Nilufer Acikalin wins 'Best Supporting Actress' at Chelsea NYC Film Festival

DRAWERS, Turkish feature by M.Caner Alper & Mehmet Binay, was among the three ‘Grand Prix Award’ nominations at this year’s International Chelsea Film Festival, held between 16-19 October 2015 in New York City. The film has been received with critical interest by New York's cinephile community, and Nilufer Acikalin received ‘Best Supporting Actress’ with her role as step-mother in the Turkish drama.

‘DRAWERS’, soon after its theatrical release in March, started traveling in the international festival circuit and received Best Film and Best Actress awards at the 2015 Nuremberg Film Festival in Germany. ‘DRAWERS’ has been screened at the Montreal World Cinema Film Festival, Vienna LetsCee Film Festival and others.

The directors M.Caner Alper & Mehmet Binay are currently working on new feature film projects which will be pitched to co-production networks internationally.

Contact: Bulut Reyhanoglu

producer@cam-films.com

WdW REVIEW: Machismo and His Demons

by Alev Scott

May 2015

A man comes home, briefly greets his young daughter, and sits down to eat his evening meal. Hovering behind his chair is his wife, watching as he takes the first bite. Something is wrong—she knows it and dreads his discovery. He lowers his fork. “No meat?” Silence. “Where is the meat?” The wife, anguished, pleads her usual defense: “How can I buy meat? You never give me any money!” The man turns in his seat, lifts his heaped plate and throws it with force through the open window beside him. They both listen as it crashes onto the street below.

Men and women gathered in Istanbul to march for women’s rights in Turkey after the rape attempt and murder of Özgecan Aslan, wearing skirts to highlight women’s right to dress as they like without fear of harassment.

This story was told to me fifty years after it happened, a perfectly humdrum little tragedy set in urban Turkey. Why did the man humiliate his wife like that? Because she had failed to disguise the proof of his inadequacies, as dictated by the universal expectations of society—his failure as a man to support his household. Her meat-less dinner mocked him. In that strikingly Neanderthal scene, man failed to secure meat and lashed out at woman, clawing back his self-respect. The story’s miserable coda is the wife’s attempt to defend her husband’s behavior to their daughter years later: “It wasn’t his fault. It was his mother’s fault, she spoiled him because he was her only son.”

Fifty years later, Turkish society has changed in many ways, but the endemic abuse of women—and its justification—remains. I was reminded of this story by the recent case of a Turkish man who killed his wife with a pan because there was not enough salt in his food. The case was a passing reference in a report on growing violence against women in Turkey: between 2013 and 2014, the number of women murdered jumped by 31 percent, an increase only partly explained by better reporting of such cases. Broadly speaking, over the last decade Turks have been getting richer and more connected, young people attend university in greater numbers, new political parties form, yet sexual prejudices and pressures remain steeped in the fabric of society. Abuse against women is not restricted to ‘disadvantaged’ families; it happens across all social strata, and it seems to be getting worse.

Why the recent spike in murder rates? An improved economy,more women with university degrees, and a sharp rise in urbanization have carried their own complications. Analysts suggest that violence occurs because newly educated women are defying their partners’ expectations, seeking work outside the home, or because rural communities are cramming into the more pressurized environment of the city, where women are unavoidably ‘tainted’ by public life. Divorce is on the rise, and around a quarter of reported cases of violence occur after a woman has asked for divorce or separation from her partner. Most significantly, economical growth slowed down in 2013, which could partly explain the increase in murder rates among conservative families accustomed to a newly comfortable lifestyle and struggling to maintain it. In this downturn period—which is ongoing—working men have been failing to earn enough to keep their families afloat, resenting the spending habits of their wives (whom they prohibit from working), and taking out their frustrations with fatal consequences.

Perhaps the greatest contributing factor to sexual violence is the current leadership in Turkey explicitly encouraging the conservative values of its voting base. When the president declares that “men and women are not equal,” many of his listeners nod sagely in agreement. They nod because this inequality has long been taken for granted; the collective personality of the Turkish family and its gender hierarchy has endured for generations. Worst of all, because the realm of the family is both private and universal, it is not something individuals (of either sex) can challenge openly—they cannot discredit a unit to which they should remain loyal, especially if they think its troubles merely reflect the norm. This leads us to the chilling conclusion that rates of violence are likely even higher than reported.

Entrenched patterns of violent male behavior are not restricted to Turkey, though the current level of violence is unacceptably high. Author Elena Ferrante describes the phenomenon of normalized domestic violence in 1970s Italy in the second book of her Neapolitan quartet. Here, the narrator realizes why her usually defiant friend, Lila, accepts her new husband Stefano’s beatings without complaint:

The explanation was simple: we had seen our fathers beat our mothers from childhood. We had grown up thinking that a stranger must not even touch us, but that our father, our boyfriend, and our husband could hit us when they liked, out of love, to educate us, to re-educate us. As a result, since Stefano was not the hateful [ex-suitor] Marcello, but the young man to whom she had declared her love, whom she had married, and with whom she had decided to live forever, she assumed complete responsibility for her choice. 1Elena Ferrante, The Story of a New Name, trans. Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa Editions, 2013), 52.

