We’re All Human and So Are The Filmmakers

I know I did this in my previous post, but humor me if you will while I begin this post also with yet another excellent expression in Turkish: “hevesi kursağında kalmak.” As with most Turkish expressions, this one is not easy to translate (forget it, google translate!). 

A literal translation would be something like “my enthusiasm got stuck in my craw,” or “I couldn’t stomach it.” (Yes, language IS extremely important and so are language rights…but that’s a whole other subject so forgive my digression.) The subtleties of the expression, however, refer to those singular situations where one feels so excited, so elated and full of hope for something, that when a disappointing outcome arrives, it’s as if the rug has been pulled out from underneath…but not quite so abruptly you find yourself suddenly hitting a hard floor, but more slowly and painfully, as if in slow motion, after a long wait. The expression came to mind as I worked my way through the second season of the Netflix limited series Kulüp, or “The Club.”

There I was after the much acclaimed and talked about (at least in some Turkish/Jewish/Armenian/American circles) season 1, waiting for season 2 with that hope and enthusiasm. Season 1 was an excellent example of what could be achieved when impeccable production standards were used to bring forth the kind of stories that were once attempted but somewhat forgotten in the world of Turkish taboo-breaking filmmaking. Here was a movie shot in Turkey, speaking about two of the worst atrocities committed against that country’s non-Muslim communities, the real-estate tax that sent hundreds of Armenians and Jewish people to a labor camp in 1942, and the 1955 pogroms directed primarily against the Greek minorities in the city of Istanbul. “The Club” was also the first time the authentic Ladino language spoken by the ever-shrinking community of Sephardic Jews in Istanbul was represented in speech as well as song. 

And there was more…the reference to memory and remembrance as represented by one of the character’s mother, a Turkish citizen of Greek origin who was stricken by Alzheimer’s. There was a lot to admire and applaud in what the filmmakers were striving for in these first episodes. 

Then came Season 2 when the series was taken over by a tendency toward melodrama — not exactly the kind one would find in the old-fashioned love stories in old Turkish films filled with rich girl/poor boy-poor girl/rich boy stories. This melodramatic turn put all the resources of this quality production in the service of the “good Muslim Turk” portrayal at the expense of rational character development. 

In the first season, there is a Turkish character by the name of Çelebi whose obsessive interest in the main female character Matilda was depicted alongside sexual abuse of female employees, such as the Greek dancer Tasula. Comes Season 2 and slowly but surely this man becomes some kind of a valiant hero who not only professes his undying love for Matilda but manages to save dozens of Greek and Jewish people running away from the Turkish nationalist lynch mobs pillaging the neighborhood. And there is more: Matilda is so overcome by gratitude at this point, as her own daughter is amongst those saved by Çelebi, that she gives him the biggest and warmest hug of the entire series. 

There are plenty of other examples but suffice it to say that the scenarists apparently decided that instead of using the storytelling to reveal and explore the reality of some of the worst atrocities committed against minorities in Turkey, they put their beautifully and painstakingly crafted sets in the service of a half-baked reconciliation effort. That is the only explanation for the beautiful dinner table at the end of the series where nearly the full cast of characters are seen seated happily enjoying a little feast. The only missing characters are Orhan (who commits suicide after having been outed as a Greek-turned Turk after trying to hide his true identity in order to keep up his success as a businessman) and a young Turkish man (whose lust after the Greek Tasula leads to his death) The main character, Matilda, meanwhile has chosen to stay in Istanbul, forgoing the opportunity to immigrate to Israel. Please note that this warm and fuzzy dinner table happens to include the rapist Çelebi and his prior victim Tasula.

Instead the filmmakers might have left the audience pondering the weight of the atrocities, the dilemmas of the characters, and the difficult conditions under which these minorities would continue living following these events, with a less than perfect ending. 

Which brings me to why this blog is titled “We’re all human and so are the filmmakers.” I do not know and will not guess as to who or what support lay behind this extremely posh production worthy of Netflix, but I will venture to guess that the filmmakers may have wanted to please more than a small circle of truth-seeking idealists like myself, and therefore wanted to wrap the series up with in reconciliatory tone and a relatively happy ending. At least they were able to expose these topics, and perhaps that was the goal.

Was it an excellent film? Probably not, considering a film with much more primitive standards had been made 23 years ago (Salkım Hanımın Taneleri) with much starker representations of the true nature of the crime committed against minorities in Turkey. That said, was it a positive development to see a film like The Club produced in the first place? Absolutely! 

The way any story is told through the craft of filmmaking is certainly up to the filmmakers’ prerogative…even if this one left me pondering the following: 

Is it truly that easy to jump from the realities of extreme bias and prejudice resulting in indescribable violence and outright massacre into the utopia of reconciling around the dining table? For the answer to that question, I will let Bryan Stevenson have the last word. He is the founder of Equal Justice Initiative, an attorney, author, and human rights activist who speaks about the importance of NOT “skipping steps” when it comes to communities and nations facing and coming to terms with their tainted histories. Here is a direct quote: “I think it’s really important that people understand that if you’re genuinely engaged and recovering from human rights abuses, you have to commit to truth-telling first. You can’t jump to reconciliation. You can’t jump to reparation or restoration until you tell the truth. Until you know the nature of the injuries, you can’t actually speak to the kind of remedies that are going to be necessary.”

