trigger"), are vivid realities of Eastern Turkey and of the Kurdish communities living in the area. The tragic irony surrounding the wife's "crime" is not apparent to non- Turkish audiences who have never heard of Sogukoluk, the brothel where she was discovered. Sogukoluk was more than an ordinary brothel. It was a male "entertainment compound" situated in an isolated spot in Southern Turkey where any concievable fantasy was readily though expensively ac- comodated. Its fame had crossed the borders of Turkey all the way into the rich Arab Sheikdoms. Men who procured women or young girls for Sogukoluk were generously compen- sated and almost all of the women rescued after the brothel was raided and shut down had been coerced into prostitution by men they had known and trusted. Once in Sogukoluk, the women were prisoners both physically and socially. Even if they managed to escape the closely-guarded compound, they would be outcasts from their families and communities and their only alternative would be to go back to prostitution. Sogukoluk was a much more degrading prison for the "guilty wife" than Imrali was for the husband who is offered the "privilege" of executing her. One last word needs to be said about Guney's portrayal of the jandarma, the rural police who at first sight seem to be the agents of repression. Guney is careful to point out that the conscripted men we see in the film are no different from the five convicts whose journey we have been following. Their dialect and mannerisms are very similar to those of the civilians they push against walls to search. In fact, the atmosphere of tension mixed with an element of connection and compassion that we ob- serve each time civilians interact with the jandarma is the same atmosphere that we observe in the rigidly patriar- chal Kurdish households that we step into. They are one and the same people, The jandarma on his one-week leave will take off his uniform, put on clothes similar to Seyid Ali's, and make his way across the mountains and the snow to a village similar to Seyid Ali's. There are no easy villains in Yol. In- stead, there are prisons within prisons, and everyone is at once a prisoner and'a jailer, except for the women and the canary who are the ultimate prisoners. By consistently refusing to point it human villains, Guney succeeds in ac- complishing two major tasks. First, he points the audience in the, direction of a keen analysis of the socio-economic forces that have led to Turkey's under- development, and to the further under- development of her Eastern and South? Eastern regions. He leaves the viewer face to face with the naked realities of feudalism, patriarchy, and exploitation - unmendiated by any human agent l In doing so, he allows for a direct conG parison with the rest of the under developed world and with repressed ethnic minorities all over the globe. Yol is far more than just a film about the Kurdish people in Turkey. It is a filrA about all the peoples of the world for whom release from one prison in- variably means imprisonment in another. Haywt is a graduate student in sociology. police. He returns home to find that his wife's clan has declared him an enemy, and she is under pressure to renounce him. She defies the law of the clan to elope with him. They get on a train, try to have intercourse in the toilet because they have no other place to go, are discovered by an angry and indignant mob and are shot by her younger brother who is pursuing them to clear the family's honor. The mob outside the train's toilet is driven by the same dynamics as the mob outside the brothel. In fact, the two mobs are made to look identical, although performing contradictory functions. The fourth convict goes home to a FOR MOST of the Kurdish villages along the border, the chief livelihood is smuggling. Our convict comes home to a village ruled by terror, where almost every household has a least one mem- ber up on the mountains, hunted by the rural police (jandarma), and all lie awake at night, listening to the sound of skirmishes and wondering whose turn it is to lose a son or a husband. True enough, his brother is shot and he has to obey the levirate of his clan, although he is in love with another girl from the village. The fifth episode, the story of Seyid Ali, is perhaps the most tragic. His clan is waiting for him to execute his wife to pm 743 r Edited and managed by students of The University of Michigan Sinclair Vol. XCIV-No. 113 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 ( SENATo4R (LENN, WE FEE[. '*1UR "$IPECIAL QU4ALMES CAN II i Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board NAVE' AN AiFFEAL... y Miserabli AD UNIVERSITY President Shapiro issued a gag order during his first year as president and instruc- ted faculty and administrators to talk to him before they talked with legislators or the University regents, :students here would probably be fuming. MSU President Cecil Mackey was able to do it. Had Shapiro decided to spend $85,000 on renovations for his official residen- ce on South University - $12,000 which 1would go for a new Steinway grand =piano - students would probably ,protest in the streets. But Mackey was "able to do it. And who knows what would happen if Shapiro decided that he needed $17,500 So improve his private box for football ames in Michigan Stadium. Yet, this ss exactly what Mackey did when he became chief university administrator of MSU in 1979. After four-and-a-half years of controversial moves which 'drew harsh criticism from the campus community, it is no wonder Mackey resigned yesterday. The former Oresident of Texas Tech University and the University of Southern Florida resigned yesterday. He should have .been booted long ago. The MSU Board of Trustees said in a ;statement that they wished "to express (their) continued support of Cecil .Mackey as president of Michigan State University." But it is no secret that 'several board members met privately :in -December to discuss ways of removing the 55-year-old Mackey. Several trustees said prior to his resignaton that they hoped he would Mackey worst recession in the state's history Mackey tried to push through a $19 million cut in MSU's $220 billion an- nual budget which included eliminating the university's College of Nursing. The trustees saved the nur- sing program and cut $16.5 million. Following that incident, the president of the state's largest university became known by students and faculty as "Mackey the Knife.' While the University of Michigan suffered through similar budget cuts, several legislators noted Shapiro's superior handling of the situation. university students should appreciate Shapiro's cool-headed administrative style when viewed beside Mackey's confrontational methods. Students and faculty, however, should have realized long ago that Mackey's administrative policies would divide the university com- munity. The controversy over the hiring of football coach George Perles, the recent firing of a popular ad- ministrator in the university's hotel and restaurant management school, and the questionable handling of a band director known to have sexually harassed several students give adequate reason for dismissal of Mackey. Yet it took yesterday's resignation to get him out of the top administrative position. The MSU community should have called for Mackey's resignation long ago. Now that student anger toward Mackey has somewhat subsided, he is able to gracefully leave and find another school willing to pay for his ex- travagant and controversial ways. To A ?RcAO 5EQrMENT OF UNCO~MITTED RUIRAL lVEMocRATIC VOTER S WHO FEEL- P5 EN FRANCHII5EP I ,-WE CALL ItTTI4E "5IO h IN f1suir VTE. , t !I NX ToANJ LENN~ ADPI WANT To TALK TO y~.ou AOuTTH E. EPRA5$ROZ VALUE 5 AND WA4d OF LIFE %m~mn~m %N N 4II" "40U - 'REPRESbENT. ~'ff((( . '(ER 3RFTNEN' ON. ME, DPACE MA N... 51 'V ' i +,(i* y l (i t y LETTERS TO THE DAILY: Reviewer misjudges 'Star 80' To the Daily: It takes a grave injustice to remove my chains of laziness and bring thy hands to the typewriter. But, the review by Bradford Parks of Star 80 was so ignorant of the film's intentions that I must speak up. * If, perchance, Mr. Parks had ever heard of thentale of Romeo and Juliet, or even had ever read a tragedy, he may have under- but more importantly she was in love and remained in love even as Paul was pulling the trigger. Peter Bogdanovitch is the "only sympathetic character?" This is, outright ludicrous. He was merely a symbol of Dorothy's "family" - just as the tramps Paul associated with were a symbol of his "family". The con- flict between these symbolic BLOOM COUNTY families is the reason why Star 80 is a tragedy and the cause of Paul's and Dorothy'sedemise. If Mr. Parks wishes to see a sim- plistic film that deals with today's mundane problems - what he may call a tragedy - then Star 80 certainly would be a disappointment. -James McKee February 10 - Letters and columns represent the opinions of the individual author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the attitudes or beliefs of the Daily. 's .44 -a by Berke Breathed . .