Islam is often singled out as the inspiration for male violence in Middle Eastern communities; it is not. Religion masks and excuses male violence in doctrine; the real culprit is an ago-old culture of machismo, a culture which rewards aggressive and controlling male behavior at the expense of both sexes. It is visible everywhere but particularly prevalent in countries from the Middle East to the Mediterranean to Latin America, and today, it is the key that many activists, artists, and analysts are seeking to understand abusive patterns, from child marriage to domestic violence to prostitution rings. The Mexican journalist and activist Lydia Cacho, who investigates and campaigns against sex trafficking, voiced a plea for a universal change on Open Democracy three years ago: “We must address masculinity issues. We need men to question how they perceive violence as the only means of solving conflicts, because that is what they have been taught. We need men from around the globe to question each other’s view of manhood, of eroticism and their perception of women.”

Still from Çekmeceler (‘Drawers’). Credits: Cam Films, Istanbul.

In Turkey, a new film, Çekmeceler [Drawers], examines violence against women through the perspective of Turkey’s macho culture, specifically abuse as a by-product of repressive stereotypes foisted on Turkish men. It follows the true story of a girl blighted by her father’s obsession with her virginity, a father who constantly accuses her of masturbating and demands to see her underwear (or “drawers,” hence the English title, which is a pun on the wooden drawers which feature as a motif of compartmentalization and secrecy throughout the film). By the time the child, Deniz, reaches adulthood, her father Ayhan’s unrelenting predictions of promiscuity have pushed her over the edge—she gives up assuring him of her chastity and starts taking a vindictive pleasure in having sex with as many men as possible, in one memorable scene turning Ayhan’s framed photograph toward her bed in a gloating gesture of filial revenge. On her thirty-second birthday, she ends up in a psychiatric ward after attempting to circumcise herself.

Months later, she learns that her father has had a heart attack and rushes to his side, accompanied by her mother and her father’s mistress (both of whom have been abused—beaten and urinated on—by Ayhan). He is already dead, but in his hand he clutches a phallic-shaped piece of foam. In the chest of drawers above him are rows of similar pieces: only at the end do we learn that this man, so inexplicably cruel and paranoid, has been twisted by his own feelings of sexual inadequacy.

The film shocked and baffled critics, who half-heartedly compared the depiction of Deniz’s frenzied sexualization to Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac without tackling any of the darker taboos. I interviewed the film’s directors, Mehmet Binay and M. Caner Alper, who said that the media’s lack of coverage of the crucial issues voiced in the film, namely, male insecurity and its ramifications, reinforced the point they were making about silent but damaging social pressures. They were particularly struck by the fact that critics completely ignored the film’s final revelation that Ayhan suffered from micro-penis syndrome, a medical condition rarely discussed or even written about. Also taboo, and much more common, is small-penis complex, a psychological condition that affects men who are anxious about their penis size and often compensate with aggressive behavior. This anxiety is widespread and genuine, as evidenced by the global profusion of spam e-mails offering dubious penis enlargement devices, but is almost always referred to only in jest. Binay said that while filming Ayhan’s death scene, he had to repeatedly ask the crew to stop giggling while the actor, Taner Birsel, clutched his foam phallus, proof that even those professionally involved in delivering the film’s message struggled with the taboo.

It would be easy to accuse the film of a desire to shock, to overdramatize Ayhan’s abuse of his child with labored Freudian imagery. Nevertheless, the plot charts the personal experiences of a close friend of the directors (“Deniz”), and the details – including “Ayhan”’s micro-penis syndrome – have been corroborated by friends of her family. But beyond the specificities of Ayhan’s condition, his torture of himself and others reflects the pressures of Turkey’s patriarchal society to be a ‘man’, and all that that entails. As Binay puts it: “Masculine power, sexual competency, and potency are daunting pressures on every man in a society driven by masculinity. In many cases, the reason behind violence against women can be found in these.”

The obvious danger in this theory is that it can be seen to explain away—even to excuse—the father’s abuse, not only of his daughter but of the other women in his life. One has to carefully scrutinize a film that rationalizes a man’s violence against women via his own weaknesses, arousing the sympathy of the audience in the process. Yet there is surely nothing to be gained from a black and white reading of sexual abuse, a reading that paints the man as a villain beyond redemption and the woman as a victim beyond help, a pattern repeated ad infinitum. In a (hypothetically) more open, less judgmental world, Çekmeceler asks us to imagine an Ayhan that would not be so crushed by insecurities that he has to validate his masculinity by subjugating his lovers and dominating the sexuality of his daughter. It is legitimate to sympathize both with the women he abuses and with him, the abuser, diminished by an oppressively competitive masculine environment.

Last September, actress Emma Watson delivered a speech at the United Nations as part of the “He for She” campaign, in which she specifically spelled out the need to address gender stereotypes in order to tackle discrimination:

We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes, but I can see that they are, and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence. If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted, women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.

This last sentence seems to sum up Çekmeceler’s central message, and the messages of people like Cacho, who argues that sexual violence will not stop unless men become actively involved in changing their perceptions of themselves, as well as of women. The problem is that many men do not recognize themselves as victims of a patriarchal system—they are, theoretically, at the head of that pyramid. They recognize this even less when they belong to liberal, middle-class families, like the one portrayed in Çekmeceler. Alper says he understands why critics of his film refused to discuss the abuse in any depth. “We sometimes refuse to look at what is nearest to us.”

I watched the film with a Turkish friend, Selin. As we left the cinema, shell-shocked, I struggled to understand the film in light of its startling final revelation. Selin struggled less; she grew up in Istanbul and told me about the (still) common practice among Turkish families of showing off their young boys to visiting relatives: “They call the boy into the room, and he has to pull down his pants, poor thing, and show everyone. Then they discuss it, in front of him, like he’s not there.”

