Essayistic Tendencies in Contemporary Kurdish Filmmaking in Turkey

recent years have seen a rise in the number of films produced in Turkey that cannot be classified as either fiction or documentary, but remain in between. Some filmmakers include nonfiction sequences within a fictional narrative; others choose to rewrite and reenact true stories; and some edit documentary images to make them feel fictive. Almost all of these films deal with social and political matters, and most are well-known examples of an emerging Kurdish cinema in Turkey,¹ especially tackling issues regarding the freedom and rights of Kurds.² Another characteristic they share is the filmmakers' personal connections to and involvements in these matters, which turn the films' narratives into fresh interpretations of current and historical events. The following films can be included in this category: Dûr [Distant] (Kazım Öz, 2005); Demsala Dawî: Şewaxan [The Last Season: Shawaks] (Kazım Öz, 2008); Gitmek: Benim Marlon ve Brandom [My Marlon and Brando] (Hüseyin Karabey, 2008); İki Dil Bir Bavul [On the Way to School] (Orhan Eskiköy and Özgür Doğan, 2008); Press (Sedat Yılmaz, 2010); Babamın Sesi [Voice of My Father] (Orhan Eskiköy and Zeynel Doğan, 2012); Ez Firiyam Tu Mayî Li Cî [I Flew, You Stayed] (Mizgin Müjde Arslan, 2012); Bûka Baranê [The Children Chasing the Rainbow] (Dilek Gökçin, 2013); and He bû tune bû [Once upon a Time] (Kazım Öz, 2014). Some of these films are fiction, whereas others are first-person observational documentaries, or "creative" documentaries as their makers call them. I evaluate these films within "the domain of the essayistic," as phrased by Rascaroli (The Personal Camera 189) because of their in-between nature along with the presence of the filmmakers' personal viewpoints and their autobiographical links to the stories, which will be discussed further later. This shared essayism prompts a series of questions with regard to filmic representation in Turkey: Are political subject matters perceived as less real (and more tolerable) when fictionalized? What are the practical and stylistic possibilities that essayism offers for recounting the past? How does un-belonging to a conventional category, such as fiction or documentary, affect a film's reception and criticism? Why, in general, is there a tendency to tell facts through fiction among filmmakers (specifically of political cinema) in Turkey? Indeed, the answers to these questions are not easily assessable, at least not within the limits of this article. However, they are useful in directing us to uncover the details of the different modes of essayistic representation available in these films and to identify some of the ways in which filmic form allows, emphasizes, and reflects upon the overlap of conventional categories. This article addresses those Kurdish films that narrativize the Kurdish-Turkish conflict in Turkey through the use of some shared essayistic choices in their visual narration, which promotes a dialogue between fact and fiction, public and personal, and past and present.

Representations of Kurds and the Kurdish identity in films from Turkey, or rather the lack thereof, is not a recent subject matter; the distribution and reception of such films has been problematic in different periods and studied by a number of scholars.³ Even though there is no official film censorship in Turkey at present, political subjects always have been under scrutiny by the government, by financers in the film industry, or by the filmmakers themselves throughout a film's production, distribution, and exhibition processes.⁴ One recent example is Bakur [North] (Çayan Demirel and Ertuğrul Mavioğlu, 2015), a documentary witnessing life in the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) guerrilla camps within the borders of Turkey. The film's production took place in 2013, the first time that a professional camera was ever allowed to film in this territory.⁵ The documentary has not yet been publicly distributed in Turkey; its premiere at the Thirty-Fourth Istanbul Film Festival in 2015 was canceled a couple of hours before its scheduled screening. Denying the allegations that the film was censored due to its content, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism claimed that the decision was taken...