Thank you for reading dear friends…my comments on the documentary Hafıza Yetersiz/System Memory Too Low for Words will have to wait for another time since the standards for documentaries based on inarguable facts and figures differ widely from those for fictional films. 

More information on The Club:

https://www.netflix.com/title/81257567

More information on Salkım Hanımın Taneleri:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Salkım%27s_Diamonds

The interview where the quote from Bryan Stevenson is taken:

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/21327742/bryan-stevenson-the-ezra-klein-show-america-slavery-healing-racism-george-floyd-protests

On Hrant Dink and the Power of Anecdotes

Author: Gonca Sönmez-Poole

January 19, 2022

There’s an expression in Turkish — “dile kolay” — that is used when something — usually in quantifiable numbers — has lasted a long time. And so here I am using the expression on the 15^th anniversary of the murder of Hrant Dink. It has been 15 years since I found out about this exceptional individual who inspired millions of people in Turkey and spoke the truth about that country’s tainted past in a way that appealed to the common man, without insulting or hurting those who may not have been ready to hear him out. And yet the forces of evil were at work and Dink was murdered 15 years ago today in front of his newspaper office building…the very spot where every year, his life and legacy is commemorated by those who refuse to forget about him and the shameful justice system that has never completely solved his assassination case. 

It has been 15 years since I started reading any and all things he had written and/or said. I have also used my own background in visual storytelling and have put together video stories that may give perspective to the various ways the subject of the Armenian Genocide has affected Armenians and Turkish people alike…albeit in hugely different ways.

In these past 15 years, I have had the privilege of listening to a multitude of people, both professionals as well as laymen/women, always fascinated by how the incontrovertible truth of the Armenian Genocide is understood and reflected upon in so many different ways, depending on the background and the life experience of the person in question.

I had the privilege of knowing and learning from historians, sociologists, and political scientists (Professors Taner Akçam, Fatma Müge Göcek, Gerard Libaridian, Ron Suny, Lerna Ekmekcioğlu, Ohannes Kılıçdağı and Ümit Kurt to name but a few), from conflict resolution specialists such as Prof. Eileen Babbitt, Dr. Pam Steiner, and Paula Parnagian) and a myriad of other professionals whose names would add up to a list too long to recite here. And most important, I had various conversations with Armenian and Turkish people with various backgrounds bringing me to the conclusion that there is one truth (the Armenian Genocide) but more than one personal recollection and reflection on it. Over the years following Dink’s assassination, I would write about these conversations and send them out to a long list of contacts, some in Turkey but mostly in the United States where I live. I never forget how one such contact (an academician) dismissed the stories I had written as “just anecdotes.” And that brings me to the exceptional character of Hrant Dink and the title of this blog post.

Dink may not have been a world-class historian, an academician or in the eyes of some, not even an accomplished intellectual of the first order. He may not have been proficient at the language of academia, replete with its specific vernacular practiced around conference tables that is. BUT and this is a BIG but: What he spoke was a language that was accessible to his readers and his audience, the kind that spoke to people’s hearts and minds precisely because he spoke the language of the common man. He was able to appeal to those thousands and thousands of people around Anatolia because he would hear them out and give them a voice by collecting and publishing their stories. Call them anecdotes, stories, or “badmıvadzk”  (lucky for me I learned a new word in Armenian just yesterday) those are the tools with which Dink was able to connect thousands of readers of Agos (the bilingual newspaper he founded and wrote for) to Armenians and Turks in Anatolia and beyond. His readers were those who wouldn’t have had the opportunity to know about those stories if he hadn’t started to collect and publish them. Anecdotes that he unearthed that were hidden away and unexplored for decades. Stories like the one about Beatrice Hanım (Ms. Beatrice) told to Dink by a Muslim man from Sivas. The man told Dink that 70-year-old Beatrice hanım would travel from France to this little village of Sivas (a province of Turkey) several times a year, and that she had died there during her last visit. While discussing where to bury her, her daughter had started crying hearing what this Sivas man had said: “I know she is yours, it’s your mother and you can do as you wish but if you ask me let her be buried right here. You see, the water has found its crack.”  Dink told and retold that story (among many others) many times before his life was taken from him 15 years ago. And yet that anecdote still resonates and is heard loud and clear by those who care to listen.

Hrant Dink (from his presentation at a Bilgi University Conference in Istanbul on September 25, 2005):

“Indeed yes, we Armenians do covet these lands, because our roots are here, but don’t worry: not so we can take the land away, but so we can go lie deep down under it.”