I gape. “What? That’s barbaric.” I grew up in a family of girls, and had never heard of this before. When I ask my Turkish mother later, she confirms it, and says in the community she grew up in, young girls experienced a similar evaluation—less invasive, but frequent appraisals of legs, arms, hands. “Children are totally objectified by their elders,” she told me. “No one thinks it is wrong, or even stops to consider it, it just continues through the generations.”

Reflecting on this phenomenon, on the trauma that must surely result from such childhood experience, as well as the tyranny of its ordinariness, I realize how important it is for films like Çekmeceler to be made. Perhaps Turkey is not ready to absorb such films—yet. But when men of all backgrounds take out their frustrations on the women closest to them, often fatally, surely the time is long overdue to tackle the grotesque social repressions that contribute to the problem. Fifty years from now, I do not want to read about another woman killed for her cooking.

VARIETY Exclusive: Naughty Turkish Directing Duo Unveil New Project

Elsa Keslassy / International Correspondent

@elsakeslassy

Mehmet Binay and Caner Alper, the Turkish directing duo behind the controversial “Zenne Dancer,” which sparked heated debates over gay rights and homophobia in Turkey, are developing “Love Blindfolded” and “The Convert.”

Binay and Alper, whose films are driven by civil liberties and gender issues, are in Cannes with their latest film, “Drawers,” pictured above, which is having its premiere at the market. “Drawers,” a drama about a teenage girl’s sexuality, won best film and actress awards at the Nuremberg fest and has been a local hit.

Exploring cultural love and identity, “Love Blindfolded” turns on an American woman who falls in love with a Turkish man and gets married in Turkey. The film opens 22 years later, when the couple is on the verge of divorcing. Still considered a foreigner even after living two decades in Turkey, the woman faces hostility in court and resistance from her children who are not willing to move back to the U.S. with her. The movie will be set up as an American-Turkish co-production.

“The Convert,” which also explores some of the same issues as “Blindfolded,” centers around a 45-year old striptease club owner from Europe capital who has lost touch with his family. When the man dies, his family is shocked to find out that he had converted to Catholicism.

“We stand somewhere between arthouse and mainstream. We think our stories are very sharp and difficult to digest. This is why cinematography is very important for us; vibrant costumes, heavy make-up, dramatic acting, talking characters; something that is unusual in the panorama of today’s Turkish cinema,” said the helmers.

Their debut, “Zenne Dancer,” won five Golden Orange prizes at the Antalya Film Festival.

Read article on VARIETY.

Controversial Turkish drama DRAWERS premieres at Marché du Film, Cannes, for the international film industry

CAM Films Press Release

11 May 2015

Turkish film DRAWERS, soon after its theatrical release on March 6th comes to the Film Market of Cannes Film Festival with two special screenings on May 15th and 18th, 2015. 

View fullsize

DRAWERS, a controversial drama on female teenage sexuality, is the second feature of acclaimed directors M.Caner Alper & Mehmet Binay, the makers of the award winning ZENNE DANCER (2012). Soon after its theatrical release in Turkey on March 6th, 2015, the film became the top winner of this year’s Nuremberg International Film Festival while receiving the best actress honor.

DRAWERS spans a lifetime of 25 years from late 1970’s until today, and examines the tormented universe of teenage sexuality through the eyes of Deniz, a Turkish girl who is born to actor parents, and rebels against her father’s obsessively controlling nature by throwing herself into a life full of drugs, sex and partying. This self-destructive hedonism takes its toll and Deniz end ups in hospital. Drained and alone she is finally forced to confront the demons of the past. After her painful but liberating journey and finally months of hospital recovery, she manages to discover herself and furthermore the hidden secrets in her family drawers. 

Written by co-director M.Caner Alper, DRAWERS paints a stark and troubling picture of family life in Turkey, a conservative country that prides itself on being modern yet is profoundly patriarchal. In this supremely hypocritical world only men decide what a woman can do with her body.

Directors M.Caner Alper and Mehmet Binay say “We tell stories others would not dare to talk about because they are taboos in our troubled societies. Our films are often controversial and can be shocking while projecting colorful and vibrant vignettes from dramatic characters who are inspired by real events and stories.” Director/writer Alper has a degree in industrial engineering while co-director Binay comes from journalism, photography and documentary filmmaking. Directors’ first feature ZENNE DANCER, inspired by the gay honour killing of Ahmet Yildiz in 2008, received 25 awards at over 70 film festivals worldwide and it was recognised as the movie of the year, shaking up Turkey politically and socially. ZENNE DANCER was recognized as the first openly gay story in Turkish cinema with a nationwide distribution that become breaking news at CNN and other international news outlets.

DRAWERS, directors Alper and Binay’s second film follows the same path by depicting a much debated story on female teenage sexuality and the micro-penis complex in a predominantly conservative, patriarchal society. DRAWERS will have two screenings at Marche du Film of Cannes Film Festival; hosted by producer Bulut Reyhanoglu and director/writer M.Caner Alper. 

DRAWERS Screenings at Marche du Film, Cannes Film Festival:

-       GREY 3 at 18:00 on 15 May 2015

-       PALAIS F at 9:30 on 18 May 2015

Turkish film 'Drawers’ wins top award at Nuremberg film festival

23 March 2015

The Turkish movie “Çekmeceler” (Drawers), about a young woman taken to a hospital on the night of her 32nd birthday, became the top winner of this year's Nuremberg turkish-german film festival, its producers announced Monday.

