With a $10 million budget, the largest ever for a Turkish film, producers of Valley of the Wolves can now afford to compete using all of the same slick editing and pyro-techic action found in any Hollywood feature film – including a a very sharp Flash dedicated Web site. Turkish filmmakers intend to let the rest of the world know that both sides can play to win-friends-and-influence-people, while making tons of money in the Global War of Propaganda (GWOP).
Turkish producers spawned Valley of the Wolves: Iraq from their record-breaking, 3-season Turkish cult TV series, Kurtlar Vadisi (Valley of the Wolves). In the hit TV show hero Polat Alemdar battled the Mafia in Turkey. In the full-length feature film he battles the US military in Iraq.
Valley of the Wolves: Iraq is based on a real-life incident: the actual raid on July 4, 2003 by US Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade of a semi-secret Turkish special forces post in Sulaymaniyah, northern Iraq.
“Our film’s a sort of political action,” says script-writer Bahadir Ozdener. “Maybe 60 or 70% of what happens on screen is factually true.”
After ransacking their headquarters, eleven Turkish soldiers were actually hooded, led out at gunpoint and held prisoner by US forces for more than two days. At this point the screenwriters step in…
To save his honor, one of the eleven Turkish special forces officers commits suicide, but leaves behind an explanatory letter. Polat Alemdar, now an elite intelligence officer, reads the letter and sets off for northern Iraq to avenge Turkish military honor. Meanwhile, American soldiers have already attacked a wedding party killing the groom and dozens of guests including a child in front of his mother. They have also dragged the survivors off to Abu Ghraib where a Jewish doctor (played by you-can-never-come-home-again American actor Gary Busey) harvests their organs for the rich clients waiting in New York, London and Tel Aviv.
Let’s see how FOXy Americans respond to a “cartoon” drawn in their likeness as Valley of the Wolves opens across European and soon in the US. No fear… angry mobs of white Christians won’t be found burning down your local theater (they own it), much less the Turkish Embassy in New York – because the film is all in Turkish. No one here bothers to pay attention to any movie with subtitles.
PS: Yesterday Deutsche Welle reported, German Calls to Ban Controversial Turkish Movie on Iraq – The film has so far sold 200,000 tickets and is ranked fifth in the German box office charts.
