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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 10:28 pm Post subject: AntiAmericanism...Turkish-Style |
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ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) -- In the most expensive Turkish movie ever made, American soldiers in Iraq crash a wedding and pump a little boy full of lead in front of his mother.
They kill dozens of innocent people with random machine-gun fire, shoot the groom in the head, and drag those left alive to Abu Ghraib prison -- where a Jewish doctor cuts out their organs, which he sells to rich people in New York, London and Tel Aviv.
"Valley of the Wolves Iraq" -- set to open in Turkey on Friday -- feeds off the increasingly negative feelings many Turks harbor toward their longtime NATO allies: Americans.
The movie, which reportedly cost about $10 million (euro 8.3 million), is a work of fiction and does not purport to level allegations against American troops. It is part of a genre of popular culture in Turkey that demonizes the United States.
The film comes on the heels of a novel, "Metal Storm," about a war between Turkey and the U.S., which has been a best-seller for months.
Movie opens with true incident
One recent opinion poll revealed the depth of the hostility in Turkey toward Americans: 53 percent of Turks who responded to the 2005 Pew Global Attitudes survey associated Americans with the word "rude"; 70 percent with "violent"; 68 percent with "greedy"; and 57 percent with "immoral."
Advance tickets already are selling out across Turkey for the film, which has dialogue in Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish and English. In addition to Turkey, the film is set to be shown in more than a dozen other countries -- including the United States, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, Denmark, Russia, Egypt, Syria and Australia.
The movie's American stars are Billy Zane, who plays a self-professed "peacekeeper sent by God," and Gary Busey as the Jewish-American doctor.
U.S. soldiers have become hate figures in Muslim countries around the world after the unpopular war in Iraq. But here in Turkey, a personal grudge fuels the resentment.
"Valley of the Wolves Iraq" opens with a true story: On July 4, 2003, in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, troops from the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade raided and ransacked a Turkish special forces office, threw hoods over the heads of 11 Turkish special forces officers and held them in custody for more than two days.
'Soldier's honor must never be damaged'
The Americans said they had been looking for Iraqi insurgents and unwittingly rounded up the Turks because they were not in uniform. Still, the incident damaged Turkish-U.S.. relations and hurt Turkish national pride. Turks traditionally idolize their soldiers; many enthusiastically send their sons off for mandatory military service.
In the movie, one of the Turkish special forces officers commits suicide to save his honor. His farewell letter reaches Polat Alemdar, an elite Turkish intelligence officer who travels to northern Iraq with a small group of men to avenge the humiliation.
There they find a rogue group of U.S. soldiers led by officer Sam William Marshall -- played by Zane. In the bloodfest that ensues, the small band of Turks bonds with the people of Iraq and eventually ends American atrocities there, killing Zane and his men in the final scene.
"The scenario is great," Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbas told The Associated Press after the film was shown at a posh opening gala Tuesday night. "It was very successful.
"A soldier's honor must never be damaged."
But Topbas and other Turks at the premiere weren't too concerned about how the movie would be perceived in the United States.
"There isn't going to be a war over this," said Nefise Karatay, a Turkish model lounging on a sofa after the premiere. "Everyone knows that Americans have a good side. That's not what this is about." |
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/02/02/turkish.movie.ap/index.html |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 11:02 pm Post subject: |
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*shrug*
Looks like Russians portrayed in James Bond. |
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indytrucks
Joined: 09 Apr 2003
Location: The Shelf
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| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 11:48 pm Post subject: |
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* double shrug *
Or the Japanese in 'Pearl Harbor'. |
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The Lemon
Joined: 11 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 11:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Or the aliens in Independence Day. |
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AbbeFaria
Joined: 17 May 2005
Location: Gangnam
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| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 12:34 am Post subject: |
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The Turks are just pissed they weren't allowed to run roughshod over the Kurds in Northern Iraq. My favorite little anecdote about them is that once they decided not to allow US planes to fly over Turkish air space before the invasion of Iraq, the very next day their stock market crashed by about 1000 points. The US offered millions in aid money etc. if they could use the air space, and the news that no such influx of cash was coming sent them into a dive.
��S�� |
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xeno439
Joined: 30 Nov 2005
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| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 4:03 am Post subject: |
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*shrug*
Looks like Russians portrayed in James Bond.
* double shrug *
Or the Japanese in 'Pearl Harbor'. |
Both are good points. But it sucks when its happening to you. Oh well, karma is a b1tch I guess. |
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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 4:12 am Post subject: |
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| The fricken Ottoman Turks massacred over a million-and-a-half Armenians - including three of my grandmother's kids - during the World War 1 period, and the present regime (like most of them in recent years) refuses to own up to it. They should be denied entrance to the EU - and NATO too. (Not that Armenian governments have been any good...) |
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keithinkorea
Joined: 17 Mar 2004
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| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 4:16 am Post subject: |
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Of course it hurts to be on the other end of the stick.
Most villains in American films are either European, Asian or Middle Eastern. A great parody of this was the classic movie 'Team America:World Police'. Very funny indeed.