Actress Nilufer Acikalin & Tilbe Saran, writer/director M.Caner Alper, producers Nurhan Ozenen & Bulut Reyhanoglu

“Çekmeceler,” co-directed by “Zenne Dancer” filmmakers M. Caner Alper and Mehmet Binay, won the best film and the best actress awards at the 20th edition of the annual Nuremberg festival, which wrapped up with an awards ceremony on Sunday.

The festival's best actress honor was split among the three female cast members of the film, billed as a controversial coming of age story that reveals the traumatic secrets buried deep within the soul of its leading character, Deniz, played by Ece Dizdar.

The six-member jury of the festival's feature film competition said in its award statement that actresses Tilbe Saran, who portrays Deniz's mother in “Çekmeceler,” and Nilüfer Açıkalın, who plays Deniz's stepmom, deserved equal praise with Dizdar for their acting performances.

The Nuremberg festival marked the first international outing for “Çekmeceler,” which premiered in February as part of this year's !f İstanbul International Independent Film Festival, and had its theatrical release on March 6.

A total of 39 titles by Turkish and German directors were in the running for awards at the festival's feature film competition. The 20th Nuremberg Turkish-German Film Festival took place March 13-22.

Today's Zaman: New drama ‘Çekmeceler’ to have one-off outing at !f İstanbul

2 February 2015

“Çekmeceler” (drawers), a new drama by the Turkish co-directors of the multiple award-winning 2011 film “Zenne Dancer,” will have its world premiere on Feb. 15 as part of the upcoming !f İstanbulInternational independent film festival.

The film, part of the 14th !f İstanbul's Digiturk Galas program, will be shown only once during the festival, according to a news release issued Monday by the film's publicist.

Co-directors M. Caner Alper and Mehmet Binay's sophomore effort, described as a controversial coming-of-age drama, follows the story of a young woman who is taken to a hospital on the night of her 32nd birthday and reveals the traumatic secrets buried deep in her soul -- and in the “family drawers” of her divorced parents, who are both actors -- as she journeys back over the last 25 years while in her hospital bed.

Starring Ece Dizdar in its leading role, the film's cast also features Taner Birsel, Tilbe Saran, Nilüfer Açıkalın and Hakan Çimenser.

“Çekmeceler” is set to open in cinemas nationwide on March 6.

Alper and Binay's debut feature “Zenne” was based on the true story of Ahmet Yıldız, the first victim of a gay “honor killing” in Turkey. That film has won around 25 awards at both local and foreign film festivals, including the Golden Orange for Best First Film at the 2011 Antalya International Film Festival.

CNN Breaking News: Shocking gay honor killing inspires movie

13 January 2012, by Ivan Watson

In colloquial Turkish, the word zenne means male belly dancer. It is also the title of a new film that explores sexual identity while also highlighting a deadly case of homophobia in modern-day Turkey.

"The starting point was a dear friend of ours who was murdered in 2008 for being gay by his own father," said Mehmet Binay, producer and co-director of "Zenne," which opens in theaters across Turkey on Friday.

Binay was referring to the 2008 killing of Ahmet Yildiz, a 26-year old physics student who was gunned down in Istanbul.

Court records identify Yildiz's father, Yahya, as the primary suspect in the killing. The father's motive, according to a copy of the indictment, was that he "did not accept the victim to be in a gay relationship."

More than three years after the slaying, Yildiz's father is a fugitive, still wanted by Turkish police. 

The death has since been widely referred to as Turkey's first gay honor killing.

One of the main characters in "Zenne" is based on Ahmet Yildiz and his tragic story.

ZENNE DANCER on CNN International from ZENNE DANCER TheMovie on Vimeo.

Caner Alper, the writer and other co-director of "Zenne," was also a friend of Yildiz's. Alper said before he died, Yildiz often spoke about receiving death threats from his family, who were trying to "cure" him of his homosexuality.

Court documents show Yildiz reported these death threats to the Turkish authorities.

In an interview with CNN this week, the filmmakers said they hoped their film would force Turkish society to debate hate crimes that target victims based on gender, religion, ethnicity or sexual identity.

"Death and murder is still on the agenda of our country. We can't get rid of this mentality," said Binay. "People need to tolerate each other. They need to understand that different identities can live next to each other without disturbing each other."

Binay and Alper are not only creative partners. Shortly before the debut of their debut film at the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, Turkey's most prestigious film festival, the two men announced they had been a couple for 14 years. Alper said their families advised against coming out publicly.

"They thought it would be career suicide," he said. "Until we won five awards from the first festival that we attended."

Despite recent critical acclaim, the filmmakers agreed Turkey still has a long way to go before it overcomes deeply entrenched institutional homophobia.

According to Article 17 of the health regulations of the Turkish Armed Forces, homosexuality is considered a "psychosexual deviance."

All Turkish men are required to perform military service. But gay men can be exempted from conscript duty provided they first prove their homosexuality.

"Zenne" depicts the degrading process its main characters endure at an army recruiting center.

In the film, military doctors perform anal examinations and hurl homophobic insults at conscripts. They also demand photos of the characters having sex with other men.

Gay rights activists say the military has long demanded graphic photo and/or video evidence from men asking to be released from military duty.

"In the photograph and the video you have to show your form and your face. Your face has to be clearly identified and another man has to be penetrating," said Kursad Kahramanoglu, who teaches international law and human sexuality at Istanbul's Bilgi University.

