A Companion to the Gangster Film by Larke-Walsh George S.;

Author:Larke-Walsh, George S.; [George S. Larke‐Walsh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
Published: 2018-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

14

Gangsters in Turkish Cinema

Hülya Önal

Although the French word for “gangster” is no longer used in Turkish, its Western equivalent “mafia” is often used. “The term ‘mafia’ (in Italian: mafia or cosa nostra – meaning ‘our business’ or ‘our case’ in Turkish) is used in Turkish in accordance with its original meaning in Western societies. This usually means a hierarchical secret organization that commits illegal acts and gains unlawful profit by using force. A mafia organization can operate in hundreds of legal and illegal sectors, such as gambling, commerce, drugs, finance, construction, woman trafficking and prostitution, smuggling, seizure, murder and redemption (Lampe, 2018). In criminology, the term mafia also describes a criminal organization that commits illegal acts by resorting to threats and violence, although there is also an understanding of the cultural codes within the context of its meaning. Indeed, the emergence and development of mafia organizations cannot be viewed independently of the wider cultural texture, economic policies pursued throughout history, and business and government relations of the country in which they are based. For example, it is arguably no coincidence that the neoliberal economic policies that began in the 1950s and gained currency in the 1980s in Turkey coincided with the introduction of the term mafia into Turkish. By focusing on gangsters in Turkish cinema, the study described in this chapter will address the transformation of local outlaw heroes and their myths in accordance with Turkey’s modernization stories. It will also trace the transformation of these outlaws within the literal modernization of Turkish society, which remains stuck between East and West.

The study includes three main periods that parallel the development of Turkish politics and cinema. The first section examines stories of the heroic leaders of criminal gangs called bandits in the 1950s and 1960s, prior to the emergence of mafias. These heroes were represented through local norms in both their appearances and acts in accordance with their biographies. Their crimes, with which one could easily to identify, were based on justifications such as “suffering from injustice” due to their friendly, fair, and protective attitudes. These bandits lived among the local people and represented the traditional heroic myth for a great part of the society which had not yet fully adapted to city culture. At this point, it is important to emphasize that Turkey’s modernization has played a significant part in transforming these outlaw heroes of Turkish cinema. Accordingly, the second and third sections focus on how Turkish modernization, shaped by neoliberal policies first implemented in the second half of the 1950s, transformed the representation of outlaws in Turkish cinema. The second section addresses the 1970s, when rowdy‐bullies who replaced bandits in line with modern city life and gangster movies (using the original Western genre name) became popular.

Although gangster movies, along with other popular genres of the time, included certain narrative codes and stereotypical characters within certain topics, the heroes in these movies were always sympathetically depicted because they consistently supported the downtrodden. The third section examines the period since the 1980s, which was a turning point for the transformation of the outlaw hero.

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