While considering the present political scenario of Turkey, the ruling party AKP or Justice and Development Party have governed the republic for more than two decades. During this rule, the republic’s founding ideology- ‘Kemalism’ has been vehemently criticised and delegitimized. Departing from Kermalism, the governing AKP advocates a very different ideology, that is, the long lasting Turkish conservative centre-right tradition. The current AKP connects with the former radicals educated in Turkey’s own tradition of political Islam through a flawed concept of a modern society held together by conservative values. Whereas, the Kemalist version of secularism is “assertive and secularism”, which means, it does not only support the idea of religion and state as two distinct realms, but considers the state authority responsible to limit the influence of religion in social life. The shift of ideology can be observed in the aforesaid films and somehow these popular texts can become important focus of study of contemporary Kemalism. The films chosen for this study are are Nefes or The Breath (2009), Dag or The Mountain (2012), Dag 2 or The Mountain 2 (2016), Wolf (2018) and a web series Boru (2018). The important political events that the films try to address are being observed in this project in the light of the popular films and their reception both among Turkish and global audience. The explicit and implicit presence of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is observed and traced in this study. Before delving into the research I have decided to go through the history of the Republic for a better observation of the political events and their sources that are portrayed in these films and how under the rule of Mustafa Kemal a modernization process took place and what shape it took after his death. To observe the aesthetics of the popular war films and web series a study of the history of Turkish cinema and web series has been included in that chapter. The presence which has been discussed in this project is of a certain kind which can be detected for definite period. For this span of time, we have already seen in the first chapter the tumultuous situation Turkey is going through since the 2000s. It is a period of deep political polarization basically on two issues which became important unresolvable questions after the death of Ataturk- what role should religion play in the public square and what role should a powerful state play in the private life of the citizens. Even after 75 years of his death Mustafa Kemal is the ever present figure in the struggle of Turkey in search of its own identity.

Discussing the debate and ideological background regarding national cinema, this form of art shall be compared to several other contemporary cinematic currents in Turkey. In this study, a content analysis comprising one of the rarer examples of national cinema, the film Güneş Ne Zaman Doğacak? (Mehmet Kılıç, 1977) will be conducted while scanning secondary sources on Turkish cinema to present a concise picture; of the phenomenon that is known as 'national cinema.' Distinctive characteristics of the artistic language and the ideological background of the post-1960 Turkish cinema will be provided, among those, the phenomenon of a very blurred line between creative expressions and underlying ideological affiliations and the non-static developmental nature of cinematic fashions in influencing each other.

Cinema is not only a space in which directors act with the aim of making art, but they also reflect their own testimonies and political perspectives; this study, which claims to be related to representation strategies that contain various interests and desires; It is of the opinion that different ideological approaches are reflected on the screen by political and cultural elites in line with the construction, legitimacy and movement of identities and images. In this study, which examines the Türkiye’nin Kalbi Ankara movie, which was shot in the intense socio-political atmosphere of the 1930s and was shot to tell Turkey's nationalization process and modernization experience through the capital Ankara; the manifestation of the Turkish nation-building process in cinema is discussed through the relationship between nationalism and cinema.

Modern Turkish cinema is a space in which different versions of national history coexist. Mainstream cinematography produced during the period of AKP rule is a field for broadcasting Turkey’s ‘glorious history’, both within and beyond the country. In mainstream historical films, neo-Ottomanism is brought to the fore. The heroisation of the Ottoman past is conducted through the depiction of Turkish military glory. At the same time, acute ethno-confessional issues are ignored, and Turkey is represented as a homeland of many peoples. Religious myths are used to support the idea of Turkey as the legal successor to the Ottoman Empire and the Caliphate. Conversely, Turkish art house films focus on complicated moments in the history of the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey (such as the Greek, Armenian and Kurdish questions). Niche films are a forum for expressing critical attitudes to the ‘traditional’ vision of Turkish history. Overall, this disagreement between Turkey’s creative intelligentsia and the ruling elite over the interpretation of history is part of a wider discourse on cultural hegemony and resistance. In contrast to mainstream films, art house cinematography details history by focusing on the lives of individuals and telling their (often tragic) stories. This chapter is devoted to exploring the formation of ‘different histories’ of Turkey in modern Turkish cinema as a discourse of hegemony and resistance.

Considering the experience of the first twenty years of Turkey's membership in Eurimages (as from 1990), this PhD thesis examines the contributions of a supranational cinema support fund - which demands a series of culturally sensitive criteria to be met - on a national cinema industry. In addition to the co-production, exhibiton and distribution support provided by Eurimages, and its contribution to filmmaking practices, Turkish-initiative co-productions - those directed by Turkish filmmakers, and those whose themes are pertinent to Turkey - are analysed herein with regard to the 'nationalness' of their content and narrative styles. Eurimages practically has been a good source of financial support for Turkish filmmakers seeking to engage with the problematic aspects of Turkey's national identity or simply seeking to convey the contribution of components to Turkey's overall cultural identity. This study also reveals those representations of diversity with particular regard to ethnic, religious and gender identities through a close examination of Turkish-initiative co-productions that have been supported by the Fund.

This chapter examines the ways in which American cinema was represented in Turkey in the 1940s and the evidence for the existence of a growing connection between American cinema and the popular Turkish imagination during this period. It is based on an analysis of the popular film magazines of the time, as well as the memoirs and observations of writers interested in cinema. Issues of audience demand, of course, pose questions about the cultural identities involved in the experiences of identification and fantasy enjoyed by the film viewer. After describing the historical context in which American cinematic hegemony was established, the chapter will consider some of the ways in which Hollywood itself functioned as a kind of fantasy screen for the Turkish viewer. It will also touch upon European cinema since – as becomes particularly clear in the memoirs of film historian Giovanni Scognamillo – the tension between America and Europe, and thus between Hollywood and European cinema, is crucial to the men- tal machinery at work in the viewers’ cinematic experience in its broadest sense.

This paper scrutinizes anxieties of national identity in Turkey through the image of Zeki Müren in three films, Beklenen Şarkı, Kırık Plak, and Son Beste. In these films the image of Zeki Müren is articulated as the ridiculous sublime. His image always tells two stories simultaneously: construction and collapse of national identity. Through an analysis of Müren's early films, the paper shows, how anxieties about the formation of Turkish citizenship and about modernity are substantiated in his image. This analysis is carried out in the following steps: I, first, explain how the films chosen here construct the feeling of we-ness and national imaginary by virtue of Classical Turkish music and the voice of Zeki Müren. I show that the image of Zeki Müren in these films tells the story of the national subject being interpellated or hailed by Turkishness and argue that Zeki Müren's image exposes the “speculary” structure of Turkishness. Examining the construction, completeness, and...

For every generation of film historians, there are new discourses and methods of film historiography regarding Turkish cinema. The methods, periodization, and discursive practices of Turkish film historiography have evolved.