CNN asked Turkey's defense ministry to comment on what gay rights groups claim has long been an unwritten military policy.

"The practice of asking for video and photographic evidence is out of question," a defense ministry spokesman responded, speaking on condition of anonymity, a common practice in Turkish government bureaucracy. "I cannot confirm that it definitely did not happen, but we do not have any information that such a thing happened," he added.

The spokesman said the current policy is for conscripts to prove their homosexuality with a doctor's report from a private or military hospital. "The evaluation is made based on the medical report," he said.

Less than two years ago, a senior Turkish government minister was quoted in an interview calling homosexuality "an illness ... that should be treated."

These types of statements have not stopped members of Turkey's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community from demanding equal rights.

Thousands marched in a rainbow-hued gay pride parade through downtown Istanbul last July. 

Some of the activists carried large posters of Ahmet Yildiz with the slogan "get the murderer." Among those marching was Yildiz's former boyfriend, Ibrahim Can.

"I am fighting for the rights of my lover and for all the gays and lesbians and transsexuals in the world and in Turkey. And I want the Turkish government to change the homophobic attitude in Turkey," Can said in an interview with CNN.

LGBT activists are lobbying the Turkish government to have the constitution amended to protect the rights of Turks on the grounds of gender and sexual identity. The Turkish Constitution is currently in the lengthy process of being re-written.

Binay, meanwhile, points to what he calls remarkable progress for minority rights in Turkey over the last decade. He said: "All sorts of minorities including gays and lesbians are demanding their rights. They want recognition, they want protection by the state. They want to be able to live, first of all, and not be murdered."

Reuters: Gay "honour killing" movie shakes Turkey up

20 January 2012, by Ece Toksabay

On a hot summer's day in 2008, 26-year-old physics student Ahmet Yildiz was shot dead when he popped out from his Istanbul apartment to buy ice cream.

The main suspect in the killing, a fugitive still wanted by Turkish police, is Yildiz's father, who could not accept that his only son was in a homosexual relationship.

The case, widely believed to be Turkey's first gay "honour killing", has inspired a movie "Zenne", which opened on January 13 and explores gay sexual identity and prejudice in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey.

"We had the movie idea in mind right after our dear friend Ahmet was killed," said Caner Alper, writer and co-director of the movie. "His story needed to be told."

Yildiz was born into a wealthy religious family in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, in Turkey's impoverished and conservative southeast, but moved to cosmopolitan Istanbul during his university years, seeking more freedom as a gay man.

In Istanbul, Yildiz started a new life and made new friends; he also began a gay relationship and eventually moved in with his boyfriend, who witnessed Yildiz's murder from the window of their apartment on the Asian side of the city divided by the Bosphorus Strait.

In the movie, Yildiz's character is encouraged to come out of the closet by a male belly dancer, or zenne, and a German photographer who has moved to Istanbul after a personal crisis in Afghanistan, where he accidentally caused the death of several children during a photo shoot. Both are fictional characters.

In real life, Yildiz's coming out as a gay man was seen as an affront in his deeply patriarchal and tribal family, even though his parents adored him, a cousin, Ahmet Kaya, told the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey.

LOOKING FOR A "CURE"

Yildiz's father had urged him to return to their village and to see a doctor and an imam to "cure" him of his homosexuality and get married, but Yildiz refused.

"Ahmet loved his family more than anything else and he was tortured about disappointing them," Kaya was quoted as saying in the foundation's report.

After he was killed, the family did not claim Yildiz's body for a proper Islamic burial -- an indication of the deep shame the family felt and that they had ceased to consider him one of their own. He was buried instead in a "cemetery for the nameless."

"The one scene I wasn't able to distance myself from the character I played as an actor was when Ahmet apologised to his father for being gay on the phone after coming out," Erkan Avci, a young actor who played Yildiz, told Reuters.

"It's such a great tragedy, so cruel and inhumane that anybody has to apologise for who he is."

Avci drew parallels between Ahmet's situation and his own as a Kurd from Diyarbakir province in a country whose Kurdish minority has long complained of discrimination and inequality.

"It would have been immoral for me to turn down this role, as a man who had to apologize for years for being Kurdish," he said.

"Zenne", which won five awards at Turkey's most prestigious film festival, the Antalya Golden Orange, has received a huge amount of attention in mainstream media and is reported to be having reasonable success at the box office.

With a $1 million budget, including financial support from the Dutch embassy, it opened in a luxury movie theatre in one of Istanbul's most fashionable neighbourhoods.

Gays are normally depicted in Turkish movies as colourful and exaggerated secondary characters who add a comic element - hardly the main character of a story.

"Zenne" tackles head-on such sensitive issues as gay society, prejudice and equal rights for Turkey's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

"'Zenne' is a very special film for us. It brings to the screen some of the important issues for the LGBT cause such as hate crimes, the complications for gay men to forego the mandatory military service and coming out," said Umut Guner, spokesman for the Ankara-based Kaos GL, a LGBT group.

PREJUDICE

The film has not been welcomed in conservative circles.

Islamist daily Vakit called it "homosexual propaganda" by a gay lobby bent on "legitimising perversion through their so-called art."

Despite being the only suspect, Yildiz's father is still at large and is being tried in absentia.

Friends and activists, who have attended some of the hearings wearing masks bearing Yildiz's portrait, say the authorities lack the will to find the perpetrator.

