In 2006 Turkish movie “Valley of the Wolves: Iraq” was a great hit in Europe and almost made it to the US theatres. Since the flotilla incident in May 2010, the movie has been constantly playing on Turkish television becoming the most viewed movie in the Turkish television history.


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In 2006, The Washington Time reported:

“Valley of the Wolves” is not the work of independents or amateurs. With a budget of $10 million, it’s the biggest-spending Turkish film in history. The international cast includes Hollywood actor Billy Zane of “Titanic.” Within three days of its release, the movie had been seen by 1.2 million people, a 40 percent increase on the previous viewing record. At a gala performance, the actors rubbed shoulders with Turkey’s elite.

“I feel so proud of them all,” said Emine Erdogan, wife of the prime minister, comfortably ensconced in a seat next to the actor playing Alemdar.

The movie opens with a real-life incident: the arrest in July 2003 of Turkish special forces in Sulaymaniyah, northern Iraq. The soldiers were led out of their headquarters at gunpoint, with hoods over their heads. America later apologized, but it appears the offense ran deep. At the time Turkey took the incident as national humiliation. In this film the fictional hero sets out for revenge.

The film depicts Americans as bloodthirsty villains who massacre civilians at the wedding, kill innocent Iraqis for the sport of it and occasionally blow up a friendly neighborhood mosque during an evening prayer. There are multiple random executions. And for the first time, the real-life abuses by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison are played out on the big screen.

Then there is naturally a Jewish doctor (you knew that was coming) who sells organs of killed Iraqis to clients in New York, Tel-Aviv and London (the Western axis of evil).

At the end of the movie an outraged, self-righteous Turkish hero thrusts a dagger into a heart of an American GI. As rightly calculated, in Berlin, this scene resonated with disenfranchised Turkish-immigrant audience, which at that moment cheerfully exploded in applauds while shouting, “Allah is great!”

However appalled by the blatantly anti-American message, in the spirit of good old new age guilt trip balderdash, we should, nevertheless, remember that it was our brave and outspoken American political filmmakers who inspired Turkish filmmakers to challenge authority. The Turks simply followed. They are challenging authority…the American authority (not their own, of course.)

Even in its agony, leftist Hollywood continues to inspire half intellectual filmmakers all over the world. It sets the tone. It is the endless domestic America-bashing and vilification that is responsible for creating these ugly film entities in other parts of the world. These weapons, which are used against us, are manufactured in the labs of Hollywood. The Turkish franchise is simply a secure investment in the devaluating market of confusing images.

After a screening of the movie in Germany, an inspired 18-year-old Turk told a reporter that:

“America is evil. Look what they did to Native Americans and people in Vietnam, and now in Iraq.”

One could only hope that one day this inspired Turkish boy will grow up to become a filmmaker and make a movie that criticizes his own government, which still denies the Armenian Genocide and dumps millions of dollars and enormous political pressure on the US Congress not to accept the first Genocide of the 20th century.

One could hope, that the 18-year-old Turkish boy who so sincerely cares about the extinction of the Hopi Indians in the US, will care about his history as well and make a movie about the Genocides of many Balkan Christian nations, Greeks and Kurds by not so distant Ottoman Turkish Empire.

One could only hope. Yet, I am afraid that by the time the boy enters his prime and chooses a subject for his first movie, there will be a whole herd of US film school graduates creating enough generic Marxist garbage to clog the poor young Turks pipe to the truth of his own history.