What's the big deal. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 10:45 am Post subject: |
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| mithridates wrote: |
*shrug*
Looks like Russians portrayed in James Bond. |
For example? (I do not recall any Russians being portrayed as barbarians in any James Bond film.) |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 10:59 am Post subject: |
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| xeno439 wrote: |
| Quote: |
*shrug*
Looks like Russians portrayed in James Bond.
* double shrug *
Or the Japanese in 'Pearl Harbor'. |
Both are good points. But it sucks when its happening to you. Oh well, karma is a b1tch I guess. |
The WWII-era Japanese are portrated as they are because of factual events, not only Pearl Harbor and incidents like the "Batan Death March," but through other events as well, such as their behavior as occupiers in China and Korea, for example.
The U.S. govt and military have done nothing comparable, not in the current Iraqi War, or anywhere else, for that matter.
Karma? What exactly are you talking about? |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 11:04 am Post subject: |
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| keithinkorea wrote: |
Most villains in American films are either European, Asian or Middle Eastern. A great parody of this was the classic movie 'Team America:World Police'. Very funny indeed.
What's the big deal. |
But not exclusively so, Keith, as there are many American villains in American films as well.
According to this information, this film is resentful and bitter, and targets the U.S. govt and military as entire institutions. You seem to feel that U.S. films that portray Middle Easterners as terrorists is little or no different than this Turkish film portraying U.S. soldiers as barbarians. I can see how Canadians would shrug their shoulders at this, because this kind of antiAmericanism is commonplace in Canada. But it is a big deal, esp. from a culture whose govt claims it is a military ally.
They are certainly free to make any film they want, just as they may have any opinion of us that they want as well. But they should be more straighforward in their relations with us, particularly as recipients of U.S. economic and military aid over a period of many decades. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 11:10 am Post subject: |
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But not exclusively so, Keith, as there are many American villains in American films as well.
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Interestingly, in a lot of Hollywood action films, the villain is some right-wing type. Just yesterday I watched The Long Kiss Good Night, and the bad guys were these CIA operatives, who were at loggerheads with the liberal president. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 3:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| mithridates wrote: |
*shrug*
Looks like Russians portrayed in James Bond. |
For example? (I do not recall any Russians being portrayed as barbarians in any James Bond film.) |
That's because you don't mind, not being Russian.
There's a reason for this series of books:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zakhov_Mission |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 4:11 pm Post subject: |
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Mithridates: I'm not being confrontational here, I just want to understand how you and Wikipedia have arrived at this conclusion...
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| ...the constant targeting of Russian people as the evil characters in Bond novels and films. |
I have read many, but not all of the Bond novels, and like everyone else, I've seen the films more times than I can count.
My impression was that Blofeld and his organization were the evil ones, and they were a ficticious international organization at that.
Early in the series, though, in Casino Royale, Bond does run into trouble with the Russians, who tortured him and forced his love interest to kill herself, and he hated them and their intel service after that. They were behaving this way in the late 1940s through the 1950s, however.
You seem to go into some kind of relativism. You confuse "the Russians" with "the Soviet regime," which is what Fleming and everyone else was talking about. And the Soviet regime, when Fleming wrote his novels, was quite barbaric. I'm speaking of Stalinsim and its politics. And this is pretty much universally understood and acknowledged these days.
Don't take my word for it, however. Talk to the Soviet dissidents who told us about it like Koestler, a favorite book of mine, by the way...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0553265954/qid=1139010953/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-9960615-8619810?v=glance&s=books
or see Academy-Award-winning Russian-made films like this one...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00009MEKP/ref=imdbap_t_12/103-9960615-8619810?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance
Or go back in time and read Khrushchev's speech before the Party denouncing the dictator as evil. The New York Times did publish it at the time, so I suspect it's available somewhere on the web.
But, in any case, please do not associate near universal contemporary and historical opinion with Stalin and Stalinism and his Soviet regime as evil and barbaric with a Turkish film that portrays the U.S. military as savage and barbaric and an article that also cites this data...
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| ...the depth of the hostility in Turkey toward Americans: 53 percent of Turks who responded to the 2005 Pew Global Attitudes survey associated Americans with the word "rude"; 70 percent with "violent"; 68 percent with "greedy"; and 57 percent with "immoral." |
...because U.S. politics have never descended to the level of Soviet politics under the Stalin regime.
I'd still like to know how exactly you concluded that the Fleming novels repeatedly portrayed the Soviets (and not Blofeld's SPECTRE) as the bad guys or as evil.
Last edited by Gopher on Tue Mar 14, 2006 1:29 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 4:26 pm Post subject: |
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Letters are mine...
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American soldiers in Iraq [A]crash a wedding and pump a little boy full of lead in front of his mother.
They [B]kill dozens of innocent people with random machine-gun fire, [C]shoot the groom in the head, [D]and drag those left alive to Abu Ghraib prison -- where [E]a Jewish doctor cuts out their organs, which he sells to rich people in New York, London and Tel Aviv. |
It isn't so much A, B, C, or D, that concern me as much as the neverending Jewish-conspiracy-thinking so deeply embedded in E.
Last edited by Gopher on Tue Jun 27, 2006 10:38 am; edited 4 times in total |
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