Alper and Mehmet Binay, co-directors of the movie and together as a gay couple for 14 years, said they heard their friend Yildiz receive death threats from his family over the phone.

Yildiz filed an official complaint but failed to receive any protection, they said.

"Honour killings," or crimes carried out against mostly women and young girls seen to have tainted the family's name, are not uncommon in Turkey, particularly in poor and rural areas.

The European Union, which Turkey wants to join, has repeatedly urged Ankara to take a tougher stance against such crimes.

MILITARY PRACTICES

Turkey is often held as an example in the Middle East for marrying Islam and democracy, but Turkish gay activists say Ankara's human rights record is far from perfect.

One practice particularly abhorred by rights groups is the method by which gay men can be exempted from the required 16-month military service: they have to prove their homosexuality in medical tests and are compelled to provide photos of them having sex with other men.

In the movie, two characters undergoing one such examination are forced to wear make-up and dress in women's clothes, while doctors perform anal examinations.

According to Article 17 of the health regulations of the Turkish Armed Forces, homosexuality is considered a "psychosexual deviance."

"Turkey is going through a democratisation process, and the army needs to enter this phase, too," said Binay.

"We don't live in a dream world and we don't expect it to happen all of a sudden in such a deep-seated institution, but at least they could stop the humiliating practices against gay men."

Turkish rights groups reported 24 killings of gay and transsexual individuals in the last two years. In most cases, courts reduced the sentences or the perpetrators were not found.

In a report last year, Amnesty International urged Ankara to draw up laws preventing discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and to punish perpetrators of homophobic attacks.

The EU in a separate report also last year said lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons in Turkey "continued to suffer discrimination, intimidation and violent crimes".

LGBT activists say they get little sympathy from the AK Party, in power for a decade, which has its roots in political Islam and is known for its socially conservative stance.

Selma Aliye Kavaf, Turkey's former Women and Family Affairs Minister, made waves in 2010 when she said homosexuality was "a biological disorder, a disease that needs to be treated".

The current interior minister accused an outlawed armed organization with "engaging in every kind of immorality, including homosexuality".

Director Binay said he hoped the movie would help to change views both among government officials and the wider society, but believed that would not happen overnight.

"These movies will be made in Turkey as long as those from different identities refuse to learn to live together."

Huffington Post: 'Zenne Dancer,' Turkey's First Gay Themed Movie, Highlights 'Honor' Killing

24 January 2012, by Suzan Frazer, AP

ANKARA, Turkey -- Shortly after telling his parents he was gay, Ahmet Yildiz was gunned down inside his car by his father in Istanbul. It was Turkey's first officially recognized gay "honor killing."

An award-winning film partly inspired by Yildiz's story, which opened in dozens of cinemas across Turkey last week, is putting the spotlight on gays in a Muslim country that is seeking European Union membership but remains influenced by conservative and religious values.

The film "Zenne Dancer" – or male belly dancer – is not the nation's first gay-themed movie but is the first to explore the little-known phenomenon of men killed by family members for being gay. So-called honor killings in Turkey usually target women accused of disgracing the family.

"Our main aim was to convey Ahmet's story, but by doing so we also wanted to expose the pressure the (gay and lesbian community) faces from their family, the society and the state," said Mehmet Binay, who co-directed and produced the film with his partner, Caner Alper.

"Zenne Dancer" won four awards at Turkey's coveted Antalya Golden Orange film festival this year, including best First Film and Best Cinematography. Erkan Avci, who plays Yildiz's character, won Best Supporting Actor. The movie was also recently chosen a Best Film by an association of Turkish film critics.

Yildiz, a physics student at Istanbul's Marmara University, was shot dead on July 15, 2008 after he went out for an ice cream break while studying at home for his final exams.

An arrest warrant has been issued for his father, Yahya Yildiz, who has been charged in absentia for the murder. The father, who has been on the run for three years, is believed to be in hiding in northern Iraq.

Yildiz, who was a close friend of Binay and Alper, came from the conservative, mostly-Kurdish Sanliurfa province, where homosexuality is taboo and where officials have been struggling to stem the practice of honor killings of women. Women there have been killed for flirting or having a boyfriend without the family's consent.

Gay honor killings are believed to be common in Turkey's conservative heartland. But Yildiz's murder was the first in Turkey to be reported by authorities as a gay honor killing.

Binay said Yildiz's family suspected his homosexuality but believed he could be treated by imams and were pressuring him to return to Sanliurfa.

"He was killed shortly after he told them he would not be cured, would not return and that he was considering leaving for Germany where he might marry (his boyfriend)," he said.

In "Zenne Dancer," Yildiz's life is intertwined with the stories of two other male characters – a flamboyant Zenne dancer named Can and a bisexual German photographer, Daniel.

A stranger to Turkey's conservative traditions, Daniel encourages Yildiz to come out to his parents, insisting honesty was the best way to deal with his family.

"You don't understand," Yildiz responds in one scene: "Honesty would kill me."

Binay said he and Alper were filming a documentary on male belly dancers when Yildiz was killed. Shocked by the murder, they put the documentary on hold and decided to create a feature film that blends the story of the Zenne dancers with Yildiz's tragedy.

Turkish attitudes toward gay and lesbians are more relaxed compared to the 1980s and 1990s when police routinely raided gay bars, detained transvestites and banned gay festivals. Gay sex is not considered a crime in the country, and some bars and clubs in major cities openly cater to gays.

But a majority of gays still choose to hide their lifestyle in a country where liberal views have yet to make inroads in rural areas and many urban settings.

