“It is evident that cinema makes a big contribution to tourism,” Culture and Tourism Minister Ertuğrul Günay said in a June 13 meeting at Istanbul’s Kadir Has University, which brought together representatives from the Ministry and the Turkish cinema sector.
The meeting was convened to kick-start work on the new Turkish cinema draft law, the first seen since 2004. Set to be included in the new draft law will the establishment of a platform to provide support to foreign films shot in Turkey. Günay said, “We already do our best [to support] such productions, but we think that it would be easier to appear in the world market if we collaborate with a foreign film company.”
Günay has in fact been flirting with a system to increase foreign film productions inTurkey for some time now. Building sets and stages devoted to foreign film productions is one of the projects he has proposed. An incentive system is another.
Last year, he met with producers of the upcoming James Bond movie “Skyfall,” to make known his enthusiasm to have many of the film’s scenes filmed in Turkey. The production team, including current James Bond actor, Daniel Craig, were in Turkeyearlier this year to film scenes at Istanbul’s Sultanahmet Square, Hagia Sophia, the coastal town of Fethiye, and the historic Varda Railway Bridge close to the southern city of Adana.
While the James Bond film team was working in Turkey last April the question of whether Turkey would be depicted in the film with an Orientalist perspective similar to how Iran is often portrayed in Western films. Of course we won’t know the answer to that until the movie is released in November, but we can easily say that Turkey, and especially Istanbul, has been subjected to some very Orientalist and unrealistic depictions in previous foreign productions.
Perhaps the most notorious non-Turkish production set in Turkey is the 1978 Oscar winner “Midnight Express.” Director Alan Parker and writer Oliver Stone’s account of theAmerican student Billy Hayes imprisonment in a Turkish prison for attempting to smuggle hashish out of the country went on to become the ultimate Turkish hate film.
Reinforcing the age-old stereotype of that Turks are the barbarians of Western culture, the movie pushed boundaries of realism even for an audience with more neutral feelings to the depiction of Turks.
Another famous film which uses Istanbul as a central character under a full-fledged Orientalist point of view is Jules Dassin’s 1964 crime caper “Topkapı.” Starring Peter Ustinov, Maximillian Schell and Melina Mercouri the film centers on a multi-national gang of thieves who attempt to steal Sultan Mahmud I’s emerald-encrusted dagger from the Topkapı Palace. Dassin’s Istanbul is an exotic and mysterious place, a city which springs right out of “Tales of 1001 Nights.” In the film Turkish people speak English in bizarre accents and the Turkish police are an echo of the sadistic, brutal ones seen in “Midnight Express.”
Hurriyet