Last year, a former government minister described homosexuality as a biological disorder that needs to be treated, while municipalities have some leeway to introduce laws safeguarding "morality," which gay activists view as a potential threat to their freedom.

Some gays openly acknowledge their sexual orientation, including poet Murathan Mungan and the late singer Zeki Muren. Zenne dancing itself harks back to the Ottoman Empire, a time when there was a degree of tolerance toward gay sex among some sectors of the elite.

Hebun LGTB, a gay and lesbian group based in the conservative city Diyarbakir that neighbors Sanliurfa, described the film as an opportunity to break ingrained attitudes toward gays in traditional areas.

"There was a piece of us in each of the characters," said a group member, Arif, who declined to give his surname because his family does not know about his sexual orientation. "I am in the same situation as Ahmet Yildiz: If I was honest, I would be killed by my family."

"If out of all the people who watch it, just 10 are able to change their attitudes, then the filmmakers should be happy," he said.

Despite one article in a pro-Islamic newspaper that branded "Zenne Dancer" a "film for perverts," Binay says he and Alper have not received any threats or hate mail, and that some 35,000 people have seen the movie in its first week.

Gulsah Simsek, a 23-year old student, watched "Zenne Dancer" in Ankara.

"Some of the swearing and some of the scenes shocked me," she said. "But there must be so many people like (Yildiz) and it's good that the pain they suffer is being told."

Binay and Alper have been same-sex partners for 14 years and openly came out as a couple during one of the film's early screenings. They regularly attend showings where they hold discussions on attitudes toward homosexuality.

The film is showing in 50 cinemas in 16 out of Turkey's 81 provinces, including conservative Diyarbakir.

"The (positive) response we got in Istanbul wasn't much different to the response we got in Diyarbakir," Binay said. "We are encouraged by the attitudes in (traditional) regions."

Turkish Daily News: Young filmmaker's documentary provides fresh look at history

26 JULY 2008, ISTANBUL | by YASEMİN SİM ESMEN

Young documentary filmmaker and journalist Mehmet Binay’s “Whispering Memories” handles the story of Armenians who stayed rather than left during the incidents of 1915. Looking at the historical events from a fresh point-of-view, Binay’s film has been screened at the Golden Apricot Film Festival in Armenian capital Yerevan, attracting much interest

A lot has been said about Armenians who left their homes in 1915, but not much has been said about those who stayed. It is this often overlooked aspect that documentary filmmaker and journalist Mehmet Binay tackles in a new film, “Whispering Memories.” 

“Today, we need to prove that we do care about our past and we are ready to confess [our] mistakes, whatever geopolitical reason they might have had. I think filmmaking is a great way to reconcile with Armenians, who are an important part of our imperial past,” said Binay in an interview with the Turkish Daily News. He added that the events of 1915 resulted in a majority of Anatolian Armenians being wiped out from their ancestral homeland. “A significant cultural, social and economic element of our society was taken out of Turkey's mosaic, which we kept mentioning as a stronghold of our culture and identity throughout the centuries. 1915 was a terrible human disaster causing economic, social and political imbalances in eastern Turkey, while its effects still dominate our problems there.” 

Binay comes from a family that migrated to modern-day Turkey from their ancestral land in the Balkans. With stories of migration in his past and a fascination with the richness of history and the mystery of eastern Turkey, Binay has traveled extensively in eastern Anatolia. “Its authenticity, complexity and the sorrow in people's eyes had been striking me while I was on my photographic journeys along the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which I've documented extensively since the 1990s,” said the filmmaker. 

Discovering a unique village 

It was during this journey that he came across ancient gravestones located in many spots in the village of Geben in the Taurus Mountains of Kahramanmaraş province. “[They] had struck me with their unknown origin and the sheer size of them standing up against time,” said Binay. “Whispering Memories” developed from a number of visits by the filmmaker to Geben, where village youngsters showed a desire to learn about their local history and, while investigating, came across Armenians who used to live in the area widely until 1915. “Some of the witnesses of this era and members of the Oral History Project were saying that some people in this village are the descendants of converted Armenians who either silently or by force became Muslims to be able to avoid deportation in 1915,” said Binay. 

 “Whispering Memories” brings a fresh look at the facts, wrote Taraf columnist Amberin Zaman.

“My initial journalistic instinct told me to keep a distance to these rural historic conversations by using the camera as an observer only,” said the filmmaker, who decided not to lead the interviews but just to listen to them in order to sustain objectivity. The documentary's producer and drama advisor, Caner Alper, then helped establish strong cinematographic links between the conversations and the filmmakers by integrating a three-day rural wedding into the visual story and having it serve as a leitmotif throughout the film. 

Binay said he believes that honesty and neutrality are the strongholds of “Whispering Memories.” “We are able to understand economic and social links between Armenians and Turks prior to 1915 thanks to sincere conversations between village elders and youngsters,” he said. He said he believes that the wedding, the story of which is told in the film, helps viewers understand that story of “The Converts,” as marriage is a perfect way to mix different cultures, ethnicities and religions. 

“Yet memories remain and live throughout generations if not condemned or discriminated just because of their being different. This is exactly how this small village in the Taurus Mountains was able to develop a liberal, open and peaceful society without getting too much polarized throughout the 20th century. Geben is a perfect example of how different roots and cultures can live peacefully together or side by side even today,” added Binay. 

“Whispering Memories” was filmed over two years. The wedding was filmed in 2006, while preparations for rural history conversations were filmed in 2007. It took both Binay and village youngsters much effort and time to convince people to speak about those times in an open and frank way. Shooting the film in two years had some drawbacks and difficulties. “Village youngsters leading oral history conversations were present at the wedding a year ago but they'd grown up or changed, so we needed to make sure the audience didn't feel disturbed by those visual changes. The entire filming process required a lot of planning regarding time and lighting so we could fit those different segments in a natural flow,” Binay said.

The documentary was broadcasted on the Turkish news channel CNN-Türk on June 27, 2008, prior to its screening in the Golden Apricot Film Festival. In the period leading up to the documentary's broadcast on CNN-Türk, the documentary's makers set up a blog, a Web site, and a group on social networking Web site Facebook. Binay said the audience in Turkey was generally impressed by the objectivity and the lyrical flow of the storyline. “I received feedback from Turkish historians appreciating our work to find out honest and open remarks about 1915,” he said and added, “I also think documentaries are a popular and successful way to convey facts and figures about our history to the general public.”

The film's two screenings in Yerevan drew attention and the audience requested a long question and answer sessions afterwards, during which Binay was asked whether he was scared to film such a documentary in Turkey. “They also asked me why I filmed this documentary as a filmmaker with no Armenian or eastern roots. Armenians today do not know modern Turkey besides the fact that intellectuals such as Hrant Dink can be killed by ultra-nationalists simply by talking about the Turkish identity and accepting 1915 as genocide. They do not expect Turkish filmmakers to make fair and objective films or documentaries about 1915,” said Binay. He said “Whispering Memories” impressed the Armenian audience in Yerevan by providing a fair and objective look into historical events. 

“Also some people in the audience [in Yerevan] told their own memories of converted grandmothers and other family members. They got very sentimental at certain points but they also laughed a lot during some of the wedding scenes,” said Binay.

The Economist: The cost of reconstruction

11 March 2010

FOR centuries, a stone bridge spanning the emerald green waters of the Akhurian River connected the southern Caucasus to the Anatolian plains: a strategic pivot on the Silk Road, running through the ancient Armenian kingdom of Ani. Today the bridge would have linked tiny, landlocked Armenia to Turkey. But war and natural disasters have reduced it to a pair of stubs—a sad commentary on the relations between the two states. 

This grim image prompted an Ankara-based think-tank, called Tepav, to devise a plan to rebuild the bridge and in so doing to reopen the long-sealed land border by stealth. “The idea is to promote reconciliation through cross-border tourism,” explains Tepav's director, Guven Sak. Turkey's doveish president, Abdullah Gul, has embraced the plan. The Armenian authorities and diaspora Armenians with deep pockets are also interested. If all went to plan, the bridge's restoration would only be the start of a broader effort to repair hundreds of other Armenian architectural treasures scattered across Turkey.

This semi-official stamp on a relationship in the absence of diplomatic ties (foreseen in an accord signed last October, but yet to materialise) would be a first. Yet academics, artists and journalists are striking peace on their own terms. Hardly a day passes without Turks and Armenians hobnobbing at a reconciliation event.

It is a tricky business because true reconciliation means confronting the ghosts of the past. For decades Turkey denied the mass extermination of the Ottoman Armenians in 1915. Under Turkey's draconian penal code, anyone who dares to describe the Armenian tragedy as a genocide can end up in jail or even dead. In 2007 an ultra-nationalist teenager murdered Hrant Dink, an Armenian-Turkish editor who often wrote about the genocide. Although Ogun Samast pulled the trigger it is widely assumed that rogue security officials from the “deep state” gave him the gun.

Dink's death was a turning point. More than 100,000 Turks of all stripes showed up at his funeral bearing placards that read: “We are all Armenians.” Indeed if the murder was intended to stifle debate it had the reverse effect. A growing number of Turks are uttering the g-word. Ugur Umit Ungor, a young Turkish academic is one of them. His research aims to show how many Young Turk cadres involved in the massacres continued to thrive after the republic was founded in 1923. 

“WHISPERING MEMORIES: Documentary filmmaker and journalist Mehmet Binay’s “Whispering Memories” handles the story of Armenians who stayed rather than left during the incidents of 1915. Looking at the historical events from a fresh point-of-view, Binay’s film has been screened at the Golden Apricot Film Festival in Armenian capital Yerevan, attracting much interest in 2008.”

Others allude to history in more subtle ways. Take Mehmet Binay, a Turkish film director. His documentary “Whispering Memories” tells the story of ethnic Armenians in a village called Geben, who embraced Islam (presumably to avoid death at the hands of Ottoman forces). Sobs were heard during a recent screening of the film in Yerevan, Armenia's capital. 

Although today's inhabitants of Geben hesitate to call themselves Armenians, a growing number of “crypto-Armenians” (people forced to change identity) do just that. Their stories were collected and recently published by Fethiye Cetin, a Turkish human-rights lawyer, whose grandmother revealed her own Armenian roots shortly before her death.

Meanwhile, an army of humble if accidental Armenian ambassadors are helping to melt the ice. Turkey says that as many as 70,000 illegal Armenian migrant workers, mostly women, eke out a living as servants and nannies in Istanbul. A recent study by Alin Ozinian, an Armenian-Turkish researcher shows that such women arrive full of fear of “the Turk” only to return with stories of kindness. If the land borders were to be reopened some day, their wages would not have to be spent on long, pricey bus rides through Georgia.